Coleman 4/6/8/10 Person Instant Camping Tent with 1-Minute Setup, Large Family Tent with Pre-Attached Poles, Air Vent, & Carry Bag, Sets Up in About 60 Seconds

Tents come in many shapes and sizes, each have their positives, and their negatives. Some tents are cheap, while other's, really expensive. The best tent for you, is going to depend on what you need from a tent, and how much money you are willing to spend. Most people who like to camp in the summer time, will probably be satisfied with a tent like this one. While other's who camp in extreme cold temperatures, might be inclined to go with one of those super thermal padded tents.PACKAGING: Coleman loves to double pack these tents. When you receive your package, and open it up, it reveals the Coleman bag as seen in photo 1. If you unzip the Coleman bag, it reveals another box! Once you open up that box, finally, you will be able to pull your tent out of the box to begin deploying.DIMENSIONS: The dimensions of the tent are, 10 feet long, by 9 feet wide, and 6 feet tall. I chose a tent this big because I wanted enough space. However, they always overstate a tents capacity. It may fit up to 6 small children. But in reality, this tent can only house up to 4-adults, and up to 2-adults comfortably.PITCHING: Pitching the tent, is not as quick as the company says, which should be no surprise to no one. If you had 2-people working together, you could perhaps do it in 60-seconds. However, I pitched it all by myself, and it took closer to 2-minutes. When you compare this design to a dome tent however, you will take much longer to set one of those up. All you have to do, is stand the spider column (as I call it) upright, then unfold each leg, until the tent is flat on the ground. Then begin extending each leg of the tent, until the button snaps through the slots. Again, it will be a bit cumbersome for 1-person to do, however, still faster then setting up a dome tent.Once the tent is pitched, and you've stretched all the legs outward, then begin setting up your guidelines. If your tent is on earth, you can use the included stakes they give you, to stake the tent down using the guidelines. Additionally, if you plan to camp on days where it will be raining, you really need to waterproof the tent with the optional rainfly accessory, model 2000010331. The rainfly is nearly impossible to put on, via 1-person, once the tent has been pitched up. I recommend 2-people to install the rainfly. The rainfly secures to the tent via plastic C-clips. And the rainfly comes with its own stakes and guidelines, to secure to the earth.INGRESS: The tent has only 1-entry point, the front door. And unlike most tents, which the door spans the entire front half of the tent, this tent's door, only opens 1/2 of the front opening. I would have liked to have seen the full width being used. There are instant popup tents that are larger in size, that do use full width doors. As typical with all tents, it is double zippered, so you can close and open it from within.WINDOWS: This tent is fully loaded when it comes to windows! There is literally windows on every side of this tent, all of them have 2-zippers per window. Each window has a mesh screen to keep bugs out, and each can be rolled down and secured with the knobs they provide. The reason they didn't use the full width for the door, is because they wanted to put a window next to the door as well. So rest assured, if your camping in the summer time, you are going to get plenty of ventilation.VENTS: Now this is where I can be a bit nit picky when it comes to vent locations. On larger tents, they often put the vents close to the bottom of the tents, usually located in the back, or on the sides of the tent. But they chose to put the vents on the top of the tent on this model. I guess if your camping in the summer time, since heat rises, having them on the top makes sense. But if your camping in the winter time, its only going to let all the heat out. And if your running propane heaters, such as the buddy heater, you really want it to intake air from the bottom of your tent. Also, if you close the vents, there is still no way to make them seal in their closed position, so they will still vent when you don't want them to. The vents also come with zipper meshes, as well as the velcro strap that keeps them open.MATERIAL: The materials that this tent consist of, 150D Polyester, and Taffeta 150D. They use taped seams, inverted welded seams, and use rugged polyguard. I'm not an expert on tents, so I can't tell you the values of these materials, or how they are constructed. What I can tell you, is that no integrated weathertek system is going to completely waterproof the tent without the rainfly accessory. However, for a