3 BEST backpacking tents under $400

what is up everybody welcome back to the channel uh today we're talking about three different tents and in my opinion these are the top three semi-freestanding tents on the market especially for the value the dollar value of what you can get these three tents at and these are all pretty much the same price so uh depending on you know sales that they may have on these tents also today's video is sponsored by backcountry so backcountry thank you guys for sponsoring today's video if you're wondering where i'm at i'm actually in uh wisconsin uh i do live in kenosha wisconsin and kenosha is uh very much so in the news this week and uh my family and i live close to where the news is taking place so we got out of there and our in our camper this next few days until things kind of settle down a little bit and then i'll bring my kids back home to the city that i love very much so kenosha all that's going on everyone involved we are all praying for you you can find all of these tents at backcountry.com one of my favorite things about shopping at backcountry is the ability to search for gear uh not just tents but any gear their ability on their website to sort by price by size by style all of those things is really well done so you can really find exactly what you're looking for the other cool thing is that they have gear heads which are former olympians former athletes former trail guides that are available at a click to be able to help you anytime you want to pick out or to choose gear or to maybe share their opinions on gear and different things like that and every time i've even gone online and sort of been incognito and never told them who i was they've always been super responsive and actually given pretty good advice similar to what i would be looking for myself probably because these guys have actually been out on the trail so make sure you head over to backcountry and use the coupon code dan15 to get 15 off of your order some exclusions do apply but at least you can try it out and maybe get a couple bucks off of your purchase first tent on my list is the nemo hornet two-person tent it's the smallest footprint of these tents so when you're setting up at camp it takes up the least amount of space it gives you the most options for being able to find spots to tent the rain fly going over the top of this has this very large open back end which provides a lot of ventilation coming up over the top of you which i think is really nice especially when heat rises and you want to try to get that heat out as quickly as possible vestibules on this tent are reasonable they're not the biggest and they're not the smallest that i've seen i think they could be a little bit bigger but i think that they were also trying to you know manage that footprint of wherever you were going to be being able to tie off one of the vestibules is pretty easy to do but getting gear under that vestibule is definitely going to be hitting the interior tent portion or the vestibule portion one cool feature is it does have the ability to tie out the inner tent to the vestibule with a small guy line that's kind of hanging on the side there that gives you a little bit more interior space if you want it but then you're going to lose some vestibule space and honestly if it's just one person in a tent it's really not that much extra room anyway it's got a rainbow style zipper door which is in my opinion not the best they kind of tend to hang in your way a little bit and getting in and out can be a little bit awkward and difficult to unzip around a curve but totally being picky there definitely not a deal breaker inside the tent plenty of footprint space on the floor it's definitely not big enough for two 25-inch pads and two people in this tent is definitely going to be crowded it can be done but just know you're going to be bumping shoulders and probably bumping butts all night long foot space and head space in this tent is great uh i felt like i was not at all worried about you know my feet hitting the foot end or my feet hitting the head end at all being able to sit up was very easy in this tent with one person two people not so much one person absolutely for sure there's places to tie off you know maybe a headlamp if you want to you know hang it from the ceiling and things like that um pockets are available on this tent for extra gear if you want to kind of organize a little bit inside of the tent and it also has like a nylon fabric that is white on the top of the tent that you can put a headlamp in to kind of diffuse light and help illuminate the inside of the tent if you want to the manufacturing on this tent is really well done everything is seam sealed everything is sewn really well it is something that a lot of thought has gone into which i think is really good the goal of this tent i think is footprint size for the amount of people that you can put inside of it um so that is what i think they're trying to do and what they're trying to accomplish by pulling the sides and pulling those vestibules in while you're at camp and giving you more options to be able to camp in more spaces if you need to the guy outlines are color-coded which is nice but only one end of the tent is actually adjustable which i don't really understand it didn't seem too difficult to be able to add adjustability for the entire rain fly to be tensioned which does cause a little bit of a problem especially if it's gonna be wet outside and the tent starts to sag and it's gonna stop you from getting that perfect pitch every single time but it's totally not a deal breaker because it's not that big a deal but just something to keep in mind as you're looking for your tent and you want adjustability privacy is really good in this tent when the rain fly is off the sidewalls have nylon that come up really high pretty much all the way around it and so that's kind of nice if you do camp without your rain fly on and you're trying to change clothes or something inside of your tent the biggest issue for me in this tent is that the headroom the interior headroom when you're sitting up is not a ton of room especially for two people you can pretty much forget about it with two people sitting up in this tent with two people somebody's gonna be hitting their head on the tent uh in some way one person it's definitely doable and works decently well but just something to keep in mind there's no brow pole on the top of this tent there are these two plastic wideners that pull out the sides of the top of the tent to give you a little bit more headroom but definitely not enough for two people the bathtub floor does have a sort of a plastic piece inside of it or something inside of it that does help square out the end of it which is nice uh gives you a little bit more vertical room for your feet or your head sitting up inside of this tent you don't feel like the top of the tent is going to be hitting your head i'm six feet two inches tall and i never felt like i was going to be hitting any portion of the tent when i was sitting up inside of it by myself or laying down at all next the big agnes tiger wall ul2 this is the tent i have the most experience with i've owned this tent and spent several nights in it for well over a year i love this tent for lots