15 Pros and Cons of Instant Tents (with REAL Pictures!)

Here are all the pros and cons I’ve discovered while camping out in instant tents over the last 3 months (and yes, you’ll get all the real pictures of my summer camping trips too):

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RELATED: Best Instant Setup Tents

Pro 1: Pre-Attached Poles

The biggest pro of instant tents are their pre-attached, telescoping poles.

So, when setting up an instant tent, I noticed that I never had to insert any poles through pole sleeves (this can be annoying especially when they’re snaggy). This saves me a lot of time.

Instead, all I had to do was to pull up on the pre-attached pole. It then extends and locks into place.

On top of just pre-attached poles, instant tents also tend to have pre-attached pole clips and pre-attached guy lines as well.

The only thing that usually isn’t pre-attached is the rainfly. You’d have to set this up yourself.

Just a side note: If you’re wondering how the above Caddis Rapid performs as an instant tent, it’s actually my favorite 6-person instant tent.

Pro 2: Takes Half the Time to Set Up

With all the pre-attached poles, pole clips, and guylines, exactly how much time can you save with an instant tent?

Here are the 1-person setup timings of all the instant tents that I’ve ever tested:

Instant Tent	Setup Timing	Time Savings
Coleman Instant 4	4.5 minutes	55%
Ozark Instant 6	6.5 minutes	54%
Gazelle T4	5 minutes	50%
Outdoor Products 10	12 minutes	45%
Core Instant 9	12 minutes	40%
Caddis Rapid 6	9.5 minutes	32%
Coleman Instant 10	15 minutes	32%

The first column from the right (the ‘time savings’ column) shows you exactly how much time you’ll save with each of these instant tents, when compared to a non-instant, standard tent of the same capacity.

Essentially, I’m able to get about 30% to more than 50% of time savings when setting up these instant tents.

How did I get these time savings? Well, here’s an example of an instant tent and a non-instant tent that I’ve timed myself setting up:

• Coleman Instant Cabin 4: 4.5 minutes (first row in the table above)

• REI Skyward 4 (w/o vestibule): 10 minutes (a non-instant cabin tent)

• Time savings: 10-4.5=5.5 minutes (or 55% time savings)

Pro 3: Can be Set Up by One Person

I also really loved that I’m able to set up all my instant tents on my own, even my huge 10-person tents.

A great example is my Outdoor Products Instant Cabin 10-Person Tent. This tent fits a whopping 10 single sleeping pads, or 4 queen beds, and towers above me at 77.5 inches of peak height.

Nevertheless, I was still able to set up the entire tent on my own with no issues at all. Even though I’m not tall, at just 5’3/160cm tall.

However, when it comes to my conventional tents in a cabin-shape, like my Core Straight Wall Cabin 10-Person Tent, the poles kept slipping out of the joints and the entire tent kept collapsing on me. I needed my bro’s help to set this up, and couldn’t do it on my own.

Being able to set up a huge instant tent on your own is great, especially for families with little kids. You can set the huge tent up on your own, while your partner takes care of the kids.

Pro 4: Takes Half the Time to Pack Away

Now, exactly how much time can you save when packing up an instant tent, compared to a non-instant, standard tent of the same size?

Here are the 1-person pack away timings of all the instant tents that I’ve tested:

Instant Tent	Pack Away Timings	Time Savings
Coleman Instant 4	5 minutes	50%
Gazelle T4	6 minutes	40%
Ozark Instant 6	6.5 minutes	46%
Caddis Rapid 6	7.5 minutes	38%
Core Instant 9	9 minutes	33%
Outdoor Products 10	10.5 minutes	25%
Coleman Instant 10	11 minutes	21%

Notice that I’m able to get about 20% to 50% of time savings when packing away these instant tents?

I also found that I wasn’t able to get as much time savings with my bigger 10-person instant tents as I did with my smaller 4 to 9-person instant tents.

And that’s because my 10-person instant tents didn’t have as big a carry bag as I expected, making it more difficult to pack away.

Again, how did I get these time savings? Here’s another example of an instant tent and a non-instant tent that I’ve timed myself packing away back into their original carry bags:

• Ozark Trail Instant Cabin 6: 6.5 minutes (third row in the table above)

• Eureka Copper Canyon LX 6: 12 minutes (a non-instant cabin tent)

• Time savings: 12-6.5=5.5 minutes (or 46% time savings)

RELATED: Best 10-Person Instant Tents (Which is the best and packs away the most easily? Find out here.)

