The TRUTH about ROOF-TOP TENT Camping - (watch before you buy, pros and cons) Tacoma Overland

hey guys how's it going I hope you've been well today's video is gonna be about rooftop tents we're gonna be talking about the pros we're gonna be talking about the cons if you are a rooftop tent hater stick around for the con section I'll put a link down here when that starts if you are a rooftop tent lover stick around for the pros section which will be coming up first maybe I'll link to it down here as well and if you are just considering a rooftop tan I just wanted to know a little bit more than watch watch both because I'm gonna give an unbiased opinion on rooftop tents I've spent decade ears backpacking and ground tents have a lot of experience with that last couple years I've been doing primarily rooftop tents because I'm really getting into kind of vehicular camping or over landing as a lot of people say sorry I got like hummingbirds and stuff going crazy soulfully it's not too loud but yeah let's go ahead and get into it okay so real quick let's talk about how rooftop tends to work there's a few different kinds there is kind of hardshell clam shells that just kind of pop up either fold up or all the way up with Pistons and the footprint the sleeping area of the tent is basically the size of the tent itself there are these kind which are pretty popular which actually fold out so the actual sleeping area of the tent is about double the size of the footprint of the tent when it's folded up there are some out there that kind of combine both mechanisms which are pretty cool but those are those are your two main two main set ups they're these kind are going to be typically a little bit cheaper than the hardshell kind and they are going to be a little more difficult to put up they'll take maybe five minutes instead of one minute but they do allow you to have a smaller overall footprint so if you have a smaller vehicle or if you're putting it on like the back of the bed like I do then these kind of fold up ones are pretty much your only bet if you have an SUV or something with a full roof area then you can use those kind so these this isn't like a list that I compiled by researching the Internet this is just my own real world use from using the tents so the original thing that led me to purchasing a rooftop tent was the main benefit of being up off the ground now that in and of itself has a lot of pros and it also has some cons so touch on the pros so for me out in Colorado half the year more sometimes in some of these places there's snow on the ground or there's freshly melted snow on the ground so there's mud on the ground and Colorado and a lot of other places are really rocky as well so finding a nice spot to lay a tent that isn't dirty that doesn't require a lot of work that doesn't require clearing rocks is sometimes a pain in the butt as well as finding level places to camp this solves all of those problems so you're up off the ground so you're off the snow you're off the mud you're off the rocks level miss of the tent does matter still but that can be solved by making your truck level that can be solved by driving up on a rocks or leveling blocks like I like to use or logs or any number of things you can level your truck even if the ground that you're on is not level so pretty much unless the terrain is really extreme you're gonna be able to get a level tent you can't really do that with a ground tent also if you are up off the ground versus being on the ground cleanup is a lot easier especially if it rains overnight and water is washing and turning into mud under to you or flowing into your tent if you don't have that quite laid out right none of that with a rooftop tent you don't have to worry about stuff and debris on your tan and packing it up and brushing it off later all you have is water on your tent really for the most part unless some leaves fall on it so then you just pack it up there's no mud you will want to unfold it and let it air out when you get back home probably but as far as the packing up is concerned it's very clean I guess you could say so another huge benefit of being up off the ground is that you are away from snakes spiders scorpions other bugs and insects and critters and that kind of stuff as well as offer is a little bit more protection from your bigger critters like bears and stuff like that if you have to worry about that yes bear could get up here but for in my mind I feel like it's a little bit more safe from those types of animals as well setup is pretty easy these are the hardest to set up rooftop tents so they take I don't know maybe five minutes a little less if you really if you're really hurry and the hardshell ones are even quicker some of them take like 15 seconds some of them take like a minute rooftop tents for the most part are relatively easy to set up obviously nowadays there's really easy ground tents to set up as well like those pop-up ones you just kind of throw them up in the air and they're set up so set up as you could or might not have seen is relatively easy I was a little distracted my dog was kind of running around trying to get something so it took me a little a little longer because I forgot to unclip the things but setups pretty easy these rooftop tents are actually the most difficult to set up of all of them the hardshell clam shell ones are even easier yes I use trying to catch a squirrel or something so the hardshell ones take like 10 to 60 seconds to set up a lot of times these ones a few minutes so setup is relatively easy ground tents depends on the tent some you just throw up into the air and it sets up others can take several minutes so I would say set up is a pro in general because you don't have to find a spot or clear out anything kind of like I mentioned earlier but yeah overall set up I would say as a pro for rooftop tents for the most part rooftop tents are pretty heavy-duty as well they're gonna have good rain fly some of them have pretty good insulation they're gonna hold up to the wind and rain mostly better than kind of your average ground tent but again you can get some really heavy-duty ground tents little that'll do just fine as well another huge plus to rooftop tents is they have a built in mattress pretty much all of them and the mattress is pretty good so it's gonna be much more comfortable experience than sleeping on your kind of traditional camping pads granted you could bring a whole mattress with you if you want and put that in a regular tent