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Discontinued The Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10 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 Best 10-Person Tents — my top pick there is the Coleman WeatherMaster 10.

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

I bought my Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10 from Amazon. There’s very little to unpack: the tent body, the rainfly, and 15 steel stakes. Every steel pole, pole clip and all 6 guylines come pre-attached, which is the whole point of an instant tent.

Set Up & Take Down

• Set-up time (2 people) 6 min
• Set-up time (1 person) 12 minthe rainfly is the only hard part at 5’3″
• Take-down (2 people) 4.25 min
• Take-down (1 person) 8.5 min
• Poles Steelpre-attached, with 3 hubs and 6 telescoping wall poles

• Stakes / guylines 15 / 6guylines come pre-attached

Unfold it flat, pull up on the 3 center hubs, pull out on the 6 elbow joints with the red tips, then extend the 6 telescoping wall poles until each button clicks and pops. Rainfly over the top, hooks and Velcro on, stake it out. That’s the whole job.

Two of us had it up in 6 minutes. Solo it took me 12 minutes, and the only awkward part was getting the rainfly over at 5’3″. The rainfly is easy to misalign, so I lay it on the ground first and check the two logo positions. Take-down is even faster: 4.25 minutes with two, 8.5 minutes alone.

Spaciousness

• Capacity 10-person10 sleeping pads or 4 queen mattresses
• Peak height 77.5in

• Lowest height 61inat the four corners
• Length × width 13ft 7in × 10ftjust under the marketed 14 × 10ft
• Base area 135.8 sq ft

• Vestibule None

At 77.5in I can touch the ceiling with my arm out. The corners come down to 61in and I’m about 63in, so those are the only spots I can’t stand upright in.

The floor is 13ft 7in × 10ft — a little short of the marketed length — for 135.8 sq ft. That’s 10 single sleeping pads near shoulder to shoulder, or 4 near-queen mattresses with a sliver of floor left if you push them all to one side. There’s no vestibule, so shoes left outside get soaked.

Comfort & Features

• Doors 3a T-door plus two side doors, all on one wall
• T-door size 72 × 51in58in from the floor to the top

• Side door size 55 × 47in58in to the top, both identical

• Windows 3all on the opposite wall to the doors
• Window size 42 × 20in
• Room divider Yes (1)pre-attached, full length, with a center zip
• Pockets 247 × 7in each
• Lantern loops 42 per room when the divider is up

• E-port 1Velcro closure
• Gear lofts None
• Bug net No-see-um
• Black-out No

Three doors is unusual on a 10-person tent. The T-door is 72 × 51in — nearly three times my size — with three zippers, a Velcro closure and no snagging. The two side doors are 55 × 47in each. All three have no-see-um mesh across about half their length, which meant a lot of bug-free airflow.

The side doors do have two quirks: their zippers snag on the outside rain cover, and after rain they droop back into the tent and drip at the entrance.

The pre-attached divider splits the tent into two rooms of 5 pads or 2 queen beds each. It’s completely full length with no gap at the bottom, and it isn’t very see-through, so there’s real privacy. It has a zip down the middle and clips back if you don’t want it. The catch: all 3 doors sit on one side, so one room gets every door and the other gets all 3 windows.

Storage is 2 pockets at 47 × 7in, long rather than small, though I’d still want more in a tent this size. There are 4 lantern loops — two per room — and one e-port with a Velcro closure.

Ventilation

• Ceiling mesh Yesrainfly removes from the outside

• Window + door mesh 6 panelsthe 3 door panels are extra-large
• Ground vents 159 × 11in

• Extended eaves 6they hold the rainfly off the tent body

Loads of ceiling mesh, and with the rainfly off I can lie back and watch it get dark. The door mesh panels are extra-large, so even with the doors shut there’s real airflow; the 3 windows are the small ones. There’s also one extra-large ground vent at 59 × 11in.