super light sprinkle, you can get away with it.For the most part, this tent feels like quality to me. A lot of times, companies will cheap out on the zippers, but these ones seem pretty good. The material makeup of the tent seems fairly solid, and the aluminum legs also seem pretty good. The spider column was fairly easy to work with when setting up the tent, so I think it is durable enough as well. Do I think the materials would hold up in winds up to 50MPH or more? No, absolutely not! But who's camping in stormy winds?ACCESSORIES: The tent comes with several accessory points that I like. Outside the tent above the door, there is a loop where you can hang a lantern, mosquito repellent, etc. Inside the tent are two mesh pockets, one close to the door on the side of the tent, and the other on the back half of the tent, on the other side. These mesh pockets can be used to store cell phones, keys, lighters, emergency supplies, pretty much anything you need small pockets for. The tent also comes equipped with a lantern hanger. But if your lantern only has a handle instead of a hook, you will need to use a carabeener to attach to the lantern hanger.EXPERIENCE: Most of you are going to use a tent to go camping. While I would love to go camping personally, I no longer have a vehicle, so I have no access to camping sites. Instead, I am thinking outside the box, and solving a problem I have. I lease my workshop, therefor I do not own the building. When you are leasing, its illegal for the renter to make changes to the building, its up to the person who owns the building to do that. The sheet metal roof of my workshop leaks when it rains. When it snows heavy, snow also falls in from the ridge cap. And since my shop is not insulated, it gets mighty cold in there during the winter time, there is just no way to heat it.NOTE: Absent T land owners are not fun. They don't consider you important, and they refuse to fix problems. But they love to go numerous vacations every year all over the world, with the money they make from your rent payments. Capitalism at work fellas.To solve this issue, I bought this tent, I knew that it would solve two problems for me. First, keep the rain off of my most important machines, and provide heat to keep the freezing cold at bay. Also, I wanted a space where I could do work in warmer temps. As you can see from the pictures, the tent fits the available space I have in the shop quite well. I ran an electrical cord up through the top vent, so that I can have power to run a light, space heater, and a charger.I used a 32-WATT LED worklight as my light source, I just used a small bungee cord wrapped around the light's frame several times, then put both the hooks onto the lantern hanger attachment. While it may be crude, it works, and thats all that counts. I run the space heater on low, its set to 65 degrees F, and it oscillates to move the heat around. When I am not working in the tent, I store my 2-best mowers inside, and a scooter. The mower closest to the camera, I actually bought on Amazon!I use an outdoor wireless thermometer to monitor the temp inside the tent, thats how I dialed in the heater. Also, to protect the tent floor from tearing, as I am moving heavy equipment in and out of it, I chose to line the floor with cardboard, and taped the cardboard together. And since I unfortunately do not have carpet material, I chose to just staple some blankets to the cardboard. If anybody has any knowledge on where I can get carpet to line this square footage on the cheap, please let me know.When the temperature is in the 30's, I am able to maintain 54 degrees F with the heater on low. (750-WATTS) When the temperature is in the 40's, I am able to maintain 60 degrees F. If I through the heater on high, (1500-WATTS) I could easily hit the mark of 65 degrees F while its in the 30's out there. But I don't want to use that much power on my bill, so I chose not to. For those of you who plan to use a propane buddy heater, make sure your vent is open, otherwise you will burn up all your oxygen and become asphyxiated. A propane heater generally puts out more BTU's of heating power, but at a price of consuming propane.CONCLUSION: I am known to do things in unique ways, and this tent is no exception. While this tent is a very simple solution to a larger problem, it is both cost effective, ingenuitive, and it just works for me. Nobody can wait on absent t owners to handle things. And there was no way I was going to spend 1000 dollars of my own money to insulate the workshop and fix the roof leaks. I really love my tent, it works really well, and I think you will love it too, if you choose to buy it. Despite a few of my nit picks, I am going to give this a solid 5 out of 5 stars!

