Epic or Fail? Roofnest Condor Overland Real-World Test

what's going on guys welcome back to the channel my name is Casey and today we're going to do a review and go through some of my thoughts and feedback with using a clamshell style tent for the last two years now the one I have behind me specifically is the roof Nest Condor Overland and I've had this Rooftop tent now on two Jeeps countless trips up into the mountains Death Valley snow rain heat cold wind a little bit everything so in the video today we're going to give you my honest feedback of using this tent for 2 years what do I think of the roof Nest condo Overland specifically but I thought I would also pair that together with general information and thoughts of this style of tent this is a clamshell style tent where you open the lid flip out the platform pull down the ladder and the ladder supports part of the tent so there's there's lots of little things that I've learned along the way with this style of tent and so whether you're going to take a look at a roof nness condo Overland tent which this will be a great long-term review for you or you're thinking about this style of tent the clamshell style tent I think you'll find a lot to learn from this video today first I want to start off with lids the piece that you flip up and it basically contains and seals the tent inside now this one has an aluminum box that basically covers and contains everything within it the other style that you can get both from roof nest and eye camper and a few other companies is like a plastic PVC flexible outer shell and then there are some that have a fabric cover that goes over and it's still a clam shell but you don't need to lift off the lid you can just flip it out and open it up I don't have any experience with those ones I generally stick to a hard shell style tent I like the uh protection of the tent when I'm driving through the bush and the trees and anything that may rub against it or snag on it as far as the materials aluminum hard case versus the plastic outer shell this is quite heavy and the newer version of the roof Nest is actually even taller and weighs even more and then the other thing about this is this is full of water somewhere along the line This has started leaking inside itself I don't know if it's actually getting in the tent but there is some moisture that continually accumulates inside on the floor of the tent and I'll get to that in a few minutes you can hear water sloshing around in this hard lid because it's multi-layered I guess there's some gaps in it in the construction in the layers A Place for moisture and water to accumulate and hide and we get a ton of rain here in British Columbia so if it's going to happen anywhere it's going to happen here the ones with the plastic PVC hard shell outside is just it's just a thin layer of rigid plastic so there's really nowhere for any of the water to accumulate there's no joints there's no seams it's uh like pressure molded it's just one big piece because there's nowhere for water to be stored unlike this it's slashing around and it's made this roof this lid quite quite heavy whenever I open it it weighs more than it used to weigh the way that this design works is there's actually a full rubber gasket all the way around the outer Edge that mates up with the platform and seals the entire tent all together when this is closed and so if you're wondering about dust getting in it or water getting in it I've driven through some insanely Dusty silty like talcum powder level dust down in Death Valley or the trails up here in British Columbia and I've never had any dust ever get through this seal where a lot of the plastic shells will come down and sit over top so they're not forming a real tight seal around all of the contents that are inside the Box this has done a good job at keeping the tent materials on the inside clean and dust free and keeping the water out pause from the video guys I'm going to show you a really cool trick that you can do with Onyx off-roads maps and Android auto did you know that you can run the maps in two different modes while connected to Android auto I find this very helpful because I can have a satellite m map and then I can have a topographic map over on my phone we can have them at different Zoom levels of detail so I find this super helpful because I can move one map around further down the trail that we may be heading for a corner looking around meanwhile I'm not going to lose my position here on the other map or I'll keep one map zoomed really far out so I can see where I am in relation to things like lakes and mountains and the other one zoomed in nice and tight so I can see where I am on the trail upcoming quarters or points of interest but you can also set one to 2D like this one here it's a flat overhead map and then you can set one to 3D where this one shows you different elevation and things coming up and if you haven't started using onx off-roads Maps already you can save 20% by using the coupon code KC 250 now the other thing is latches so this seems to be starting to become a more popular style latch I do like this style of latch it flips up it holds the tent down it doesn't really provide any compression but because the lid is so heavy it provides enough weight and compression on that seal to keep it tight from dust and water coming in and then it has a little lever here that locks the latch in place so that this can't flip down while you're driving there's a little Keyhole here it's not a specific key it's just a key with a little notch on it but I generally just use my finger to push this little uh locking lever into place after I'm done closing up the tent and what's nice about this style latch is it's easy to do when it's cold and it's wet and you've got gloves on it's nice and easy when you're trying to get your tent put away now one thing to note with these though is they do have bolts that hold these latches together and somewhere along in my Journeys this bolt has rattled loose and has come out so