Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am very, very pleased with this tent. I'm 6'1", 180lbs, athletic, and this tent took me about an hour to setup the first time by myself. It's not easy to setup by yourself, but it is possible. There were a few times when I thought I was putting too much stress on some poles, but they didn't break. The stress was due to having to lift parts while balancing other parts, a necessary procedure with a 1-person setup. The setup would have gone faster but it took about 15 minutes to figure out how to do the canopy over the entrance (the instructions weren't exactly clear on how to configure the guy lines). Once I figured that out, then it was all downhill from there. Setting up the rain fly wasn't too hard, but I think that's only because I'm 6'1". I would imagine that if you're not as tall, the rain fly will be a challenge, but again, not impossible. It took me a few tries before I was able to toss the rain fly over the tent, but once I did I was able to position it quickly. Once you unfold the rain fly, it's a hot mess and making sense of what goes where is nearly impossible. Thankfully, they printed on the rain fly "vehicle side", because without that it would have taken A LONG time, so be sure to pay attention to that. I tried to sleep in the tent, but it got a little cool, so I got up in the middle of the night, emptied out the back of the 4Runner into the tent, and climbed inside and went to sleep. At that moment, I knew I had selected the right tent. Also, there were some loud campers nearby, so once I closed the trunk of the car, all was quiet , another unexpected benefit. I do have tinted windows on my 4Runner, with the back ones being darker, but you can still see in if you put your face up to the window. For privacy while I'm sleeping in the back of the car, I put up a windshield screen on the front window, keeping a lot of light out of the inside, and then I shut two beach towels in the side doors, while extending them on the inside towards the front seat headrests and securing them there. Lastly, I bought a bought a few of these, Jeep Cling Sunshade, 2 Pack, that I applied to the inside of the back windows that weren't covered by the beach towels. With all of that, it becomes REALLY dark inside, even during the day. Seeing inside during nighttime is impossible. Air flow inside is pretty decent, but not great. I would have liked it if they had a 100% mesh ceiling, as it is, it's only 50% mesh. Of course, having the rain fly on will keep it warmer, but I'll never set it up without the rain fly where I live. It did rain pretty hard on my first outing, and a little water did get in, but that's only because I kept some of the windows open, so it was expected, and it wasn't bad at all. No water got in where it shouldn't have. I was surprised though, as I was skeptical of the rain fly since it didn't cover 100% of the tent. It works though, very, very well. Oh yeah, I did seam seal it prior to going, but I do that with all my tents. To increase air flow, I wedged a helmet underneath the hitch of the car and the part of the tent that connects to the back of the car. This opened up about a 1' gap under the car and provided some fantastic cross ventilation. If you're not concerned about critters getting into your tent, this is a great little trick to cool off the tent. You can always do this during the day and then seal it up at night. I didn't use the factory-provided stakes and instead bought MSR GroundHog Tent Stakes. They're pricey, but they're the best. This tent takes 20 stakes in total, so 3 sets of 8 MSR stakes will take care of you and you'll have a few extra. I bought an additional tent stake bag at R-E-I since the included one would barely fit them all. I bought the ground cover for the screen room, Sportz Footprint for SUV Tent with Screen Room,and it has some limitations. It doesn't attach at all to the tent, so it's free-floating. You could stake it down, but you'll already have the stakes in the ground once the tent goes up, so you'd have to unstake and then restake, and I'm not sure that that's the best way to do it. Perhaps you can just put down 4 additional stakes on the inside corners for the floor cover. If you're thinking that adding the floor cover to the screen room will give you a second room, you'll be disappointed. There will still be some gaps and you could potentially lift the bottom of the tent and get out, or get in. Granted, this would be difficult with it being staked down, but if you were to put a dog in there overnight, he would probably find the motivation to do it. It's a great room to hang out in if you want to be outside, but away from the bugs. I also bought 2, 10'x10' tarps, one for under the tent and one for inside the tent. The 10x10 tarp is almost the perfect size, but you'll never get it centered properly and will have parts sticking out that will