You should also expect tent poles and stakes to perform just as well as regular a tent. They shouldn’t break or bend easily and should stand their ground in windy conditions. This instant tent’s key traits are its simplicity, ease of setup, and affordability.
And you can unzip the front door, remove it, and neatly stash it into one of the tent’s internal pockets—a useful feature if you’re feeling sociable. Some campers might find the Wawona 6’s footprint unwieldy in smaller campsites, or they might simply prefer a tent with a more straightforward design. If you want a six-person tent made with high-quality materials but a traditional profile, we recommend the similarly priced Big Agnes Spicer Peak 6, or Nemo’s Aurora Highrise 6. MSR’s Habitude 6 is also a good tent, but it costs about $200 more.
We also appreciated the shepherd’s hook stakes that come with the tent. Most of the tents we tested came with basic L-shaped stakes, which tended to spin around in the soil and slip a line. The shepherd’s hook design, in contrast, held lines secure.
Zippered doors can enclose the vestibule fully, so it serves as a separate room for the tent, or you can leave one or both open, so the vestibule can act like a porch or mudroom. The main tent body has a giant front door that’s oriented to make entry and exit easy for all the tent’s occupants at night, and a smaller back window that doubles as a second door. Our only quibble with the Mineral King 3 is that it comes with only six stakes. (Our runner-up pick comes with eight.) Six is enough to secure the tent and fly but not to fully secure the tent’s extra lines in very windy conditions. 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.
Our head tester Rob Gaedtke put these tents to the test so that you can choose your next home-away-from-home with confidence. He has raced across India, ozark trail canopy tent done an IronMan in Mexico, and Jeeped through the African safari. Over the past 20 years, Rob has set up hundreds of basecamps across various terrain.
When heavy trade winds buffeted our Oahu-coast testing site, we pitched each tent in full face of the blast. We then rotated the tents looking for structural weaknesses, and we tested their guy lines and tabs to see which tents had the best and most intuitive design for withstanding wind. The Nemo Aurora Highrise 6 is another fantastic ozark trail shower tent family-friendly camping tent with a little funky style. The super high ceiling, large footprint, and dual vestibules give this tent plenty of room and options for everyone. All this space does make a few things less straightforward. Setting up the rain fly and garage in the moderate wind isn’t as intuitive as it could be.