The ULTIMATE Tonneau Cover Comparison | Truck Central

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so what's going on guys and welcome back to another episode on the truck central youtube channel this is going to be an awesome video for you guys today very informative because i'm going to be reviewing three different tonu covers for my truck now before we get into the video before we start everything i want to take the time to thank realtruck.com for sending us these three tanu covers over here you can get anything on their website from tonu covers to steps to lighting accessories anything from the interior you can even search by brand so they have a lot of stuff on the website definitely check them out but right now i have these three tonneau covers and we've already sort of unboxed them as you can see basically it's going to start from the most affordable option to the most expensive option all three of them are from gator so real quick here i'm just going to go through each cover and tell you guys the differences in all of them and the prices so this is the tri-fold sfx soft cover and this one starts at around 250 bucks it's the most affordable option of the three it has a tear resistant vinyl top as you can see so this one has the bigger support bows for like heavy rain if you get bad weather you know like hail or snow it'll actually support it and won't rip through the cover it has what they call a speed clamp so when you lock the cover it automatically locks it's not hard to do now this one also says i think it installs in like 10 minutes so it's probably the quicker installation of the three i don't know yet because we haven't installed all of them but i'm just guessing by the looks of it it doesn't come with a lot to do it just has your weather stripping right here and the cover and it has a few clamps to clamp it on the back of the truck and this one in particular is cool because it comes with a limited lifetime warranty on the structural part of it so like the bars and everything but it has a 10 year warranty on the vinyl top that's pretty cool 10 year warranty on this thing now all these gator covers have a 60-day guarantee so if you don't like the cover in 60 days within 60 days you can swap it out for something different so that's really cool that gator comes with that now coming to the second um tonu cover and i think i'm saying it right maybe i'm not it's tonu ortano i don't know i guess it depends on what region you live in in the u.s or the world i'm just going to call it a tanu cover so this one here is the gator fx and this is the first hard top i should say hard cover of the three so this one in particular costs a little bit more it's about 800 dollars and up it starts at 800 so depending on your truck bed length i'm sure it gets more expensive i have the six foot six inch bed length so i kind of have the middle bed length so this one was about eight hundred dollars um it is aluminum it's made of aircraft aluminum it uh has a no drill install so you don't have to drill into your bed or anything like that which is nice it gives you full bed access when it's open too so it doesn't like cover half the bed when you open it all the way it gives you full bed access which is good it can support up to like 300 pounds so you can put evenly distributed 300 pounds on this cover and it'll be fine it has buckle straps too so you can have it open like two thirds of the way while you're driving and it's still okay and this one comes with a two year warranty and that's it that opposed to like the 10-year on the cheaper cover so that's the mid-grade level comes with your rails here as you can see some weather shipping some other parts there that we haven't gotten into yet so this third one here is kind of like the cream of the crop the uh cherry on top the big kahuna of all three of them it is the gator mx this is a full hard cover and it starts at about 1 750 so this is a big big significant jump in price about a thousand dollars more than the the mid grade model but when you look at this cover you can tell why it's that expensive it's all aluminum um it's nicely put together it actually has this finish on it that's like a scratch resistant sort of bed liner finish but it looks nice it's not like rough or anything like that they call it a matte finish it's very durable it has a smooth ball bearing operation in the rails which is pretty intense for a ton of cover it has nearly full bed access when it's open all the way so again you can access the entire bed when you have it open not only is it functional but the thing about this is it looks good so it has a low profile design as opposed to the other two where it's like you can see it and it's kind of sticks up a little bit this one is very low profile what it seems to me is it's probably going to look like it came on the truck from the factory like this made for the truck this one also is cool because it locks in any position so the other ones you kind of fold over you only have so much difference so you can have like two thirds open one third open or open all the way whereas this one literally you can lock it in any position it also can support up to 500 pounds which is the most out of all three of them so that's pretty wild and it comes with a three year warranty so this one has another year warranty as opposed to the middle the middle grade option even with a three year warranty this thing looks like it's built really really nice now this one is also the heaviest of all three too not that it really matters because let's be honest we're putting on a truck not a race car but this is the more heavier option if you guys are concerned about weight in the bed so now that we have gone over all three models we're gonna start the installation with the uh most affordable option model the the gator sfx cover i'm going to do a quick time lapse on all three of these i'm not going to go through the whole installation and explain anything to you guys but if i do find something that's kind of worth mentioning during the install i'll make a note of that after so with that being said let's get started [Music] so just completed the installation for the first time cover and they said it took 10 minutes they were wrong it only took five minutes extremely easy to install first you start with the tailgate down and if you'll notice under here there's no hardware used it's literally just clamps you got two clamps in the back and two clamps in the front the two clamps in the back are the ones that are stationary they stay there um and then the ones in the front here if you want to fold it back all we do is like that it locks in pull the other one down it's just on a spring it's a spring loaded clamp just like that and then it's a tri-fold so it folds back now the only negative to this one is it's either all the way closed or all the way open you can't have it halfway like this you have to fold it all the way back and then it does come with latches here so you can latch it in both places as you can see this doesn't come up anymore it's always going to stay on the truck so if you want to have the bed open while you're driving you're only going to get two thirds of the bed open i think the pros outweigh the cons on this and the fact that it's easy to install like super easy so you can you could probably just take it off instead of folding it up into a third you can just take the whole thing off really simple so if you don't want it on the bed at all it's easy to take off it does seal very nice they do provide extra weather stripping here for your tailgate because your factory tailgate doesn't have any seal they provide that if you don't want to get any water in the bed when your bed is closed like that you can't really pull it up and get anything in here like it does protect whatever in the bed from like theft but somebody could take a razor blade and cut this top if they wanted to it's not really completely theft proof so if you're looking for a theft proof cover this is probably not a good option for you but if you just want a simple cover to keep the weather and rain out this is probably your best option this is the most affordable option out of all three of them it's the lightest option too and easiest to install so what we're gonna do is we're gonna uninstall and take off this cover and then we're gonna go to the second cover the gator fx [Music] alrighty so just installed the second tonneau cover this is again the gator fx this is the first hard cover that we've installed and as you can see just by looking at it it's a little bit sleeker because it sits a lot lower and one thing i quickly noticed after installing it was the fact that i was still able to use the hand grips here to get up on the truck those you guys that don't know these holes here are actually functional they're for putting your hand in here and getting up onto the truck bed so i like the fact that that was still accessible and also i have these like carbon fiber chevy letters i put in there obviously just an added touch but i can still see those whereas the first cover it covered pretty much most of that right there quick operation of the of the cover first impressions i really do like it we're going to put the tailgate down real quick and see how this thing operates now first you grab one or both of them it doesn't really matter but there's two wires you just pull down and then that releases the locks then you lift up and then just kind of folds over itself like that then you have a second set right here you can pull down back as you can see exposing however much bed you want now from here you can drive with it like this all you need to do is unlatch your clips and you can clip into right here and tighten it up so you can drive with the cover as is so i'd probably say this is like two-thirds open now if you want it all the way open to drive with you can do that as well all you have to do here is open the cover the whole way they also provide before i click open it up they provide a nice pad strip here you can put on so you don't hit your glass and damage it it rests up against there like that and you'll see why that's needed here in a second so if you want to drive with it all the way open they have these nice bars that you go up through here and what that does is that locks them so the cover itself doesn't move anywhere you have another one over here which you can also do then you can drive with the cover open the only issue is obviously you can't see out of the rear window there is that but if you needed to drive with it open for like a short distance or something you could so that's nice now they do provide these this tubing which for video installation sake we did not install there's a hole under here that you put the tubing in and then you take this little cover out on your truck bed and what that does is allows the water to drain i think in the rail here so don't collect water in this rail it'll drain then through and down through your truck onto the road so they give you two tubes one for each side other than that that's honestly pretty much it as far as the installation goes all you need is a socket wrench to tighten the uh brackets here as you can see there's three on each side and they tighten to your the lip of your of your bed now for certain trucks you may have to shim it so it's level for the silverado we didn't have to do that which is nice it does provide a list in the instructions of the trucks that you need to shim it was a pretty fairly easy install the nice thing about this model like i said before is it's a hard cover they just click in just like that it latched really nice not much to it and that's it pretty easy to use pretty functional so now that we've installed the second cover we'll take this one off and we'll install the third one and see how that [Music] goes [Music] alrighty so tony cover number three the gator mx has now been installed it took a little while to install this was definitely the harder one to uh get put together only because it requires two people it is the heaviest one as well the entire structure the entire roll-up portion of the cover is one whole piece and then the rails come separate as well as the back finishing rail with like the weather stripping so like those are easy but like you have to assemble the entire thing before you even put it on the truck bed whereas the other ones you could put on rail rail and then cover this one you had to assemble the whole thing off we had to put it in the grass over here and then we had to do other things it took two of us to put it up on to the bed i think it weighs like 80 pounds it might even weigh like 100 pounds just by looking at it it's definitely the more sleek version it looks really really good it almost looks like it could come from the factory like this like it'd be a factory option to have a cover and the cool part about this one here too is it's got a lock on it and a key so it's definitely the most secure the most anti-theft proof of them all and once you unlock it you push this button pops up you can just slide it off right now or we're just going to put the tailgate down here to show you guys how it works so that's what it would look like if it was locked and then you push the button up top it unlocks both sides push it back like that it'll stop anywhere you can adjust these tracks like in or out to get the alignment right we have it so it's a little more snug so it stops right now anywhere i put it so i can just have it there and it'll it'll pretty much stop so if i want to have it the cover halfway i come over here and i lock it like that and now it's not going to go anywhere you can drive with the tonneau cover halfway all the way quarter of the way doesn't matter it's it will literally lock in any position so when you pull it back that's the farthest it goes that is a little bit of a i guess a negative side to it and you can see better from this angle you can't really put much under here i mean it it covers probably almost a foot you can see where the bottom of this is and that's going to be there the whole time there's a film on here that i haven't ripped off that's what this is so you peel that off and then this thing will this thing will guard the rolled up portion of the cover like i said if you are using your entire truck bed you can't really utilize that that section there when you want to close it just pull it all the way closed and lock it and that's that the weather stripping seals really nicely all the way up to the front here it's got a wet piece of weatherstripping all the way under here it's got a nice weather stripping like pad i think this one probably seals the best as far as weather conditions and water and then when you close the bed you can see there's a piece of stripping right here closes nicely on there it uh definitely takes the longest to install and you're gonna need at least two people to do it if you're really looking to utilize autonomous cover like all the time like if you're using one daily for whatever maybe this is the option you want to go with especially since you can lock it so if you have anything valuable in here you know you lock your cover and this does also allow access to the hand the hand grips so you can get up on the bed too so that's nice that it doesn't cover the entire side of the bed it does also come with tubes like the previous one that you can have for water drainage on the rail other than that there's not really much to say i mean it's it's what you see is what you get and it's a really nice piece for sure so with that being said we're going to take a look at all three of the different covers that we installed today and i'm going to kind of give my opinion on what i think is the best uh for myself alrighty guys so is it going to be toneu cover number one tonu cover number two or is it tanu cover number three so in conclusion with uh installing and reviewing all three of these tanu covers for my personal use i think the second one was the best the mid-grade level model the gator fx only because when i put certain things in the bed with the more expensive version tonu cover i can't put my mini bike in fully because part of that cover sticks out and kind of like takes up a bit of the front of the bed the second one that one is nice because i can completely fold it up and put it on the back of the uh glass so when i'm towing a trailer i would do that i mean i wouldn't really see out the rear anyways i just see a trailer so it doesn't matter to me that that cover kind of blocks my view back there so for me i like the hard cover i think it looks better it's definitely more resistant than like the soft vinyl one and i like i said for my use for what i would use it for i think i would rather have the mid-grade model i can't really justify spending all that money for the most expensive one maybe because i'm not using it on a daily basis but as far as like the cheapest option like that's still nice that the entry level model is is really nice for what you get i mean it's the easiest one to install like i said literally five minutes it took me to install that thing so i think as far as that goes that'd probably be my second choice and honestly the more expensive option would probably be my third choice only because it's hard for me to justify spending that much for my usage if i used it every day and i was putting things in there that were valuable that i didn't want stolen i probably would go with that option only because that's the best of the three but this really just goes to show you how different and how many tanoo covers are out there so if you guys are in the market for a ton of cover probably while you're watching this video go check out realtruck.com and you can see all the different tonneau covers you can price out your own see which one is best suited for you and what you're going to use it for on your truck and if you're looking for other truck accessories pretty much anything truck that is where you're going to find it on realtruck.com so i want to give a special thanks again and a shout out to realtruck for providing me with three different tonu covers to review for you guys let me know what you guys think below in the comments which is your favorite and which one you would get also stay tuned for the next video on the truck central youtube channel if you enjoyed this video make sure you guys give it a big old thumbs up make sure to hit that subscribe button stay tuned for more truck content and as always have a great day you

Channel: Truck Central

Views: 752,538

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Id: NduR-YSHo7M

Length: 18min 32sec (1112 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020