catch water. If I could do it again, I'd look for a 9'x9' ground tarp, but I don't think they make them. What I'll do now is fold the edges on my tarp and make it a little bit smaller. This will help so that it doesn't catch the rain and pool water underneath. Packing up the tent was easier than I expected, easier than setting it up that's for sure. The bag that it comes with is expandable, but of course, as with any tent bag, you'll always wish it could expand a little bit more. In addition to what comes in the bag, I managed to add a small hammer, the ground cloth for the screen room, and both 10'x10' tarps! It was a TIGHT fit for sure, but make no mistake, it all fit! Unfortunately, I forgot to put the instructions back inside and can't get them in now, so don't make that mistake. In my search for a tent, I was determined on having a few features. The primary feature I wanted was a screen room. I wanted a screen room that had a floor, but it seems like they just don't make them, or the ones that they do have other limitations for me. Then I thought that if I wanted to dry stuff off inside in inclement weather, like a wetsuit, a screen room without a floor would be perfect. Second was that I wanted to be able to stand up in the tent. I can do that no problem, and I love it!!! Third, I wanted to have a canopy to sit under outside. After having used the tent, I am now in love with that canopy. It's so nice to have it, but the area of shade underneath it isn't much, and probably not enough for 2 people, and it's right in front of one of the main entrance. Once the sun angle changes, the area of shade can get small depending on how you've positioned your tent. The canopy held up surprisingly well in the wind. One pole blew down, but that's because I didn't guy it out correctly. Once I did, then it was secure for the rest of the trip. The ability to connect to the car wasn't even a consideration in my tent shopping, but once I got to thinking about how nice that could be, it is now without a doubt, the best feature of the tent. I won't always be able to use that feature with the campsites I use, but it's wonderful when you can use it. Another small problem that this tent has, is that there is no E-port for an electrical connection. I had the power coming in through the main door, which was really annoying. Now that I think about it, it'd probably work much better to have it come in from underneath the car since it'd be out of the way, so I'll do it that way next time. For the makers of this tent, the improvements needed are: 1. Change the tent ceiling from 50% mesh to 100% mesh. 2. Add an E-port so you can route a power cable into the tent without having to use the door. 3. Add attachment points in the screen room so as to easily secure the ground cloth without having to put stakes on the inside of the tent. 4. A few more pouches/storage options once the tent is setup would be nice. I little corner shelf like some tents have would be awesome. The two inside pouches are not ideal, but they are better than nothing. It looks like they were added at the last minute just to check the box. 5. Some small loops in the ceiling of the screen room would be handy for people that want to hang things inside, like wet clothes, towels, swimsuits. This is a common problem when camping. I hemmed and hawed for 6 months over what tent to buy while looking at many of the tents that folks look at as alternatives to this tent, like the Copper Canyon, Red Canyon, Cougar Flats II (no longer available), WeatherMaster, and a handful of others. What swayed me was the outside canopy and the ability to connect the tent to my SUV. Granted, this tent was the most expensive of the bunch and was more than I wanted to spend, but tents last years and years, and the last thing I would want would be to use this tent, year after year saying, "if only I had spent an extra $100, I could....." That would drive me insane. Also, I kiteboard and kiteboarding gear takes up a lot of room and can run into the thousands of dollars. With that, I wanted to be able to easily secure my gear without people seeing me move it in and out of my vehicle all the time. When the vehicle is attached, you can do whatever you want and nobody sees. I bought this tent as a single person and it's a lot of tent for just one person. But, I expect that I'll be starting a family in a few years. It also works great for me because my sport takes A LOT of gear, and I'm tall. It's REALLY hard to find a tall tent that is small, so I had few options. I would absolutely buy this tent again. I had a lot of questions about this tent that I wanted answered before I bought it, and I couldn't get any answers, which was quite frustrating when you're considering spending so much money. Therefore, if you have any questions about this tent, just ask in the comments and I'll try and respond promptly. Good luck with your tent shopping.