only one side has a bolt on here I need to put a bolt back through this other side and then the other thing is you can see just how tight that latch is to my Venture that is attached to my Jeep Gladiator here and I had to move the tent back a little bit more so that this didn't interfere with the Rack or the window at all and that I could get access to it so you do have to be conscious of where you're mounting your tent if you're mounting it on your truck and it's getting close to the cab they do need some room to flip down I thought I would be able to bring it out to the outside but these latches don't move they don't they don't fit on this side there is a rail here that you can connect them to but I couldn't the way that the latches are just design they don't seem to work and latch on there you can move them back and forth across this rail if you want but that doesn't really help you as far as the rest of the exterior holding up other than the lid letting water in and there's now a swimming pool floating around in there these gas struts on the outside you can see they starting they're starting to take on a little bit of rust this has been through some snowstorms and Ice storms and because the gas struts are on the exterior they are going to uh get hit with whatever else your Jeep is getting hit with so do make sure you wash them off rinse them off if they get some salt but I don't know if this is from salt or not uh and this is on the back of the Jeep so there's not a lot of spray hitting it but this gas strut is starting to get some rust on the part that doesn't go inside the rest of the strut when it's closed and if you're wondering if this is rust it's not I need to wash this off we it's springtime and the trees are just dumping pollen every single day on the vehicles so there's a little bit of pollen all around the outside edge I mean look there's this is just from yesterday the pollen accumulating here so that is that is that is not rust just so you know and for the mounting system on this uh this does have the traditional slotted rail design this is very common in a lot of the rooftop tents um you just slot into the T channel here and you can bolt it down to whatever you want or you can use their included aluminum straps to go over a bar on the adventure X system we have the crossbar so I just bolted it directly to it um but when I had it on the JK with the rack on there I had the straps on so there's a couple different ways you can mount this but nothing out of the ordinary I think is the main point here you see that I don't have the awning over the front window set up this is kind of a problem because it hits the rail there are metal bars like this one that you use for all three awnings but I can't set this one up because the way that they bow it hits the truck now on the back I don't have a problem it's super easy to set up and it's actually even easier on the truck because I can stand on the tailgate and put those bars in to hold out the awning but here's something to think about now this is not going to be for trucks my friend Chef John he has a larger version of this with the ABS plastic shell on it on his Toyota 4Runner when he puts the tailgate up on his Forerunner it actually interferes with those bars so he doesn't put them up on this side he puts them up on the front this is not a roof Nest specific problem but any tent that's going to have these bars to hold the awnings up could cause problems like that future Casey just jumping in because you probably also want to know just what sort of footprint this will occupy on your vehicle so the lid is 10 in in height so front to back it is about 56 in but don't forget if you have a cab or something close to those hinges you'll probably want another four to 5 in of room in front of the tent you can't butt it up right against your vehicle and it is going to sit at about 53 in in width so I've just come up to the top here I want to talk about the material that this is made out of as well as the extra rain fly that's part of this whole uh system now roof Nest does say that these are four season tense they've tested them in every weather condition I have also tested them in every weather condition and if you go back and watch my Vlog from a couple weeks ago you'll see uh we didn't have a very good experience with heavy rain and water getting in the tent so go check that out I'll put a link in the corner and at the end of the video once we're done with this review I'm going to get the hose out and show you that big problem once again uh so you guys can see it here in the light and not on a camping trips and this is supposed to have a 3,000 mm uh rainproof rating so supposed to be good in in heavy storms and it had been for several storms until the last trip so just Hing our head in um on the inside there is a skylight and even with the rainfly on there's a clear plastic uh window so that you can still get light in through even when you have the rainfly on once you open up these internal panels so you have a panel kind of a I wouldn't say these are blackout panels the new Condor Overland 2 has blackout material but we have this one drop down panel and then we have a screen so you can still get some ventilation and not wor about the rain coming down on you well you'll see about the rain coming down on you later but in theory you're supposed to sleep with your internal layer open and pushed up like that your screen closed you can see the stars and get some really good ventilation in here and if it starts raining in the middle of the night in theory you shouldn't get wet so before we go to the inside of this the other things I want to mention are the pull down strap so this here this is what you use to close it right here now when I open it almost every time this gets snagged on the the uh base of the tent and so you got to get it halfway open and move it out of the way and then try to get it back this does have a vestule over the entrance area which is this is cool because you can kind of climb in and