The 6 extended eaves are the clever part: they hold the rainfly away from the tent body, so in rain the water mostly misses the mesh and you can crack the windows open.

It isn’t total protection. The rainfly is small — its job is the ceiling mesh — so part of the window mesh still got damp in light to moderate rain with no wind at all. In heavy rain, or any wind, shut everything and let the ground vent do the work.

Rain Protection

• Rain hold 15 minbefore the untaped bathtub seam leaked

• Rain test length 1 hrmoderate to heavy, hose on the front
• Light rain 1 hr, no leaksnot even through the untaped seam
• Seam taping None on the bathtub seamit’s inverted, not taped
• Bathtub floor 5instayed dry throughout
• Guylines 6

It didn’t rain while I was filming, so I ran an hour of hose — moderate, arguably heavy — on the front of the tent. After about 15 minutes water came through the inverted, untaped seam joining the yellow body fabric to the bathtub floor.

One side door leaked a little through its zip too. The T-door didn’t leak at all — it has extra fabric sewn in at the bottom to catch anything that gets past.

After the full hour, nothing else was wet: not the body, not the bathtub floor. The lighter green fabric at the bottom felt close to wet though, so an hour of heavy rain is probably its limit. Through an hour of light rain not even the untaped seam leaked. So it’s great in light rain, and you’d want to seal that seam before anything heavier.

Staked down it handled light wind. It’s a cabin tent with near-vertical walls, so I wouldn’t trust it in strong wind — and unstaked, even a light breeze picked it up and started moving it across my yard.

Quality

• Floor Polyethylene5in bathtub

• Tent body 68D polyester800mm water resistance
• Rainfly 68D polyester800mm water resistance
• Poles Steelpre-attached, 3 hubs

• Stakes 15 steelstandard, nothing special
• Guylines 6pre-attached, and reflective at night
• Mesh No-see-umsmooth and silky

The polyethylene floor has a 5in bathtub, which earned its keep in heavy rain and light flooding. Body and rainfly are 68D polyester rated to 800mm of water resistance, enough to keep the inside dry through an hour of moderate to heavy rain.

Stitching is consistent with no light coming through, apart from one patch above a door that didn’t bother me. Window zippers are fine; the side-door zippers snag on the rain cover, while the T-door never did. The no-see-um mesh is smooth and silky, and the guylines are reflective at night, which not all of my tents manage.

The instant mechanism itself is the strong point: everything is pre-attached steel, so it goes up and comes down easily and feels sturdy doing it. Only my Gazelle T4 has a better instant mechanism, and it costs a lot more.

Portability

• Packed size 50 × 17 × 12intraditional 10-person tents pack to about 30in long
• Weight 32.8 lbseverything, including poles and stakes
• Carry bag 2 extra bucklesneeded, because it’s so long

Here’s the price of an instant tent. Packed it’s 50 × 17 × 12in against roughly 30in for a traditional 10-person tent, and 32.8 lbs all in. The carry bag needs two extra buckles just to hold it together. Repacking is easy, at least — air doesn’t get trapped on the way in.

Pros, Cons, Recommendation

Now, what are the pros and cons, and would I recommend the Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10?

Fast set up

6 minutes with two people, 12 on my own. The only bit I struggled with was lifting the rainfly at 5’3″.

Easy pack up

4.25 minutes with two, and no air got trapped stuffing it back into the bag.

Good in light rain

A full hour of light rain and no leaks at all, not even through the untaped seam.

Feature-rich

Three hubs for more livable space, six extended eaves that let you crack the windows in rain, three doors including that huge T-door, and a full-length privacy divider.

High quality

Consistent stitching, silky no-see-um mesh, reflective guylines, and sturdy pre-attached steel poles.

Big packed size

50in long against about 30in for a traditional 10-person tent. That’s the trade you make for an instant pitch.

All 3 doors on the same side of the divider

Put the divider up and one room has every door while the other has only windows. The side-door zippers also snag on the rain cover.

Bonus – MUST Read!

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