Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent Review (I Bought & Tested It!)

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The Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent is my easiest pop up tent to set up, as it literally pops open right out of the bag (seriously, no joke). It’s also highly inexpensive, and works great as a pop up tent on a budget.

However, just bear in mind that its biggest con is that it’s not weather resistant at all. It doesn’t hold up to rain if you don’t add any additional waterproofing yourself. Read on to find out more about this, as well as other pros and cons!

Check out the Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent:

RELATED: Best Pop Up Tents, Best Tents Under $100

Here’s what we’ll discuss here:

• Unboxing
• In the Box
• Specifications

Unboxing

I bought this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent from Amazon, and here’s what the outer cardboard packaging looked like:

And this is a picture of me taking out the Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent from the box:

In the Box

Inside the package, I got the tent inside the carry bag, plus 8 stakes and some instructions. The 2 guylines are pre-attached.

Specifications

Here’s all the data (including my personal measurements) that I gathered on this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent:

• Peak height: 32.5 inches
• Longest Length: 91 inches
• Longest Width: 54 inches
• Base Area: 34.1 square feet
• Floor material: Polyester
• Bathtub Flooring: None
• Tent body material: 185T 68D Polyester
• Rainfly material: 185T 68D Polyester
• Poles material: Fiberglass (Pre-attached)
• Mesh: Regular
• Packed size: 29 by 29 by 3 inches
• Weight: 6.6 pounds
• Number of guylines: 2
• Number of stakes: 8
• Number of windows: 1
• Number of doors: 1
• Number of vents: None
• Number of pockets: 1 (split into 2)
• Number of gear lofts: None
• Number of lantern loops: None
• E-port: None
• Black-out: No

I also did some testing on my own, and came up with this data:

• Pop up timing (without staking): 0.25 minutes
• Set up timing (with staking): 1.5 minutes
• Take down timing (without staking): 1 minute
• Take down timing (with staking): 1.75 minutes
• Number of single sleeping pads: 2
• Number of queen-sized mattresses: None
• Number of full-sized mattresses: 1 (sort of)

I go through all the above specifications in the sections below, in more detail, if you’re interested.

I put the Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent through these 7 tests:

1. Ease of Use
2. Spaciousness
3. Comfort & Features
4. Ventilation & Condensation
5. Rain & Wind Protection
6. Quality
7. Portability

Here’s how it performed.

Ease of Use

For ease of use, I looked at the:

1. Ease of Set Up; and
2. Ease of Pack Up.

Set Up

To set up this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent, first take the tent out of the carry bag. There will be a black strap holding the tent together.

The moment you slide the tent out from the black strap, toss the tent away from you, or it’ll pop up in your face. This takes just 15 seconds.

Next, zip up both the inner window and outer door panels, before staking down the tent. This is so you wouldn’t have any issues trying to zip the doors up after the tent has been staked down.

Then, grab the provided stakes from the inner pocket in the carry bag, and use these loops to stake down the tent body. There are 6 of these loops on the tent, 3 at the right, and 3 at the left.

Next, guy out the tent with the pre-attached guylines. There are 2 guylines, 1 at the right, and the other at the left of the tent.

This takes another minute and 15 seconds, so altogether the entire set up can take as little as 1 and a half minutes.

Pack Up

To take down and pack up this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent, first remove all the stakes, then unzip both the window and door panels, so that air can be pushed out of the tent more easily when you’re folding it up.

Then, pick the tent up from one side and fold all the poles together until the tent looks like a taco.

Once your tent looks like a taco, stand it up on one end, like this.

With one hand, grab the middle of the taco.

With your other hand, reach out as far as possible to the other end of the taco.

Then, fold the tip of the taco down towards you, like this:

At the same time, quickly kneel on the ground, using one of your knees to press down on that end that you’ve just folded in. This is to prevent the poles from popping up again.

The rest of the poles will now form circles, so use both hands to push them down and together, until the tent folds back into a smaller circle.

After that, I usually hold the tent together using my legs, and place the black strap across the tent.

Finally, put the tent back into the carry bag, it should go back in no problem, and keep all the stakes up into the pocket inside the carry bag.

The entire pack up takes just 1 minute and 45 seconds for me, and if you don’t use the stakes and guylines, it can take as little as 1 minute and 15 seconds.

If you prefer watching, here’s a video on my channel with everything I said above:

Spaciousness

For spaciousness, I looked at the base area, as well as the height inside the tent.

Dimensions

The Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent has a longest length of 91 inches, and a longest width of 54 inches, but just take note that the base area is like an oval-shape.