of different reasons it's the middle of the road tent between these three as far as space and as far as footprint goes so it's going to fit in a lot of different places um but it's not going to fit in as many places as the nemo will vestibule space in my opinion is the perfect amount it's not too big it's not too small it's just enough to fit one medium-sized backpack that's got some gear in it one feature i really like about this tent is it doesn't have the rainbow door i like having two zippers on this tent i think it's easier to kind of get in and out of it's easier to open the zippers it's easier to kind of feed gear in and out of the tent when you don't want to open the tent all the way you know just if you want to slide in a sleeping pad through a slit in the zipper so that you don't get a lot of bugs and things inside of the tent i like that is that a deal breaker for me absolutely not for the other two but it's just an added benefit of this tent this tent feels definitely like it's got a little bit more headroom when you're sitting inside of it it has a brow pole across the top of it that opens up and widens the top of the tent a lot bigger so having two people sit up inside of this tent while it's not super comfortable it is more roomy laying down inside of this tent you never feel like your head's gonna hit the top of the tent you never feel like your feet are gonna hit the bottom of the tent there's vertical walls at both ends for the most part there's a little bit of an angle but um definitely room for maybe some extra part of your sleeping bag to be down there or even your pillow at the top of your head and there's not a ton of fear that it's going to be brushing along that net portion or getting wet it's adequately designed this tent does not have like that white piece of nylon at the top of it to be able to put a headlamp inside of it to diffuse light but it does have an extra gear pocket up towards the top that you can just stick a headlamp in there and shine it down and it will definitely be sufficient providing light inside of your tent depending on the headlamp that you have super well manufactured tent very well sewn all the seams are sealed but with any tent you're gonna wanna have a footprint underneath it as if it does get wet and you're pushing down on that sill nylon water is going to wet out the bottom of that tent at some point so having a good footprint underneath your tent in my opinion is a must one thing i also really like about this tent is that all of the corners are completely color-coded and all of the corners are adjustable so if your tent does get rained on overnight and that still nylon starts to sag those tensioners are going to be a lot easier to pull on to readjust and get that perfect pitch back the way you had it the bathtub floor does not have any type of uh you know plastic little piece inside of it to square out the ends but these guy outlines do a decent job of sort of squaring out that floor for a little bit more of a vertical end to maybe have your feet down there and add some extra gear the third tent on our list is the marmot super alloy two person tent this is by far the largest of the three tents but it's also the heaviest of the three tents while still coming in well under three pounds this tent is gonna have the largest exterior footprint of any of the three tents so the downside of that is that um you're gonna have a little bit more difficult time finding spots to tent if you're looking to tent in little tiny campsites the upside to that though is that you're going to have a lot more vestibule space and you're going to have a lot more interior headroom space like the nemo this tent has sort of that sideways rainbow style tent opening which isn't my favorite obviously but for some people it works and some people really like it it's definitely not a deal breaker at all outside nothing is color coded so it does make it a little bit more confusing when you're trying to set it up i like when manufacturers color code stuff even if you've owned a tent for a long time it always takes a couple extra minutes to try to figure out which end goes where having color-coded ends is always helpful and then only two of the ends of this tent are adjustable similar to the nemo which again doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me and they're not clips they're actually these sort of curved toggles that kind of loop around the guy line to be able to connect it which isn't a big deal either it works well but again only two of the ends are adjustable so in different situations where your tent starts to sag readjusting it can be a little bit more difficult the brow pull on this tent is huge it's long so sitting up inside of it is a ton of room however this room has the least amount of privacy while the rain fly is off so the bathtub floor only comes up to a certain height but that does have its benefits as well for people that like to have that rain fly off and to be able to kind of feel like you're sleeping under the stars the other thing about this tent is that the brow pole is a separate pole altogether which some people like some people don't like i tend to not like it because i don't want to lose that pole it just makes a little bit more sense to me like the big agnes to have that bra pull permanently connected to the pole structure but again not a deal breaker the ends of this tent are fantastic they are almost fully vertical they feel like they're straight up and down for your head and your foot ends so again interior room when you're laying inside of this thing especially with your head and your feet you're never going to feel like something's hitting a wall in any way the downside of that again is limited tinting spaces for me the biggest downfall of this particular tent is that it's this weird color i'm not a fan of the green and i'm not a fan of the blue but that's totally personal preference i used to think that this wasn't gonna really blend in outside i thought man it's just gonna stick out like a sore thumb but actually that green does oddly blend in in some of the summer environments here in wisconsin and in the midwest when you're trying to get that green to sort of be a little more stealthy so it's not that big a deal it's just i don't know not my favorite color this tent has plenty of places to be able to hang a headlamp or whatever you need to and it also does have a white piece of nylon at the top of the tent to throw in your headlamp in order to diffuse light and it does have a couple of pockets for gear as well i think they did a really good job building this tent the bathtub floor similar to the nemo does have sort of a little plastic bar or something inside of the bathtub floor at the corner to sort of help give it a little bit more room for the feet to kind of square out that bathtub floor which is always nice and it doesn't really add virtually any weight to the tent whatsoever all right guys if you like this video make sure you hit that like button subscribe for more head over to instagram to follow me on instagram and i will see you guys on the next one you

Channel: Dan Becker

Views: 333,119

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Id: 1KLbcFilUjY

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2020