The Best 10-Person Instant Tents (Bought & Tested!)

Here are the best 10-person instant tents that I’ve bought and tested:

1. Coleman Dark Room Instant Cabin 10-Person Tent

2. Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10-Person Tent

3. Core Equipment Instant Cabin 9-Person Tent (okay, not exactly a 10-person tent, but you’re still gonna want to check this out, trust me.)

Best 10-Person Instant Tent – Quick Summary

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Here’s a quick summary of everything you need to know about these 10-person instant tents:

And now, let’s get into the more detailed recommendations.

RELATED: Best Instant Setup Tents

1. Core Equipment Instant Cabin 9 (Best Value for Money)

Key Info:

• Set up timing: 12 minutes

• Pack away timing: 9 minutes

• Peak height: 75.5 inches

• Base area: 118.1 square feet

• Packed size: 46 x 13 x 12 inches

• Weight: 30.0 pounds

Pros and Cons:

Summary

If you’re looking for a huge instant tent to go camping in with your family, the best pick that I have for you is the Core Equipment Instant Cabin 9.

There are many reasons why I absolutely love this tent over the others, and I’ll go through all the reasons with you right now.

First, this Core Instant 9 is the least expensive of all the instant tents in this review. Here’s how much I paid for each of them:

• Core Instant 9: ~$200

• Outdoor Products 10: >$300

• Coleman Instant 10: >$300

Please bear in mind that the price I paid may differ from the actual retail price now, because I bought all of these tents a few years ago. For the current price, I left my affiliate links above.

Second, even though I paid the least for the Core, I found the instant mechanism to still be high quality. I noticed that it’s better than Coleman’s, and on par with the Outdoor Products’.

The pre-attached poles are nice and thick, made with sturdy steel, and there are a whopping 3 hubs to hold the tent body up at the top of the tent.

Third, here are all the setup and pack away timings of all the tents in this review:

Instant Tent	Setup Timing	Pack Away Timing
Core Instant 9	12 mins	9 mins
Outdoor Products 10	12 mins	10.5 mins
Coleman Instant 10	15 mins	11 mins

What do you notice?

The Core Tent is one of the quickest to setup, but here’s the kicker – it packs away the most easily.

And that’s because its carry bag is much bigger than the other two 10-person instant tents. Here’s what the Core looks like when put beside the Outdoor Products (the Outdoor Products has the exact same packed size as the Coleman):

With a bigger and more generous carry bag, there’s much less struggling and fumbling about. I didn’t have to fold and squeeze the Core down as much to get it back into the carry bag.

On the other hand, I was really frustrated while trying to pack away the other 2 tents, because each had a smaller carry bag.

And fourth, the Core has the best vents of all 3 tents in this review.

Actually, scratch that – the Core has the best vents I’ve ever seen in a budget-friendly family tent, not just the tents in this review.

I really loved that these vents can be opened and shut from the inside of the tent. Here are a few pictures to show you what the vents look like when open, and also when shut:

Having the added flexibility to open and shut vents when you want to, from inside the tent, is a great help.

However, of course, there are a couple of minor cons to take note of.

And since this is a review on the best 10-person instant tents, I’ve got to knock the Core for this, since it’s only a 9-person instant tent.

And this 9-person configuration was a little strange, because the floor area wasn’t big enough to fit more than 2 queen beds.

To be honest, I expected it to fit 3 queen beds, at least, and not just 2.

You can, however, buy a 10-person instant tent from Core, instead of this 9-person model. I’ll leave a link and some pictures here so that you can check it out if you’re interested:

And also, the Core’s room divider is ridiculously transparent. It was so transparent that I could practically see the entire room through the divider. Unfortunately, this is also the worst room divider of all the tents in this review.

But to me, these 2 cons are relatively minor, and I still love the Core 9-Person Instant Cabin Tent for its great value for money.

2. Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10 (Runner-Up Pick)

Key Info:

• Set up timing: 12 minutes

• Pack away timing: 10.5 minutes

• Peak height: 77.5 inches

• Base area: 135.8 square feet

• Packed size: 50 x 17 x 12 inches

• Weight: 32.8 pounds

Pros and Cons

Summary

If you found the Core Instant Cabin 9 a bit too small for your liking, then you may want to consider the Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10 instead.

It has a bigger base area (135.8 square feet) than the Core (118.1 square feet), it fits 4 queen beds instead, and here’s what it looks like:

Just bear in mind that after the 4 queen beds go in, there will be no leftover floor space to put anything else.

Of course, you can use just 3 queen beds instead, and free up some floor space in case you want to put camping gear or camping furniture into your tent.

