How to Choose the Best Travel Tent
This still does the job it set out to do, and the framework holds. What follows updates the numbers, because tent weights have come down a long way since 2010.
Start with the season rating, not the weight. A three-season tent covers spring to autumn and is what almost everyone needs. Four-season means it will take snow loading and wind, at a cost in weight, price and ventilation. A one or two-season tent is a summer shelter, and buying one for a trip that might involve real weather is the classic mistake.
Then size up, not down. A two-person tent fits two people and nothing else. If you are two people with packs, or one person who would like room to sit out a wet afternoon, buy the three. The weight penalty is now small enough that this is nearly always the right call.
Weight, updated. A good two-person three-season tent is now around 1.3 to 1.8kg, where 2.5kg was respectable in 2010. Under a kilo exists and involves trekking poles instead of tent poles, single-wall construction, or both, with condensation as the trade.
The features that matter: two doors if there are two of you, because climbing over someone at 3am is how people stop camping together; a vestibule big enough for packs and boots; a full-coverage fly; and freestanding poles if you camp on rock, sand or platforms where pegs will not go.
What has genuinely improved: zips, pole hubs and fabric coatings. What has not: a cheap tent still leaks at the seams, and seam sealing is still the thing to check before a trip rather than during one.
Part of the guide to tents and shelter.