kick off your boots you don't have to worry about getting wet when it was really pouring rain in in the last Vlog I was able to just kind of sit up here and hang out while some of my friends were with me sitting underneath the canopies um the big problem with this and this isn't unique to roof nness I've seen this with the eye camper as well this turns into a pool very quickly when it's raining it happens every time and so what ends up happening is you're climbing up here and you bump your head like this right at the right time and all the water pours down your back and that happened to me like twice on the last trip so I always end up keeping a stick at the bottom of the tent or when I climb in the tent I keep a stick up here and then I poke this before I get out so I don't get all wet it's I don't know I don't know a better way to fix this if they can make this tighter or some other design but ever since day one this has always accumulated water right here on this vestibule and it's soaked me down my back I can't even count how many times now as far as ladders go I really have no complaints this is as standard of a ladder as it goes it hasn't seized up it hasn't broken it hasn't bent it's uh pretty much done its job as a ladder for the entire time I own it even the velcro still holds the ladder together when we bring it up I do find the clam shell style tent a little bit easier to close ladder because you have some weight on the top of it so when you push these releases in you've got the weight of the tent pushing down on it and it is does make it a little bit easier to fold the ladder up and then it gives you something to push the platform up and over and close the tent and the other thing that I I do like is when you have this platform out and the weather is bad you've got somewhere to kind of put a bit of gear overnight or even just come under here and stand underneath and you don't need to have an awning or set up an awning you can just hide under here if you have the XL which is even wider uh Chef John and I have sat underneath it when it's raining and we don't have an awning we can just tuck our chairs right to his vehicle and it keeps us dry um if you have this over top of your rear passenger doors on a Wrangler then you can now have something that covers your doors when you open them and they don't get all wet and I do like that roof Nets puts all these little d-rings all around here cuz I hang my my Lantern on here all right let's pop inside the tent and I will talk to you about uh some some of the features in here the Comfort uh sleeping in this tent and some notable little things quirks that have come up along the way while using this over the last couple of years and many many trips so starting at the entrance here we've cut this sort of blackout layer and then we've got the screen layer behind it I really really don't like the screen on the inside of the tent layer when I set up my tent I like to have the windows open get some fresh air in there dry out any moisture uh if it's not cold why not when I go to bed though the problem is in the dark I now have to open my screen to close the exterior windows and well there's a lot of bugs in British Columbia and in a lot of the places that I go and it's a great opportunity for bugs to get into your tent what I would really like to see is every manufacturer of these tents any style whether it's a wedge a clamshell a popup whatever make one piece doors and windows we don't need to have a full screen window for the entire uh we don't need to have an entire the entire door and the entire window have a screen on it just make one panel that opens and closes so you only have to do one zipper to get in and out of this because just like the windows we have to undo two Zi zippers to get in and do up two zippers to close it back up again so what I would really like to see every Rooftop tent manufacturer adopt is a a window and door that is one piece this is going to solve two problems so if we can make the door one piece the solid piece or the window a solid piece and have a screen on a section of it that you can then unzip the solid panel and then get your window the screen is out on the outside so we don't have to worry about bugs we can open or close our Windows as we need but to get in and out you would only then have to undo one zipper because to get in and out of this tent I have to undo the screen and then I have to undo the actual door panel same with the windows you have to undo the screen close the window do the screen back up it's funny like people joke about this at Camp because they can hear me closing and opening a million zippers getting into my tent and getting it situated for the night this door panel doesn't actually zip at the bottom so there's no zip along the bottom of the door to keep the draft from coming up I don't understand why some of the tent manufacturers do this the screen Zips and goes all the way along the bottom but the door panel is a square panel and it doesn't zip across the bottom when the wind is blowing this way at the tent it comes right up underneath the door and right into the tent now if it's nice and warm that's not such a big deal but when it's cold you're trying to keep the drafts out yeah and for this rainfly how has it held up over 2 years honestly not too bad there's a little bit of wear and tear on it you can see there's some Thin spots here and there I think that's just from rubbing being inside the tent um but there's no holes or anything like that there's just some mud and stuff on it from me going out and mud somehow getting on it um but the rest of the tent material has held up really well none of the screens have worn out none of the zippers are broken I have no complaints about the overall construction now coming inside the tent uh you'll note I don't have the mattresses in here I'll get to that in a second the walls are not blackout in The Condor Overland one I haven't tested the two yet but the specs on their website do indicate that they have