Pro 5: Beginner-Friendly

Instant tents are also perfect for beginner campers or casual campers, especially for those of you who hate the whole set up process. (It can be quite a workout, I know.)

Here’s what the setup process of a non-instant cabin tent looks like:

1. Lay tent flat on the ground.

2. Look for the 2 roof poles.

3. Insert the 2 roof poles through the 2 roof pole sleeves.

4. Insert the 4 ends of these poles into the elbow joints.

5. Look for the 4 leg poles.

6. Insert one end of a leg pole into the other end of the elbow joint, and the other end of the leg pole into the pin at the bottom of the tent.

7. Do this for all 4 leg poles, while struggling to balance the tent.

Now, here’s what the setup process of an instant cabin tent looks like:

1. Lay tent flat on the ground.

2. Lift the pre-attached elbow joint, and extend the telescoping pole into place.

3. Do this for all 4 leg poles – just lift the joint, and extend the pole.

The number of steps you have to go through is just so much less, and this convenience can be priceless to some of you folks out there. These tents are great beginner tents for sure.

Pro 6: Perfect for Backyard or Car Camping

I will go through this later in the cons, but instant tents tend to be much bulkier and heavier than standard tents without the instant setup. However, this isn’t an issue for car camping, where you can just toss the entire tent into the back of your car or truck.

And if your kids decide they want to have a few hours of fun in the backyard, an instant tent is the most user-friendly, kid-friendly, easiest-to-setup tent to just throw up for them.

Pro 7: Lots of Capacity Options

I also really like that instant tents have loads of capacity options for me to choose from. Instant tents vary from smaller 4-person instant tents to humongous 12-person instant tents.

My Gazelle T4 Hub Tent is a great example of a wonderful 4-person tent, and here’s what 4 regular sleeping pads look like in it:

One of my biggest instant tents is my Coleman Dark Room Instant Cabin 10, which can fit a whopping 10 sleeping pads, and here’s what it looks like. It’s perfect for a large camping group of car campers:

There are also other instant tents in the market that go up to 12 or even 14-person capacities, but I don’t have any of those at the moment.

If you’ve ever used pop up tents, which are tents that literally pop open out of the carry bag, you’d notice that they’re usually in a very small 2 to 4 person capacity.

My largest (and also one of my best pop up tents for budget-conscious campers) is the Coleman 4-Person Pop Up Tent, and that only fits a maximum of 3 sleeping pads:

I haven’t seen larger pop up tents than this.

And that’s why I prefer instant tents to other types of easy-up tents (like pop up tents), because you get a lot more flexibility with your capacity options.

Con 1: Extremely Bulky

Moving onto the cons of instant tents, one of the biggest ones is that they’re extremely bulky and have a huge packed size.

I’ve noticed that most instant tents are typically about double the length of a non-instant traditional tent of the same size.

Here’s an example:

• Length of Core Instant Cabin 9: 46 inches (instant tent)

• Length of Coleman Red Canyon 8: 26 inches (regular tent)

Here’s another example:

• Length of Caddis Rapid 6: 50 inches (instant)

• Length of Coleman Sundome 6: 27 inches (regular)

There are also exceptions to this, and one example is the Gazelle T4 Hub Tent. This tent is more than double, almost three times the length of another 4-person tent:

• Length of Gazelle T4: 68 inches (instant)

• Length of REI Skyward 4: 25 inches (regular)

In fact, look at how ridiculously huge it is, it’s taller than me:

Con 2: Heavier than Regular Tents

Instant tents also tend to be slightly heavier than regular tents, because their tent poles are usually made of steel (and not aluminum or fiberglass like regular tents).

Here’s a table comparing 3 different tents (both instant and normal tents). I chose only 6-person tents for a fairer comparison:

Tent	Type	Poles	Weight
Caddis Rapid 6	Instant	Steel	25.0lbs.
TNF Wawona 6	Regular	Aluminum	19.4lbs.
Coleman Sundome 6	Regular	Fiberglass	16.0lbs.

Notice how the Caddis Rapid 6 (the only instant tent in the table) is the heaviest, because of its steel poles? These are usually thicker poles too, and thus heavier.

Also, please take note that instant tents cannot be used for backpacking at all.

