The 8 Best Camping Tents (Bought & Tested!)

Ease of Use

For ease of use, I timed myself setting each tent up and packing everything away. This excludes setting up the footprint for some of the tents that provided that, but it includes setting up everything else, so even all the possible stakes and guylines:

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All 1-person timings (I set up and packed every tent myself), arranged fastest to slowest in set up. /Pax = the timing divided by the number of people the tent is rated for, since we have 3 to 6-person tents here.

• The Gazelle sets up 2-3x more quickly than everything else: It’s an instant tent with pre-attached poles, so all you need to do is pull on the wall hubs and the tent pops open on its own. Its pack away is about 50% faster per pax too

• Most non-instant tents land at about 3 mins per pax: The one anomaly is the NEMO Aurora 6 (2.2). It has the smallest fly of the non-instant tents, and the vestibules aren’t super big as well, so it was quite quick to set up. Generally, smaller and less features means a faster setup
• Bigger fly + more features = longer setup: The Snow Peak and the Wawona took me the longest. These had bigger rainflies that were a bit more difficult to set up, but overall not a big issue for me

Spaciousness

For spaciousness, I looked at the peak height of each tent, the overall livable space (tent shape, heights at various places, and how much I could walk around), and the base area, both inside the tent and out in the vestibule:

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*No standing room in the smaller 3 to 4-person tents. Both have a ridge pole though, so if they were taller, I’d peg them at about 70% walkability. Every tent here sets up 1-2 ridge poles for extra livable space.

• Cabin and tunnel shapes are the most livable: The Gazelle’s 4 vertical walls gave it standing height across practically the entire tent, and the Bunk House’s ridge pole runs the entire length of the tent, so I could stand upright throughout
• If you want at least a bit of standing room, avoid the last two rows: The Snow Peak and Gazelle are the exceptions here, each with standing room despite being a 4-to-5-person tent, and the 6-person tents all have at least 6 feet of standing room under the peak

• Ridge pole direction matters: The NEMO’s and Base Camp’s ridge poles run width to width (70% walkability), while the Bunk House’s runs the full length (80%). The Wawona and Snow Peak have just 1 ridge pole at the front, and the Snow Peak’s A-frame back drops all the way to 50%

Typically you get anywhere from 20 to 23 sq. ft. per person. The Gazelle T4 Hub has no vestibule. If you want one, the T4 Tandem version adds a 49.0 sq. ft. vestibule for about 110 sq. ft. total, or 27.5 sq. ft. per person, the most of all the tents here.

• Only 2 vestibules have standing room: The Bunk House’s peaks at about 67.5 in (58 in at the front door), and the Wawona’s runs 65 to 74 in, so I could stand up everywhere inside it. You won’t be able to stand up or walk around in any of the others

And just in case you need some pad and mattress sizing info:

*Can technically fit 2 queens, but it will bulge out the tent a bit.

Features

For features, the most important part of any tent is usually the doors. I counted them, measured the size of each one, and checked whether the zipping is snag-free and how easily the door fabric stows away:

*Door size as a percentage of the wall it’s on, since we have tents of all different sizes here (bigger tents = bigger doors). The first number is the front door, the second is the back door.

• Pockets are the most user-friendly stowing: About 3 seconds to stow a door away (Big Agnes’s Door Keeper is like a pocket, 3 seconds too). Toggles take 10 to 15 seconds, and Gazelle’s tie-downs take the longest at more than 20 seconds

• The Wawona’s front door (90%) is the only one taller than me: I did not have to duck when getting in and out of the tent, which was really, really nice. Its back door is really, really small though (30%)

• The Gazelle’s doors are really tiny (20%): I tripped over them a few times before, so it takes some getting used to

Now that we’re done with the doors, we’ll look at the rest of the features, so the number of windows each tent has, plus storage too, like pockets, loops, and other options such as clotheslines:

The Mineral King’s clothesline is actually 1 long line across the entire tent, but it’s so long it could easily be split into 6 parts.

• Smaller 3 to 4-person lightweight tents tend not to have windows: Bigger tents will, and the Gazelle has a whopping 8 of them
• For a 3-person tent, the Mineral King has an insane number of storage options: 22 in total, or 7.3 per person. I could hang up so much stuff in this tent

Ventilation

For ventilation, I estimated the overall amount of mesh on each tent (your hot-day ventilation without the fly), and counted the vents (your rainy-day ventilation with the fly on):

*A variable amount of mesh = zippable mesh. The percentages are my estimates from eye-balling each tent, but they’re enough to give you a good idea of how much mesh you get.