changed the thickness and how much light can get through the new material I honestly don't like a full blackout tent I like to know when the sun has come up I don't particularly like sleeping in Forever when I'm out on road trips and campings on the inside we have some storage hanging out up top um they include a USB cord for this light that is uh attached with some velcro strips above me here like that I've honestly never used this um the length of this USB cable isn't particularly long and so therefore it never seems to reach uh the cord that I bring in here cuz you bring in um an extension cord with 110 and USB on it and it really doesn't reach much further than um right here and I never really have a USB port right here so I generally don't use this but it does light up the tent pretty good it's um like it's flexible it's in a fabric so the only time I ever used this when I I first got was when I first got it and tested it out it does light up the tent pretty good but I've never never used it on a camping trip the other thing that I like about this style of tent on the interior is it does give you quite a bit of space I'll go get my measuring tape out I'll show you so as far as width goes this guy is about 53 in wide and it is really long because you get an extra bit of space from the lid that has what is it about almost a foot of extra length from that lid that's open and you get almost 95 in of length I know in my uh rooftop last Rooftop tent review video everybody said uh can you fit in I'm 6'2 yeah I mean almost every tent that I've had except for the tiny little Aly cab which I'll put a review to that um I can fit in them no problem and I'm taller so if you're a tall person this is definitely the most length out of any of the rooftop tents um that I've used or tested just because of this extra space right here so you see when it's open you get the length of the lid also as space that you can have inside the tent and the actual weight of this tent uh with the ladder and the bedding in it is 165 lb the Condor Overland 2 is 190 lbs the the extra height that they've added to it to be able to store some stuff inside it has uh really increased the weight of it as well so as for storing bedding in here because of the way that the platform has to flip over and close there really isn't any room to store much of anything I've tried to store just bedding in here it really doesn't work you could try there is a little bit of space right here that you could stuff a little bit of um bedding or a pillow maybe because the platform stops about here when it's folded over and folded closed obviously with this style of tent there are hinges for the platform to go on which means that the material doesn't seal all the way around there is a big hole here that uh you need to make sure that the covers on the inside and outside are put into place as tight as you can get them they don't fully seal all the way around the velcro it's just like a flap that you kind of stuff in here otherwise you're going to get bugs and stuff coming in through the hinges on both sides of these so when you set up your tent you need to make sure the outside flap which has a bit of velro on each side is proper properly put in place and you got to come in here and just Jam this in on both hinges and uh hopefully no bugs find their way in the you know cuz it's not sealed super tight you don't have a lot of Headroom in this style uh We've have right here I'm going to say about 44 in of Headroom so you can't stand up in this and get changed you can't even really stand up and tilt over unless you're maybe like 4 and 1/2 ft tall or something so i' I've spent several nights in the wedge style tents uh from roof Nest from alley cab and what's nice is because they open like a wedge I can stand out 3/4 of the way and it really makes a difference for getting dressed in the morning especially when you're taller now on the back wall of this tent we have some pockets and we also have a layer here that helps keep condensation off now a couple things that I've noticed in this tent is uh this has never got wet um but the thing that I've noticed a lot is when the sun comes up and hits this black aluminum roof it is like a giant heater so if you're somewhere uh warmer and the sun's coming up and you're facing with this uh towards the east this is going to heat your tent up like crazy now if it's a cooler morning that makes getting out of bed pretty nice but if it's a warmer morning me boy it gets really warm in here pretty quick when the Sun starts hitting that uh all black outside surface and just radiating heat inside the tent but the last big thing that I want to talk about with regards to the review of this tent is you can see all the water here on the floor and I don't know where this has started coming from um but every time I leave this parked I haven't even driven this in the rain since the last time I drive this out it is getting water in here constantly which is why we have no mattress in here um I'll show you the mattress in a second and talk about its Comfort but I really just wanted to continually talk about the water getting in here um this wasn't a problem to start out this is a problem that has started to happen over the life of the tent I cannot keep mattresses in here anymore because it's constantly getting wet and the mattresses are soaked if I leave them in here and this is not from driving this is just sitting so this isn't water that's coming in under the seal water is not getting in under the seal um there's no way that water would get in under that seal and then there's a lip around the outside edge of this you know there's this this just not possible it's got to be coming from somewhere along the sides I think with the roof because it's full of water like I need to figure out what the solution is um I did a little bit of reading and some people recommend drilling a little hole somewhere along the outside of the tent but that seems like such a lame fix for a tent that's several thousands of