Not only are they too heavy for backpacking, all the tent poles are pre-attached, making it impossible to split the weight of the tent between 2 or more people.

Con 3: Small Rain Fly

I also noticed that instant tents tend to have very small rainflies, making them vulnerable in the heavy rain.

This small rain fly feature is typical of all cabin tents, and not just instant cabin tents. Many conventional tents in a cabin-shape also have really short rainflies. (Instant tents don’t typically come in a dome shape.)

And usually, the smaller the rainfly, the less rain protection a tent has. This is because instead of the rain running over the rain fly, it runs over the inner tent body instead, and any of the seams on the inner body.

This makes the possibility of leaking in the heavy rain through the seams much higher.

Any tent with a full rainfly will do much better in the rain. However, I haven’t come across any instant tent with a full rainfly at all. Do hit me up if you’ve seen one of these!

Con 4: Joints are Vulnerable in Wind

All cabin tents will have elbow joints. These joints (or hinges) are used to connect the roof poles of the cabin tent to the leg poles of the tent.

For a normal tent in a cabin-shape, you’d have to manually connect one of the roof poles into one end of the joint first, then you’d connect a leg pole into the other end of the joint.

Here’s what an elbow joint looks like in a conventional tent:

However, when it comes to instant cabin tents, these elbow joints are pre-attached, and bendable. The elbow joint being bendable is what makes the instant tent easy to set up and pack away. However, this also means that it is particularly vulnerable in high winds.

Any strong gust of wind can blow against the elbow joint, and collapse your tent if it’s not guyed out.

Essentially, here’s a word of caution – Instant tents do not have great weather protection and weather resistance when compared to standard tents, and are not meant for inclement weather while wild camping.

Con 5: Harder to Repair

The poles of an instant tent being pre-attached also make them harder to repair.

For a conventional tent, if one of your poles break, you can easily remove the pole from the pole sleeve, and slide a tent pole repair splint around the break to repair it.

However, for an instant tent, these poles cannot be removed, and both ends of the pole are attached to the tent. This makes it extremely difficult to slide a splint through the poles.

This is the typical instant tent design, and there’s no way to change it.

Nevertheless, treating your instant tent with care and not forcing the poles with brute strength will help to reduce any need of repairing it.

Con 6: Slightly Less Livable Space

I also noticed that instant cabin tents tend to have slightly shorter peak heights than conventional cabin tents.

My tallest instant tent is the Gazelle T4 Hub Tent, which comes in at a 77.5-inch peak height.

On the other hand, a 4-person regular cabin tent (like the Eureka Copper Canyon LX 4) can reach a peak height of 84 inches instead, which is a whopping 7 inches taller.

My bigger 10-person regular cabin tents can reach peak heights of 90 inches instead, while my 10-person instant cabin tents come in at only 77.5 inches, or about 13 inches shorter.

I suspect that this is because of the pre-attached poles. They can only be extended up to a certain point, leading to slightly lower peak heights.

Con 7: Can be Difficult to Fold

One minor con I noticed with my instant tents is that because everything is pre-attached to the tent, this can make folding the tent up a bit of a challenge.

You will have to follow the instructions given to you by the tent manufacturer, and fold the instant tent up a certain way.

If you’ve never used an instant tent before, this is a little bit of a learning curve.

This is unlike conventional tents, where you can easily remove all the poles, and then fold the tent body up however you see fit.

However, once you get used to the folding process, this makes the pack up much easier in the long run.

Con 8: Harder to Clean

Another minor con I noticed is that instant tents can be slightly more difficult to clean, because most of them cannot be folded flat on the ground.

After I took the tent down, and folded all the poles together, I had to deal with a gigantic mess of tent fabric and poles all stuck together, which made cleaning up the tent a little more difficult.

However, using a water hose to hose down the entire tent did the job.

It makes the tent a little bit wetter than you might expect, but as long as you have enough time to let it dry under the sun, this shouldn’t be too big of an issue in the long run.

More Cons than Pros?

Now, you may be wondering – there are 7 pros to an instant tent, but a whopping 8 cons. That’s more cons than pros! Are instant tents worth it? Should I still buy an instant tent?

Well, here are some ways to deal with some of the cons:

If you’re fine with the above conditions, I think an instant tent would be great for your next camping trip. Here are some of the best instant tents I’ve ever tested, and I’ll help you find the right tent for yourself.