Mattress Sizing

When I inflated my Exped MegaMat Duo 10 inside this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent, which is the size of 2 regular pads put together (74 by 43 inches), it fit just nicely into the tent.

The corners of my Exped MegaMat Duo were touching the side of the Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent, so it probably can’t fit anything longer or wider. But I did have some leftover space inside for a little bit of camping gear.

When I tried to inflate an almost full-sized Coleman Quickbed (73 x 53 inches) inside this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent, it was definitely a bit squashed.

One side of the Quickbed was okay, while the other side couldn’t be fully inflated, like here.

You can still use it though, but you wouldn’t have much space leftover for camping gear.

Also, there’s no vestibule, so if you leave your shoes out, it will get wet if it rains.

Height

The peak height at the center of this Coleman tent is about 32.5 inches.

When I sat naturally with a little bit of slouch on my Exped MegaMat, which has about 4 inches of loft, my head didn’t touch the top of the tent. But it does hit the top of the tent when I sit upright though.

With the Coleman Quickbed though, which has a thickness of about 8 inches, it definitely felt quite a bit more claustrophobic inside the tent. Even when I sat naturally, not even upright, my head still touched the top of the tent.

If you think you’ll find this Coleman Pop Up 2 a bit too small for your liking, you have 2 options.

First, upgrade from this Coleman Pop Up 2 to a Coleman Pop Up 4. Find out how the Coleman Pop Up 2 compares to the 4-person version here.

Second, upgrade from this Coleman Pop Up 2 to a Coleman Instant. The smallest size is a 4-person version, and find out how these 2 tents compare against each other here.

Comfort and Features

For comfort and features, I looked at the door, window, and storage options.

Door & Window

The Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent has a single door at the front length of the tent. It measures about 34 and a half inches in length (*longest length), and 26 inches in width (*longest width), and it’s pretty much a circular shape.

If you don’t want to use the door, you can just zip up the window mesh panel instead for more ventilation, and this inner window measures about 30 inches in length (longest length), and 13 inches in width (longest width).

But just bear in mind that if you’re inside the tent, and you want to zip up the door, you first have to unzip the window to do so.

Both the door and window have 2 zippers each, and each zip can be opened from both the outside and inside.

This Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent comes with these latches that you can use to tie both the door and window up for maximum ventilation.

You can also tie just the door up, or just the window up, so there’s plenty of versatility.

Storage

There’s 1 pocket inside this pop-up tent, which is split into 2. The pocket measures about 16 by 8 inches.

There’s no lantern loop inside this tent, but you can hang a lantern up using the window and door latch attachment.

You can hang a lantern up with both the window and door open, with just the door closed, or with just the window closed.

You can also use the zipper if you want to, but I don’t usually because I don’t want to put too much strain on the zipper.

Ventilation

For ventilation, I looked at hot day and rainy day options.

Hot Day Ventilation

On a hot day without any rain, you can take off the rainfly entirely, without even having to remove the guylines stakes.

To remove the rainfly, all you have to do is to unhook the 4 S-hooks at the front of the Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent, like so.

Then, undo the Velcro attachments near the guylines, and sweep the rainfly to the back.

At the back of the tent, you can tie the rainfly up, or you can just leave it like this. I usually leave it like this, because I’m lazy.

Just take note that you cannot remove the rainfly entirely because it is attached directly to the tent with some straps.

On a hot day with the rainfly removed and the door completely opened, there’s actually quite a bit of ventilation from the ceiling mesh and the door.

Rainy Day Ventilation

However, on a rainy day, you do need the rainfly to be in place, and the door to be closed. There are also no vents, so there’s hardly any ventilation when it’s raining.

Condensation

For condensation, I slept in this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent on my own overnight, with the rainfly in place, and the door closed.

It didn’t feel too stuffy during the night, and I don’t think I noticed any condensation issues the next morning, but it did rain occasionally during the night, so water got into my tent.

Rain Test

So, I decided to rain test this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent as well. I used this water hose to kind of simulate heavy rain, which looked like this.

Also, I used a stopwatch to time exactly how long I was rain testing this pop-up tent.

At about 15 minutes into the rain test, I stopped to check in on the tent.

Even though I did my best to not let the door droop into the tent, I noticed so much leaking from just the door itself. There was so much leaking that there were big puddles on the floor from the door.

On the inside of the Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent, I noticed that quite a bit of water had started seeping in through the seam between the flooring and the tent body, even though it had been taped.