but this is already out of built-in so it's always there you can put bedding on it and in addition to the mattress always being in the tent you can for most tents keep your bedding in the tent as well so I keep like a jumble sleeping bag in there all the time fold it up it's in there unfolded it's ready to go just throw my pillow in and I'm good to go so always have a mattress pretty much always have a bedding depending on the tent but pretty much most of them you can put the bedding in there some of them you can throw your pillows and stuff in there as well another advantage is this is specifically obviously related to vehicular camping but it takes up less overall space so you got to park your truck or your car somewhere anyway so it's going to take up that much space and normally with a ground tent you would have to go and find another spot and then you're taking up more space with the rooftop tent obviously some of them take up even less than this but this takes up about the space coming out and brings a ladder down with these ones also depending on how high your rooftop tent is this is kind of a pseudo awning obviously when paired with a separate awning you could have a bunch of cover from the Sun or the rain and a lot of these rooftop tents also have completely separate awning type structures that you can build into them so take up less space in general and the space they do take up you can also convert to more useable either shaded or entire enclosed space as well the other thing I like and this is kind of hard to put into a pro necessarily but for me specifically having my tent on my truck kind of establishes the truck as a base camp I use the tailgate as a table to cook on hang stuff on have my water maybe put some towels on the side set up lights on my truck and everything is there just right around my truck so I have my tent for sleeping or hanging out or whatever and everything else is right there in the vicinity you can do this with a ground tent as well obviously if you put it right next to your truck same deal or if you put it further away maybe some people like that separation and you could set up a table or whatever like that but for me it's kind of easy to set up my truck with the tent on it it's kind of just a central base camp or everything is all in one place and then the last of the pros this one's kind of I kind of saved these like pros that are kind of pros for the end is it takes up less space as far as packing is concerned so it's up on your roof racks so yeah you could put boxes or other stuff on your roof rack but typically if you have a truck you want to just put stuff in the bed of the truck if you have an SUV you just want to put stuff in the back of the SUV a tent a big ol tent like this is just up there where you wouldn't normally typically put a lot of other stuff obviously you could put cargo at the boxes you could put Pelican cases whatever up on your roof rack but in my mind and probably in a lot of people's mind the rooftop tent is up there just kind of taking up relatively wasted space it's designed to go on the roof already it's typically some of them are very streamlined and they're all like relatively streamlined especially if you kind of have them in the back of the trip like this so it's yeah kind of takes up less space but we'll just kind of say that's kind of a pro which is gonna kind of get us into the cons so with the rooftop ten it's not all fun and games and gumdrop smiles there are some Bad's to it some cons and that's what we're going to get into so if you are a rooftop tent hater well here's some more fuel for the fire first point is they are expensive granted there are some ground tents that get really really expensive as well but for the most part for a decent ground ten you're paying a couple hundred bucks for a rooftop tent you're paying upwards of a thousand some of these suckers are like five thousand or more dollars this one that I have is the CVT Mount Shasta and I believe it was around sixteen to eighteen hundred so that's well over a thousand dollars so there's no denying that you're gonna be able to camp much cheaper and a ground tent then you are in a rooftop tent but you do have to remember that it does include a mattress as well so it's like a little bit of offset but I'm not there's no getting around it they're pretty expensive another thing is they're pretty heavy even the lightest rooftop tents are almost a hundred pounds I think I like about somewhere between 80 and 90 pounds for like the lightest rooftop tents that are out right now that I'm aware of and they go upwards of hundred two hundred some of them up to like three hundred pounds I think so these things aren't lightweight so what that means is you're gonna need a specialized rack system your vehicle may come equipped with racks that can handle that kind of weight but you got to remember that if say this rooftop tent is a hundred fifty pounds that's more than a bicycle that's more than a kayak you're gonna make sure your vehicle's roof racks bars and all that stuff is rated for that much weight dynamic I look excessively short down here because I'll show you in a second but my truck is up on these tall blocks to get a level anyway yeah most manufacturers of racks do put that dynamic rating into the rating so if a racks system typically says it can hold X amount of pounds that is the dynamic load and you may be wondering well my rack system says it can hold 200 pounds the rooftop tent is 150 pounds I could only put a 50 pound person in there and I would already be at the weight limit it's not really true because dynamic weight limit means the limit in motion the static limit is often two too many times higher than the dynamic weight load so some rack manufacturers will tell you the dynamic as well as the static so you can depend on if your rack system can hold 200 pounds it'll be able to hold like 600 pounds probably of static weight don't quote me on that that's generally how it works quick note on rack systems I had this rack that was weighted for 300 pounds dynamic per bar so this whole system with two bars theoretically should hold 600 pounds which is overkill for 150 pound ten my racks broke so that brings us to one more point even if your rack system can handle the weight it may not be able to handle the weight off-road going off-road will introduce new stressors to your rack system as you shift side to side and go up and down and do all the stuff which may cause your rack system to fail like minded I will be uploading a video about my rack system failing and what I did to fix it so if you have the same rack system and you're worried about it I did something to fix it that I think should hold up well that's relatively easy so I'm gonna put that on my B channel and I'll link to my B channel somewhere comment down below and I'll pin it or something so if you want to know that I'm going to upload it to my B channel because it's not really a mass mass appeal there's a few of you that have their rack system and I'm making a video for you so stay tuned for that all right so we're we're expensive we're big we're heavy we need specialized equipment to carry it and we also need a place to store it so you can store it on your vehicle all the time and then just take the hit on fuel economy and the extra a little bit of wear and tear on your suspension and stuff like that and a lot of people do that nothing nothing wrong with that you look cool at the mall and stuff as well I don't I have a pulley system that I can make a separate video on as well where I it's very simple for me by myself to raise and lower this off of my truck if you don't have a pulley system then before I had the pulley system I could load this on to my truck by myself I kind of had a guren grunt and lift it up I have videos of it somewhere back in my history much easier with two people but for any other tent you know a 100 pound girl or boy could load that thing into the into the car the SUV or the truck no problem but with this it does require more effort in addition to actually getting it on there it does require a little bit effort to mount typically some nuts and some bolts there are some quick detach systems out there by like front runner I think but it's kind of specialized and you got to use the rack system and stuff so for the most part people are getting a wrench and actually bolting this thing to their roof racks so that'll take a few minutes as well I have dialed a system where I can get it off and on in just a couple minutes so it's pretty quick but still not gonna be as quick as just grabbing a bag and throwing it into the back of your truck another con is if you just want a really massive tent where you can basically throw a party in there there's no rooftop tents that are that big they get relatively big you know you could sleep for usually like two adults and two kids I think are kind of the biggest tents they have out there some maybe just a tiny bit bigger than that but they're I don't think there's any rooftop tent so that you can stand up in all the way and there's not there's just there's just not as much room in rooftop tents granted for me I have a history of using like really small ultra light ultra small backpacking tents so they do feel roomy but for a ground tent you can get massive massive tents so con is they don't get that big so if you really want a huge tent where you can stand up and do all kinds of stuff in rooftop tents aren't gonna be for you other con is that you have to camp where you can park so sometimes I'm out on the trail there's a little pool off that you could Park a truck and yeah I could camp there but then down 50 feet out or I can't get my truck to or I shouldn't get my truck to is like a nicer camping spot with better views or just it's in a it's in a better area altogether and I can't get my truck there so therefore either I have to pop up my rooftop tent come up and sleep in it but hang out down there which is what I typically do or you need a tent that you can go and put down there so if you really wanna camp camp as in put your tent at a very specific location that's you know the perfect spot in between these trees that you can't get your truck to well you can't get your truck to it that means you can't put your tent there if all you have is rooftop tent and that kind of ties in to this doesn't affect me as much because I'm not really extreme like living out in the outback or anything like that but if you do only have a rooftop tent and your vehicle get stuck or crooked or something and you got to spend the night outside you can't sleep in a rooftop tent if your vehicle's all kinds of crazy so it is good to kind of have a backup ground tent with you if you're kind of going anywhere that you may potentially which kind of could be anywhere you may potentially get stuck in some crazy crazy way or flip your truck or something and have to spend the night out there then having a ground tent or a back up ground tent will come in really handy and then I'll bring us to the last con I feel like talking about right now that I can kind of think of off the top of my head which is to get into all rooftop tents pretty much you need a ladder so not a good option obviously if you have some sort of disability that you can't climb up a ladder to get into the tent which affects a lot of people out there or maybe if you're a little older and that doesn't really sound like something you want to do or if you have really young kids and it doesn't sound like what you really want to do with them for me I don't have either of those but I do have a dog which he's a big dog he's a 90 pound dog and he sleeps with me in the tent just because you know that's that's how I want to do it getting him up there up the ladder into the tent it's a little bit of a chore I just kind of got to pick him up and pass him up in there so it's not super easy if you have a small dog obviously a little easier but overall getting up into the tent may be impossible for some may bring some difficulties for others okay thanks for sticking around again I'll link to stuff if I mentioned it down below that you might be interested in and yes for that rack breakage video subscribe to my B channel I don't know if I can link it up here but I haven't made the video yet but I'll be making it soon so if you're interested in that and the fix that I did subscribe to my B channel or here I'll mention it probably whenever I upload it as well if you found this video helpful informative or any of those things take two seconds hit that thumbs up button I really appreciate it guess subscribe to the channel if you're not and feel free to ask any questions down below and I'll answer them to the best of my ability all right take care

Channel: Last Line Of Defense

Views: 3,128,168

Keywords: rooftop tent, roof-top tent review, roof top tent buyers guide, rooftop tent pros, overland tent, roof tent camping

Id: oNPfn0NhJvM

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 15 2018