The Mountain Hardwear Mineral King 3 Tent is the best car-camping tent choice for couples. It has everything you need for three-season camping, with the bonus of being light enough to double as an occasional backpacking tent. Although it’s designed to accommodate three people—hence the “3” in its name—we found that at 42.5 square feet, the tent is more comfortable for two, plus gear and maybe a medium-size dog. Canopies come in a wide range of sizes, and most are shaped as squares or rectangles. The smallest models are typically 4 feet by 4 feet and designed to shade a single person or something akin to a portable changing station.
A 5-gallon solar shower comes with it, heating water up to luxurious temperatures using natural light. This 2-room portable shower tent includes a separate changing/utility room, so your clothes stay dry. Mesh panels offer ample ventilation, and a mesh drain in the shower allows quick water evacuation. Like our couples’ tent pick, the Wireless 6 is a dome-shaped tent with a tried and true two-pole design. It has an interior footprint of 87 square feet, which sleeps four adults on single pads, or two adults and two or three children, and can accommodate a crib.
This shouldn’t be an issue in most situations, but if you’re headed into a particularly windy place or simply want some backup, we suggest picking up four extra tent stakes at your local outdoor shop or online. These inexpensive stakes are comparable to the ones that accompany the Mineral King 3; these slightly more expensive stakes will serve you well in any car-camping terrain. The Mineral King 3’s fly attaches intuitively with plastic buckles and has well-placed guy tabs.
The other tents in this guide all have bathtub-style tape-seamed polyester floors, which is the standard among high-quality tents. The Sundome’s tarp is clearly a budget material, but for what it was, we ozark trail canopy tent found it user-friendly. It’s easy to mop up after wet paws and spills, and it doesn’t hold moisture. It’s unlikely to be as durable, though, as the softer, stronger polyester found in our other picks.
Each has its pros and cons, including a higher price point for some. The canopy’s purpose and most common use will help determine the right material type. The water-resistant, ozark trail canopy tent fire-resistant, silver-coated cover withstood heavy rain and light wind. It comes with foreground stakes, which were enough to keep it in place for an entire weekend.
The tent weighs just 16 pounds, less than any other family tent we tested for this guide. Despite having the smallest capacity of the tents we tested—42.5 square feet—the Mineral King 3 easily fits two people with a full-size mattress, or two sleeping pads, and gear. Two large vestibules add nearly 40 square feet combined—that is, 18.75 square feet on either side. To test the tents, we first opened them, splayed out their parts, and tried to put them together without consulting the instructions.