• The Snow Peak’s zippable mesh is the best by far: Fully closed for off-season use, fully open for summer. No other tent here lets you zip up all the mesh like this
• Pure summer tents: The Wawona’s big doors and top mesh panel aren’t zippable, and the NEMO and Big Agnes let you zip/cinch only the windows
• More suitable for the off-season: The Base Camp and Gazelle have much less mesh than the average tent here (10-20% each)
• The vents are all rain-friendly: The Wawona’s 4 vents can be left open in heavy rain; 2 of the Base Camp’s 4 have to be shut in heavy rain, but I could do it from inside the tent, no problem

Rain Protection

For rain protection, I first looked at the waterproofing features of each tent. Then, I actually tested every single one, with at least 1 hour of heavy rain each, and some going through much, much more:

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As long as the seam taping is good (especially on the flooring), you don’t technically need a tub floor. The most important feature here is the rainfly: for many days of non-stop heavy rain, I highly recommend a full rainfly, which keeps the inner tent body dry at all times, even if it’s completely soaked through on the outside.

And this is how good each tent actually was in the rain:

The Bunk House, Base Camp and NEMO were each tested up to 2 hours, so beyond that is my estimate.

• The Snow Peak and the Wawona breezed through 5 hours with no leaks at all: But the Snow Peak has a full rainfly and the Wawona does not. When I put the Wawona through 2-3 days of heavy rain, the water eventually started to soak in through the tent walls, so anything touching them got wet
• The NEMO’s rainfly was starting to look damp at close to 2 hours: So I’d estimate this tent to go through maybe 4-5 hours of heavy rain
• A damp fly doesn’t mean a wet tent: The Mineral King and the Marmot have full rainflies, so even when each fly got damp (at the 5-hour and 2-3 hour marks), the inside of both tents was perfectly fine. It’s also really important to guy out the widths of the tent, which you can on both, to keep the wet fly away from the body
• The Gazelle has a really short fly: I noticed wet seams after a few hours. That’s why I’d typically recommend a tent with a full fly if you’re expecting super heavy rain over many days
• I also put 2 tents through a flooding test: The Wawona was perfectly dry after many hours of flooding, but the Marmot’s seams let in a huge puddle of water after just a couple of hours

Quality

For quality, I looked at the materials of every part of each tent, any durability issues I ran into, and each brand’s warranty. Here’s everything, arranged from my highest-rated quality down:

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(+75D) and (+68D) = a provided footprint, worn under the flooring. Warranty is lifetime from every brand except Gazelle and REI (1 year each).

• DAC poles are the highest quality: I’ve never had any issues with any of them. Snow Peak’s 6061 aircraft-grade aluminum poles are stronger than regular aluminum, and Gazelle uses fiberglass because its instant pop-up mechanism needs a flexible material
• The Marmot had my only durability issues: Its regular-aluminum poles are so thin (9mm, vs the Mineral King’s 10mm DAC) that one cracked after a few uses, and I also managed to rip a small hole in its 68D flooring. Both are easily repairable, but that’s why you definitely need the provided footprint

• Typical camping tents have ~150D polyester flooring: I’m not sure why the Big Agnes came in at only 75D (even though it’s slightly stronger poly-taffeta). Its flooring is about half as thick as other tents this size, so please get a footprint to protect the base
• Expecting wind? The Big Agnes and the Wawona are the best here, with the most tie-downs (8 and 11 guylines), and 4 of the Bunk House’s are forked for added stability

Portability

Finally, I weighed each tent with all the components that were provided, and measured the packed size of everything in its carry bag:

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*Footprint weight (~12 oz for the 3P, ~15 oz for the 4P) is included in the total weight.

• Only 2 tents here weigh less than 10 lbs: The Mineral King and the Marmot, both lightweight and packable enough to double as backpacking tents for shorter trips

• The rest come in at about the 20-pound range: And the Gazelle is the only tent that weighs more than 30 pounds
• The Gazelle is ridiculously long when packed (68 in): So if you have a smaller car, double-check it against the dimensions here before buying