It was after midnight, and our tent was crammed with two adults and three small sleeping kids. Inside, the air was clammy and hot, the tent a sealed chamber akin to a plastic bag. While there are other, cheaper options on the market, coleman instant tent the Coleman Skylodge is still a well-priced tent. With the 4-person model running under $250, you’ll be smart to splurge on this. You’ll spend less time figuring out complicated tent poles and more time enjoying the great outdoors.
The Instant Tent 4, touted to set up in one minute or less, has heavy-duty walls and hinging poles that snap into place. While I am a writer on Reviewed’s parenting team, I’m also an avid outdoors woman with nearly 30 years of camping experience. I own a somewhat embarrassingly large collection of tents for camping—some from my backpacking days, while some are from when I switched to family car camping.
And this tent is relatively lightweight–with aluminum poles, it weighs just over 10 pounds. This roomy 4-person instant tent has a 78-inch center height, which means most adults should be able to easily stand inside it. You do not need an extra fly, but it may be a good idea to buy one for extra protection. But this is a design with huge windows, for comfort in normal summer situations. So the rain fly which you can order separately here, is minimal by the design, and it covers only the roof, see the picture. This is also a 3-season tent designed for mild conditions, and it is a cabin type as well.
The Abco is a very simple pop up tent that is more of a rectangle shape than the Coleman. If you buy the right size for the number of people you are camping with there really is only one con which is the slightly difficult closing of the inner door flap. It fits under the camper bed and I use it occasionally when I want to take a nap outside, have a beach shelter, or when I need extra sleeping space for visitors.
Luckily the outer door flap closes just fine and if you want to make closing the inner flap easier all you have to do is leave each end of the tent staked a few inches off the ground. It doesn’t matter if you are in an RV, a pop up camper, or a tent, the wind is going to be noisy and shake everything around. Some people are worried about figuring out the folding part. Luckily Coleman has a lot of resources for you to use in order to understand the process. The mesh is woven tight enough to keep bugs out and loose enough to see through very easily. There are also 2 mesh pockets hanging inside you can use to store phones and flashlights for easy access.
I love that all I have to do is pull it out of the storage bag, remove the elastic strap that’s keeping it from flying open, and just let the pop up tent go. The instant tent folds into a circle and comes in a zippered storage bag that has two carry handles. We used our 2 person pop up tent regularly for 3 years before we upgraded to a travel trailer and I can tell you right now that I was and still am very impressed with the instant tent overall.
Once that is done, the legs need to be extended out to give it some height. In addition to stale air, the sealed tent holds moisture in like a sponge. We awoke in the morning to a ceiling patterned with dew, the respiration-induced droplets threatening to rain down if an arm but glanced off the taut Coleman walls. And you won’t have to worry about unplanned rainstorms thanks to the 2000mm waterproof rating.
I highly recommend coleman sundomes and I still use my little 2 person one to this day. There are a lot of great things about the Coleman 2 person pop-up tent that not only make it super easy to transport and set up but also make it a great instant tent overall. Pop-up tents also known as instant tents take up barely any space and weigh very little. That’s why instant pop up tents like the ones by Coleman are so amazing, they set themselves up in a matter of seconds.
This tent shape is beneficial for people who likes to walk around in the tent without crouching or bending down. The tent has a lantern loop inside that you can use to hang your night lamps. It has two interior mesh pockets that I think is not enough especially when you have a lot of people staying. Thank you for reading, please see around if you still need something different. There are many tents of various sizes and designs described on my page with tents.
I’ve used this tent in windstorms, rainstorms, hot sunny days, and cold fall nights and everything is still as good as new. It can be done but there’s a lot of strain on the zipper and the seams around it. You don’t have to worry about it blowing away in the wind or finding a place to store it because it’s attached permanently. The wind cover is extremely easy to remove so you can enjoy the breeze or lay under the stars at night protected from mosquitoes. We experienced some very high winds when camping in southern Utah and although it was very noisy (like all tents in the wind) I never felt like the whole thing was going to blow away.