Best Two Person Tents
Still the most common tent purchase and still the one where people make the same mistake, which is believing the number on the label.
A two-person tent fits two people and nothing else. Two adults shoulder to shoulder, with packs outside in the vestibule. If you want room to sit out a wet afternoon, or you are two people with a dog, buy the three. The weight penalty is now small enough that this is nearly always the right call, and it is the single best piece of advice about tents.
Weights have come down a long way. A good two-person three-season tent is now 1.3 to 1.8kg, where 2.5kg was respectable when this was written. Under a kilo exists and uses trekking poles instead of tent poles, single-wall construction, or both, with condensation as the trade.
The features that decide whether you like it:
- Two doors, if there are two of you. Climbing over someone at 3am is how people stop camping together, and this matters more than 200g.
- Near-vertical walls, which turn the same floor area into somewhere you can sit up.
- A vestibule that actually takes two packs and two pairs of boots.
- Freestanding poles if you camp on rock, sand or platforms where pegs will not go.
Where to spend and where not to. Pay for the fly fabric, the pole hubs and the zips, which are what fail. Do not pay for a footprint; a cut piece of polycryo or a groundsheet from a hardware shop does the same job for a tenth of the price and a fraction of the weight.
And pitch it in the garden first. The first pitch is always the slow one.
Part of the guide to tents and shelter.