On top of having a big base area, I also noticed that the Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10 has the highest peak height of all the instant tents in this review, coming in at a whopping 77.5 inches.

Here’s the peak heights of all the instant tents here:

• Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10: 77.5 inches

• Core Equipment Instant Cabin 10: 75.5 inches

• Coleman Dark Room Instant Cabin 10: 73.5 inches

On top of just being a heck of a roomy tent, the Outdoor Products also has the best room divider of all instant tents in this review.

Actually, it has one of the best room dividers I’ve ever seen in my life (and trust me, I’ve tested quite a few family tents with room dividers.)

What I really loved about this divider is that it’s completely full length, so there are no gaps at the top, bottom, or sides.

On top of that, it’s not see-through like the Core’s, and it very effectively separates the tent into 2 rooms.

It is a pre-attached room divider though, so you can’t take it out even if you want to, though you can pull back the sides of the divider if you don’t want to use it.

The Outdoor Products 10 also has lots of great features, like a whopping 3 doors (the other tents in this review only have 2 doors each), and lots of lantern loops around the tent (4, to be exact).

The instant tent mechanism of the Outdoor Products is also high quality, and it’s the exact same one that the Core has.

I noticed that the poles are identical, the 3 hubs at the top are identical, and they even came with the exact same product tags.

One big con of the Outdoor Products though, is that it’s a little bit on the pricier side. I paid 50% more for the Outdoor Products than I did for the Core.

Considering that both tents have almost the exact same instant tent mechanism, that’s why I thought that the Core had better value for money in the long run.

However, if you like your instant tent to be roomier with more features (and especially if you want a 2-room tent), then the Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10 would be a better pick for you than the Core.

3. Coleman Dark Room Instant Cabin 10 (Best Blackout Tent)

Key Info:

• Set up timing: 15 minutes

• Pack away timing: 11 minutes

• Peak height: 73.5 inches

• Base area: 135.7 square feet

• Packed size: 50 x 17 x 12 inches

• Weight: 32.0 pounds

Pros and Cons

Summary

The Coleman Instant Cabin 10 is also an extremely feature-rich 10-person instant tent, and I would recommend it if you love its 2 main features:

1. Phenomenal dark room technology

2. User-friendly hinged D-door

Let me show you how each one works.

When it comes to blackout or dark room tents, I think that Coleman does one of the best jobs in the industry.

Here’s what the Coleman 10 looks like in the day.

Apart from the little bit of light seeping in through the gap between the roof and the rainfly, and also from the bathtub flooring at the bottom of the tent, I think this is really great for sleeping in.

And here’s a close-up shot of what the blackout tent body fabric from Coleman looks like:

The other feature that blew my mind was its ingenious hinged door.

This works just like a regular door at home. All I had to do to get into the tent was to pull on the hinged door handle here:

This opens the door, and I just had to step into the tent. After that, the door would automatically close behind me.

How awesome is that? This is such a great fix for all of you guys who hate having to deal with snaggy door zippers.

However, these 2 ingenious features aside, the Coleman Instant Cabin 10 isn’t a great instant tent by any means.

Here are some details on all the instant tents in this review:

Instant Tent	Hubs	Side Walls	Peak Height
Outdoor Products 10	3	16° angle	77.5in
Core Instant 9	3	15° angle	75.5in
Coleman Instant 10	1	35° angle	73.5in

Typically, the more hubs an instant tent has, the more the tent body is held up by the hubs. This leads to more livable space inside the tent.

However, the Coleman Instant Cabin 10 has only 1 single hub at the top of the tent, while the others here had 3.

And because the Coleman has only 1 hub, this led it to have extremely slanted side walls, slanting at a whopping 35-degree angle.

This really ate into my livable space inside the tent, especially when compared to the other instant tents in this review that had more vertical side walls.

The single-hub feature of the Coleman also led to it having the shortest peak height of all the instant tents here.

So, if you’re looking for roomy instant tents or spacious cabin tents, this Coleman tent wouldn’t be for you.

But – if you absolutely need an instant cabin tent that has blackout tent fabric and a hinged door, then this Coleman Dark Room Instant Cabin 10 is easily the best instant tent for you.

So overall, here are my recommendations on the best 10-person instant tents:

1. Best Overall: Core Equipment 9-Person Instant Cabin Tent

2. Best Value for Money: Core Equipment 9-Person Instant Cabin Tent

3. Runner-Up Pick: Outdoor Products 10-Person Instant Cabin Tent

4. Best 2-Room Tent: Outdoor Products 10-Person Instant Cabin Tent

5. Best Blackout: Coleman 10-Person Dark Room Instant Cabin Tent

6. Most Feature-Rich: Coleman 10-Person Dark Room Instant Cabin Tent

Instant Tent Features

When looking for the best 10-person instant camping tent for yourself, here are some of the features that you may want to take note of:

• Pre-attached poles

• Setup timings

• Instant tent quality

Pre-Attached Poles

For starters, all instant tents will have pre-attached camping tent poles. This is the very feature that makes an instant tent, well, instant.