I also found that both the green and white tent fabric have been soaked through, after just 15 minutes of heavy rain.

Also, the rain cover for the door zip had also been completely soaked through.

One more thing I noticed was that there was some water on the ceiling mesh of the tent, and it dripped down onto the floor too.

So, I decided to check the rainfly as well. After I unhooked the S-hooks and lifted the rainfly, I found that the underside of the rainfly was already wet, and the entire rainfly had already been soaked through.

I also rain tested my Coleman 4-Person Pop Up Tent through light rain, and I’ll link the full rain test video on my channel here.

Most of my other Coleman tents have much better rain protection than this Coleman Pop Up Tent. In fact, find out exactly how this Pop Up Tent stacks up against other Coleman tents:

• Coleman Pop Up Tent V.S. Skydome Tent (I Tested Both Tents!)
• Coleman Pop Up Tent V.S. Sundome Tent (I Tested Both Tents!)

Wind Protection

The Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent has only 2 guylines.

When I guyed out the tent and tried to shake it, it wasn’t the most stable, but it was okay. The peak height isn’t too high, so it would probably be able to take light to moderate winds.

Quality

Material

The Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent has flooring that doesn’t feel like polyethylene, my guess is that it’s polyester, though I could be wrong. The flooring doesn’t feel as thick and rugged though.

The rest of the tent is made of 185T 68D Polyester.

Seams

Most of the seams in the tent have been taped, but some parts of the seam tape weren’t very well applied, like this part here, which was a big reason as to why some of the seams were leaking in my rain test.

The stitching around the tent is double stitched and consistent for the most part, but I did find some inconsistent stitching and loose threads around the tent.

Zippers

The zippers don’t feel super smooth, and I noticed some tension while trying to zip the door and window up.

This is why I highly recommend staking down the tent only after you’ve already zipped the door and window up, so you don’t add more tension to the zips.

Poles

The poles are made of fiberglass, and I’ve been using this tent lightly over the past couple of years with no issues at all.

Carry Bag

The carry bag is pretty good quality, it’s the perfect size for the packed up tent, and comes with a pocket for your stakes.

Portability

Packed Size

For portability, this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent has a packed size of 29 by 29 by 3 inches, which is quite thin.

For a size comparison, here’s what it looks like beside a Coleman 2-Person Sundome Tent, as well as a 32-ounce Nalgene bottle.

Weight

The Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent weighs about 5.4 pounds for just the tent and carry bag alone, without the stakes. With the 8 stakes, it’ll weigh about 6.6 pounds.

Ease of Carry

The carry bag also comes with a handle at the top of the carry bag.

Pros

For pros, I found the Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent really easy to pop open in just 15 seconds, because the poles and rainfly are pre-attached. The guylines and tensioners are also pre-attached, but you don’t have to use them if you don’t want to.

Packing up the Coleman Pop Up Tent takes less than 2 minutes, but honestly it takes some practice to get used to it. The first time I used this pop-up tent, my knee was bruised because I struggled to get it back in.

The Coleman Pop Up Tent also has a decent amount of ventilation on hot days, because of the ceiling mesh, and I also found it very inexpensive.

Cons

As for cons, the biggest one is that it’s definitely not weather resistant. Just 15 minutes of heavy rain got my Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent completely soaked through. Also, the door design is definitely not great for rain.

Another con is that it’s definitely not the most spacious. The peak height is pretty low at 32.5 inches for a 2-person tent, and it can’t really fit a full-sized mattress. It does fit 2 regular sleeping pads though, or a double pad, but that’s about it.

Also, there aren’t enough storage options, like lantern loops, and the pocket is really small for a 2-person tent.

The quality is okay, but definitely not the best. I found loose threads around the tent, the flooring doesn’t seem very thick, I noticed some tension while trying to zip the door and window up, and some parts of the seam tape weren’t very well-applied.

But overall, I think you do get what you pay for, and more.

It’s a perfectly functional tent for a very inexpensive price, and I found that this Coleman Pop Up Tent is definitely a great budget option for backyard camping in the summer with clear skies, at least you can run indoors when it starts raining.

How does this Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent compare to other pop-up tents though? Well, I’ve already done the comparison for you, in this blog post right here, where I bought, tested, and compared 7 of the best pop-up tents in the market.

Alternatively, check out how this Coleman Pop Up Tent compares to 13 other Coleman tents in this blog post: I Bought & Tested the 14 BEST Coleman Tents!

Or, check out the Coleman 2-Person Pop Up Tent: