The metal tips clipped to each corner were easy to insert into the base of the tent poles. Using our back yard as a test site, I proceeded to test its set-up time which is set at 10 minutes. Silke watched from the edge of the deck as I deftly maneuvered my way around the laid out tent and proceeded to stake off the corners. It was very similar to our old coleman sundome tent in layout and design so I had an unfair advantage to setting it up the first time. Even though Coleman uses an inverted seam to sew the tent body to the tub floor I still went around all four sides with seam sealer before I took it out on its first camp. So I’ve spent 12 nights in the tent and with a good steady rain on 4 nights and no leaks yet.
Our best guess is that the water ran down the rainfly, made contact with the tent body, and then proceeded to leak through the seam where the wall is sewn to the bathtub floor. All in all, we were pretty disappointed in its wet weather performance. If you think you’ll experience rain on your camping adventures, you get what you pay for here and it’s probably best to look elsewhere. We tested the six-person version of the Coleman Sundome, which offers a healthy 10 feet x 10 feet of floor area.
Do you have a similar tent and would you like to share your experience with us? But when you pick up the Sundome for ONE THIRD the price of the slightly larger Tetragon 9, you can put up with a lot of little bothers.
The use of weaker materials like cheap plastic clips, elastic connection points, fiberglass poles, and the tarp floor is where the Sundome could fail after harsh use. A classic dome structure, single door, and vented roof make pitching this tent relatively easy, though we had issues with the rainfly. The floor is also cheap polyethylene material — you will basically be sleeping on a tarp — and we had some pole malfunction right out of the gate. However, coming in at 9.8 lbs with 63 sq ft of tent space, a family of four can certainly make due. The Coleman Sundome is a basic dome tent, not intended for camping in extreme weather conditions.
6-Person Skydome™ Camping Tent – Blue NightsWith a quick setup in under 5 minutes, the Skydome™ Camping Tent lets you enjoy more time with friends and family on the next camping trip. 6-Person Skydome™ Camping Tent – EvergreenWith a quick setup in under 5 minutes, the Skydome™ Camping Tent lets you enjoy more time with friends and family on the next camping trip. We found plenty of reviews from users online emphasizing the value of the Coleman sundome 4 person tent, particularly for car camping. For rain protection, the length of the rainfly of my Sundome Tent is pretty decent, covering about one-third of the entire tent body, and it leaked only after 30 to 35 minutes. The Coleman tent is not really a four person tent unless you have small children, under the age of five.
However heavy rain in bad weather might cause the tent to leak. The bathtub floor that comes with welded corners and inverted should keep small rain showers out of the tent. Whilst the tent does come with two storage pockets (which is an improvement on the smaller models), there is still no vestibule with the Sundome.
I also don’t use the supplied stakes; I have those good nail spikes with the orange top. Another con in my opinion would be the lack of structural guy outs. There is one guy out loop sewn into the bottom seam of the rainfly on each side for a total of two that are really used to hold the rainfly out over the mesh panel.