dollars so the water in the roof I didn't start noticing it anytime immediately it's definitely something that's developed over time um I originally got this tent in the spring so it went all through a calendar year through the winter and I noticed a little bit of water after the first winter and then it seemed to dry out over the summer but this past fall and this past winter it's been very very wet I haven't taken this out really at all it's just mostly been sitting in my driveway but now you can it's like a swimming pool and this is when the water started showing up inside the tent so I'm going to have to see what the options are to fix that if we just have to drill a hole and let the water out that would be great but if water still keeps coming in because it's getting in from somewhere else and yeah it's great it drains out the hole but if it comes into the tent before it drains out let's go in the garage I'm going to show you the mattress and then I'm going to put a hose on the top of this thing and show you uh just what happened last time we were out camping here are the mattress panels they're easy to take out of the tent this one here the smaller one has some Vel curl on it so that it doesn't fall out of place when you flip the platform back closed so these are a single density they're like a high density not like a memory foam they're very I found them very uh firm to sleep on they are 2 in in thickness and um I don't know how i rate this mattress I would say this is slightly below middle of the road as far as rooftop tent mattresses go I've slept on some less comfortable ones but I've definitely slept on some more comfortable ones it could be better I think in the newer Overland 2 they have a thicker mattress which definitely would be a welcome Improvement for this um but if you're looking at the Overland one or really any clam shell style tent uh do take note of how thick the mattress is because the design of the tent does limit how thick they can actually make these pads because they have to fold up onto each other and then continuously increase the thickness so 1 in additional thickness for the mattress means 2 in of additional height for the tent now for the part of the video that you've been waiting for the hose test so what I want to show you is what happened when it was raining I would say moderately throughout the night and uh we can simulate this quite easily with a hose and this becomes much more of a problem depending on the angle that you're parked on now I am currently parked on a 3° incline and 1° to the passenger side but if we put the camera up on top of the tent look what starts happening in the middle here now it doesn't fill up too much more than this because of the incline that I'm on but if you're on a flat surface this pool of water that you see right here will continue to slowly accumulate and droop the tent down even more as the water gets heavier and heavier even though the fly is rated for 3,000 mm of water it just can't handle standing water all night long and if you're parked with your driver's side one or two degrees lower it's like it is not always easy to get a perfect flat spot then now your tent is tilted up like this and it will hold even more and more water now this didn't start happening the first time I took this out I've had this in the rain a couple of times maybe I got lucky with just the angle that I was parked on or perhaps the fly is stretching over time and the tent is stretching over time that seems a lot more plausible to me and it is starting to accumulate and hold water during rainstorms now the other thing I was going to show you is on the front of the fly that happens all the time ever since day one and right here water accumulates on on the part of the fly that is over the outside of the tent so it doesn't really matter if it sags and drips through because it's not dripping into the tent it's just going to be dripping onto the ladder but uh let me show you what happens I'm going to try to get some water to accumulate but I'm having a bit of a hard time CU I'm on more of an incline than I would normally park I try to keep parking with my rooftop tents to one degree in any direction but here here I'll show you so this fills with water and you go to get in the tent and you climb up and it's holding water right here and all this water runs down your back every time and I'll show you a clip from the last video you can see me putting the tent away and I forgot about it cuz I always forget about it and it goes right down my back so I'll leave it up to you guys whether you think the Condor Overland is a pass or fail and is possibly going to be on your list of potential rooftop tents do keep in mind there is a newer revision of this since I got this tent to years ago the Overland 2 so you might want to check that out I don't know if some of these problems have been fixed or not but what I really wanted to do is make sure that you guys have everything you need to know when you're considering purchasing a rooftop tent of this style or the Condor Overland and things that you can ask questions about perhaps in future models I'm going to suggest a couple videos for you guys to watch right here if you want to check out some more awesome content on my channel let me know if you have any questions down in the comments below leave a like hit that subscribe button cuz I upload every week and I'll catch you guys in the next video little Easter egg for anyone who's stuck this far in the video I'm going to put a link in the pin comment for the first person that clicks on this is going to be able to purchase it for free from dirty and danger.com this is one of the Mrs 250 Viking hats so if you're a channel member you have a huge Advantage because you can see that pin comment before this goes live to everybody else

Channel: Casey 250

Views: 8,718

Keywords: casey 250, jeep, offroad, 4x4, jeep jk, jeep jl, jeep gladiator

Id: cXgf26-mc8g

Length: 31min 31sec (1891 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024