Camping Tents
A short guide that got the important thing right: the number on the tent is the number of people who fit lying down with nothing else, and almost everyone should size up.
Start with what kind of camping you do, because it changes the answer completely.
- Car camping. Buy for space and standing room, ignore weight entirely. A big heavy tent you can stand up in is a far better weekend than a light one you crawl into.
- Backpacking. Every 100g is carried all day. A two-person three-season tent is now 1.3 to 1.8kg, where 2.5kg was normal when this was written.
- Travel. Rarely worth it. Most trips are better served by paying for a bed, and a tent is 2kg of your luggage allowance used on nights you will mostly not camp.
Season rating, properly understood: three-season means spring to autumn and covers almost everyone. Four-season means it takes snow loading and wind, at a cost in weight and ventilation. A summer shelter bought for a trip that might see real weather is the classic error.
The features worth paying for: a full-coverage fly, taped seams, two doors if there are two of you, and a vestibule big enough for packs and boots.
What not to buy: the manufacturer's footprint, which costs a lot and weighs more than a cut sheet of polycryo that does the same job.
And the unchanged advice: pitch it at home before the trip, in daylight, dry. That is when you find the missing peg and learn which pole goes where.
Part of the guide to tents and shelter.