The media could not be loaded. WARRANTY UPDATE: I have to add to the observations below that Coleman's warranty department is amazing to work with. They took back the 6-person tent we found to be too small on our first trip, just because I felt that the 6-person description was misleading, no questions asked. NEXT, after the pin failed (see below) in wind, they're replacing it, no questions asked. The Amazon Prime window had closed by a month. The proper way to submit a warranty issue is on their website under WARRANTY. You simply save your receipt from here in PDF (or scan a print), write the date & "WEB" on the product, take a couple of pictures, and that's IT. They answered my inquiry in less than 24 hours. I'll stick with a company that stands behind their product - which in this case is a GREAT tent - this well.WIND UPDATE: ours collapsed but still 5-stars! It held out until we were taking it down. On our first Tiger Scout trip with this sustained winds were 10 to 14 mph but gusts might have hit 30 mph for two nights. Our packs' tents include various Colemans and direct "instant tent" competitors from Amazon and Walmart, but also some more expensive dome tents. Two or three failed equally, so no favor to the more expensive options.Although a pin failed when we were taking the tent down it held through two nights of winds from all directions off of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico (at Florida Keys Camp Sawyer). If you look at the knuckle under the fabric on the frame you'll see they're plastic-reinforced tips through the metal rods, secured with a metal pin - the pin broke eventually, not the plastic or the rod, so I'd consider it pretty good construction for a "cheap" tent. At times the tent was pressed down on top of us, almost flattened. Although it rained HARD we were completely dry except for one side-seam that dripped only enough to soak up with a face wash cloth (not much!). The two doors were GREAT because we could use the "downwind" side rather than the "wet" side.I hope never to camp in another situation like this (probably motel camp), but learned a few things to pass on if wind is expected. (1) most important is to guy-line out farther than expected and will bring some glow sticks to help keep people away from them. Make them long - short guy-lines are not effective in wind. (2) forget the stakes that come with your tent - buy the strongest you can find (foot-long nail/spikes from Home Depot) and bring a hammer, not a rubber mallet. You may never need them but they're essential in the event of wind and will reach deeper in wet earth.I could have easily fixed the pin but before realizing how easy it would be we trashed the tent - the rods were bent a little and so I just hammered them down into one another. So, we'll be buying another of these. The only change I'm going to make is to buy more of the beefy spikes (they held very well), something to glow on the guy-lines, and a chord long enough to tie around the top of the rods to help keep them from flexing all around in high wind (thinking that maybe the chord will take some of the pressure off of the joints).Even though ours failed we were safe, dry and very comfortable until it was time to go. Love this tent!ORIGINAL REVIEW: My video is actually for the disc-o-cot but shows the tent wide open. Also, I say "eight people" can sleep on two side by side but obviously I mean four with more up front. Other reviews hit all the high points about 1 minute setip, quality and dryness. This is a great tent. The OPTIONAL fly is essential for ventilation if there's any chance of rain but the tent stays dry inside without it. It rained two days without any leaks at all even though one of the front doors was not completely zipped at the floor.I strongly recommend this rather than the 6 person version because the price, weight and ease of setup are comparable for the luxury of the extra room.We have been using the 6-person version for our family of three but even with a disd-o-bunk bed found it tight because we all like to sleep off the floor and cots take space. Don't even consider more than five in this tent even without cots, unless the kids are still very small, of course.By the way, the disc-o-cot hits a 9 foot wall because of the slope so the 6 person tent isn't optimal. Even though you're probably not using bunk beds now, the extra foot is nice.In addition to the giant 14 foot side walls this one has two 10 foot ends, each with a door. The extra door and one foot more than the 9 feet in the six person allows us to leave 2+ foot isle between cots, each of which is 30+ inches (we're car camping after all). There is a ton of extra space left over up font for a adult, two small kids chairs or all of your gear.Camping with cub scouts can be a real challenge especially when they're still bobcats, and a luxurious tent with a good night's sleep makes a huge difference! This is why I suggest this tent for even three.