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Discontinued The NTK Cherokee 6 has been discontinued and is no longer sold. I’m keeping this review up as a record of my testing — every measurement below is still exactly what I found. If you’re shopping now, start with The 7 Best 6-Person Tents — my top pick there is The North Face Wawona 6.

See the 8 tests

1. In the Box
2. Set Up & Take Down
3. Spaciousness
4. Comfort & Features
5. Ventilation
6. Rain Protection
7. Quality
8. Portability
9. Pros, Cons, Recommendation
10. Bonus – MUST read!

In the Box

Inside the turquoise carry bag I got the tent body, the rainfly, the poles in their own case, and the stakes and guylines in a second smaller case.

• Poles 3, fiberglass2 white for the body, 1 red for the rainfly
• Stakes 10
• Guylines 4
• Carry bag Polyester, non-expandable

Set Up & Take Down

The two white poles slide into sleeves that cross in an X over the tent body, then each end drops into a pin at the corners. The red pole runs down the center of the rainfly. I staked the four corners down lightly first, which made the whole thing a lot easier on my own.

• Set-up time (1 person) 13 minI leave the guylines attached, which saves time
• Take-down + pack-up (1 person) 10 min

Even though the carry bag can’t be expanded, everything went back in without a fight.

Spaciousness

• Peak height 70in
• Base area 91.8 sq ft
• Floor dimensions 9ft 7in x 9ft 7in

The catch is that the 70in peak is only at the very center. Two small steps back and my head touched the roof.

• Single sleeping pads 6shoulder to shoulder, with a little gear space left
• Queen-sized mattresses 2both of mine are slightly under a true queen

Two mattresses is the more comfortable way to use the space, and it still leaves room for gear. But the floor is too short for two actual queens — even my slightly-under-queen pair was a very snug fit.

Comfort & Features

• Doors 1
• Door size 51 x 43in55in from the ground to the top, so I had to duck
• Windows 1
• Window size 50 x 43in

The window is the tent’s weak point. To shut it for privacy you have to unzip the whole window, zip the door shut, then zip the window shut again. Both the door and window use the same orange zippers and the same pair of latches, which makes it easy to grab the wrong one.

• Pockets 2each split into 4 smaller pockets, 16 x 8in
• Lantern loops 1
• E-port Yes, 1zippered, covered by the rainfly

Ventilation

On a hot day you can take the rainfly off completely and get airflow from the door plus all four mesh walls — two large ones at the sides, two smaller ones front and back. You do lose your privacy that way.

• Mesh walls 42 large at the sides, 2 small front and back
• Usable rainy-day vents 2the small front and back walls

With the rainfly on, the two small mesh walls did give me real airflow. The two large ones barely did — the rainfly is so long that I could only pull it about 9in away from the tent outside, and inside it sits barely an inch off the mesh.

Rain Protection

I ran a water hose on the Cherokee and concentrated it on the left and back walls, which behave very differently.

• Side walls Dry after 45 minthe rainfly covers them almost to the ground
• Front and back walls Leaking from 30 min
• Seam taping Rainfly onlythe bathtub-floor seam is inverted, not taped

The back and front walls have a much shorter rainfly. Water still mostly ran clear of the tent body, but droplets tracked down the inner wall, and the seam between the tent body and the bathtub floor trapped water. At 30 minutes I saw the first leak inside; by 45 minutes that whole seam was soaked and letting water through.

Quality

• Floor Polyethylene
• Bathtub floor ~10in
• Body & rainfly 68D polyester taffetathe rainfly is rated 2,500mm
• Poles Fiberglasscolor coded: red for the rainfly, white for the body
• Mesh Regular

Only the rainfly seams are factory taped. The rest are inverted instead, including the tent-body-to-bathtub-floor seam — which is exactly the one that leaked. The stitching itself is double-stitched and free of loose threads, though some needle holes are noticeably bigger than others.

NTK markets the mesh as micro-mesh; it doesn’t look or feel like no-see-um mesh to me. The zippers are decent and never snagged on the window, but the door’s rain flap sits over the zipper track, so I hold it out of the way when zipping from outside and push the door away when zipping from inside.

Portability

• Packed size 26 x 12 x 8.5in
• Weight 15.2 lbseverything included: stakes, guylines, the lot

Pros, Cons, Recommendation

So what are the pros and cons, and would I recommend the NTK Cherokee 6?

Easy set up and take down

I put the whole tent up on my own with no trouble, and I’m not tall (5’3″). The take down and pack up were just as easy.

Decent peak height

I could stand up at the peak, and even walk and bounce around on thick air mattresses. Then again — I’m not very tall.

Decent rain protection for a budget tent

Not the best, obviously, but decent. The side walls stayed bone dry through 45 minutes of hose.

The seams aren’t taped

I wish NTK had taped the seams instead of just inverting them, so they’d last longer under heavy rain.

The window isn’t user-friendly

Having to unzip the window before I can get to the door gets old fast.

The vents could be bigger

Rainy-day ventilation needs bigger or more vents, and that blank back wall was a missed opportunity for a second window.

Bonus – MUST read!

Every figure above is from my own testing — measured by hand, bought with my own money.