With instant tents, you won’t ever need to insert poles through pole sleeves. Instead, all you’ve got to do is to extend the pre-attached telescoping poles, until it locks into place.

Without pre-attached poles, a tent wouldn’t be instant.

Setup Timings

Do also take note of the setup timings from user reviews. Here are my personal timings:

10-Person Instant Tent	Setup Timing (1P)
Core Instant Cabin 9	12 minutes
Outdoor Products Instant 10	12 minutes
Coleman Instant Cabin 10	15 minutes

The setup timings are decent for all the instant tents in this review. It should be significantly lower than a non-instant regular tent of the same size.

RELATED: Instant Tents V.S. Regular Tents

In contrast, here are the setup timings of some of my non-instant tents:

10-Person Non-Instant Tent	Setup Timing (1P)
Coleman WeatherMaster 10	19 minutes
Ozark Trail Family Cabin 10	20 minutes
Core Straight Wall Cabin 10	22 minutes
Columbia Mammoth Creek 10	28 minutes

Instant Tent Quality

Having a good quality instant tent is also something that you will want to take note of.

Another word of advice here from me to you is that the Coleman Dark Room Instant Cabin 10 isn’t of a great quality (at least in my experience).

On top of everything that I talked about above, I also noticed a few more cons to the Coleman.

First, the Coleman Instant 10 that I got was defective out of the box. The pole was attached the complete wrong way in a manufacturing defect, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t fix it.

I even tried to oil up the pole, and even unscrew the entire pole, but nothing worked, and I had to send mine back.

Second, everything I tried to pull up the joints of the Coleman, some of the poles would jam. I would have to push it back down, and pull it back up again, just to unjam it, which took some extra time.

The other 2 tents though, the Core and Outdoor Products, didn’t have these issues.

10-Person Tent Capacity

When looking for a 10-person instant tent as well, you’ll also need to look at the tent capacity. Here are some things to look out for.

Base Area

Here are the base area measurements of all the instant cabin tents in this review.

Instant Tent	Length	Width	Base Area
Outdoor Products 10	13.6 ft	10.0 ft	135.8 sq. ft
Coleman Instant 10	13.9 ft	9.8 ft	135.7 sq. ft
Core Instant Cabin 9	13.5 ft	8.8 ft	118.1 sq. ft

With the exception of the 9-person Core Instant Tent, the capacity of 10-person tents tend to range from 135 to 145 square feet.

This is usually enough to fit about 10 single sleeping pads, with no space leftover for anything else in the tent after that:

Alternatively, a 10-person tent should also be able to fit 4 queen-sized air mattresses. This also takes up the entire tent, with no leftover space for anything else after that:

Room Dividers

When it comes to 10-person instant cabin tents, they will also usually come with room dividers. This will allow you to split the tent into separate rooms, and the most common configuration is a 2-room split.

One divider will give you two rooms.

To find out the quality of the room divider, you’ve got to look at user reviews as well.

I showed you what the Core and Outdoor Products room dividers looked like above, but not the Coleman yet, and here it is:

Again, this isn’t a great room divider cos it’s pretty translucent and doesn’t give each room enough privacy.

For a great room divider, check out the Outdoor Products camping tent above.

Why You Can Trust Me

I bought and tested all 3 of the 10-person instant cabin tents in this review, and I’ve also got 4 other instant tents that I didn’t feature in this review (because they’re of a smaller size).

Just the 3 instant tents in this review set me back more than $800, and I also took about 3 weeks to use and thoroughly test them.

Conclusion

And with all the experience I’ve built up with my instant cabin tents, here’s all the 10-person tents I can recommend to you for your next car camping trip:

1. Best Overall: Core Equipment Instant Cabin Tent 9

2. Best Value for Money: Core Equipment Instant Cabin Tent 9

3. Runner-Up Pick: Outdoor Products 10-Person Instant Cabin Tent

4. Best 2-Room Tent: Outdoor Products 10-Person Instant Cabin Tent

5. Best Blackout: Coleman Dark Room Instant Cabin Tent 10

6. Most Feature-Rich: Coleman Dark Room Instant Cabin Tent 10

I hope this helps, and feel free to reach out to me on my YouTube channel if you have any questions.

Alternatively, you can check out my best instant tents review here (this features instant tents of all sizes, from small to big).