The Lightest Tent In The World - The New Zpacks Plex Solo

the lightest fully enclosed backpacking tint in existence 13.7 ounces of pure ultralight bliss but is it too good to be true let's take a look at the brand new for 2022 z zpax plex solo [Music] hey everyone steven here at my live outdoors and today i'm talking about the brand new z packs plex solo a tint that very well may be the lightest fully enclosed tint on the market this thing is so new i believe it was released just a little over two weeks ago for instance take a look at this this is the build date for this tent today is february the second and this tent was made on january the 21st so needless to say i have not had very much time with this tent in fact right now i'm with it in my backyard because i'm so excited about this i wanted to give you a good first look and talk about some of the things that i like and some of the things i don't like about this tent so let's take a look at the plex solo this thing is so light zpax is advertising is less than 14 ounces i put it on my home scale and i got 13.7 ounces for a tent which is pretty amazing now that is without stakes and without the pole because this is a trekking pole tint and most people are carrying those anyways and so it's generally not counted towards the weight of the tent i actually don't carry trekking poles so i picked up one of the optional three ounce carbon fiber poles which you might have to do as well because this thing requires a 52 inch trekking pole 54 if your pole is going to sink into the ground at all and some trekking poles simply won't extend that long and if that's yours you're going to need the carbon fiber ball too so with the optional pull and a minimum of six stakes the weight comes out to a still pretty impressive 19.5 ounces or one pound 3.5 ounces without the carbon fiber pole it's right at one pound and if you opt for titanium stakes you could get it as light as 15 ounces but does that make this the lightest tint in the world well it's certainly a strong contender there might be one or two other tints to come close to it if not beating this on weight but only by one or two ounces all in all pretty impressive for how much tint you actually get because this thing is actually pretty spacious if you sit close to the netting there's plenty of headroom on either side you don't even have to sit that close to the middle you can actually move pretty far back before your head starts to hit the side of the tent there's plenty of room at the head of the feet for gear and even more room on the side for gear or a dog one of the nice features about this tent is the generous bathtub floor which is supposed to be able to extend up to eight inches deep but in my limited experience i can only get it to be about four inches deep but i'll also admit that i'm not the best at pitching trekking pole tents so you might be able to get it deeper there are these nice little elastic cords that hold up the floor and they are even adjustable but every time that i try to adjust them they just seem to stretch rather than pull up on the sides of the floor there's netting all the way around a downward sloping angle that should allow condensation to flow down and out of the tent there's a small net pocket below the door and a large rainbow zipper that is just a little finicky to open and close the netting just sort of hangs loosely which is common intense like this requiring two hands to open the zipper the door also folds down onto the ground when fully open which isn't my favorite design i think i would have preferred two zippers and a door that hangs rather than falls into the tent the vestibule has a really simple but effective design with two overlapping flaps that eliminate the need for a zipper the clip two or just one of the flaps of this little hook draw the cord tight but that's actually kind of difficult to do from inside the tent as you have to pull the cord away from you reaching out and below the flaps the top of the vestibule overhangs the door by about six to eight inches which will allow you to keep the door open and all but heavy rain which will also really help with condensation i should also mention this is a dyneema composite temp made from .55 oz per square yard dyneema fabric dyneema is incredibly lightweight stiff and waterproof with no added silicon and this tent is factory tape so there's no need for seam sealing i will say i am a little concerned about some of the factory taping all the seams seem to be sealed on the outside of the tent and as i'm going around setting up the tin a few different times i've noticed that there's a lot of areas where the taping seems to be coming loose already and i really haven't had this tint very long i wanted to go ahead and try to give you a better idea of how to set up this tent you're going to need a minimum of six stakes and at least one trekking pole or the carbon fiber pole i mentioned earlier lay the tent out flat loosen the guidelines and stake them out at roughly 45 degree angles from the corners insert your 52 inch pole into the upper pocket and stand it upright i'm using a cheap trekking pole from academy and i find it easiest to shorten the pole a little push it up and then extend the pole to the ground or until it sinks into the ground if you're on soft ground then i stake out the front and the back and any remaining guidelines that you wish to use i will note that this 10 uses a minimum of six stakes but can take up to 10 stakes if you stake out all the guy lines okay so the biggest con in this list is the price this tent is going to set you back 600 us dollars and that's pretty expensive even for an ultralight tent although some people would argue that for a cottage industry tent like this that's a pretty competitive price so you're gonna have to decide whether or not the weight savings is worth the money the other con is that this is a single wall tint which is to be expected on a tent like this but with any single wall tint condensation is more of a concern because you're much more likely to brush up against the walls getting you or your gear wet so those are only my initial impressions of this tent as i have not yet had the chance to get into the backcountry but i wanted to go ahead and put this video out so that you can hopefully get a better idea of whether or not this is a good fit for you so if you found this video helpful please make sure you hit that like button and if you want to support me in the videos i'm putting out the easiest way is to simply watch like and subscribe or you can pick up one of my take a seat shirts at the link below this video make sure you're following me on instagram and my life outdoors and as always thanks for watching

Channel: MyLifeOutdoors

Views: 69,408

Keywords: zpacks, zpacks plex solo tent, Ultralight, lightest tent for backpacking, Review, Set up, Pitch, First Look, Backpacking, Backpacking Tent, zpacks tent, zpacks shelter, appalachian trail, ultralight backpacking, long distance hiking, 1 person tent, pacific crest trail, thru hiking, gear review, plexamid, hexamid, soloplex

Id: qLO9O0yefXI

Length: 6min 4sec (364 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022