Which Backpacking Tent is BETTER? - Durston X-Mid VS Zpacks Offset

well hey guys it's Darwin and today I want to talk about two ultralight tints that I've recently been testing and using in the field the Duren xmid Pro one versus the zpack offset solo what makes them similar what makes them different the pros and cons of each and which tint I think is better now if you have been watching my videos over the past 7 years it is no secret that I am a big fan of zpac tents I have bought an owned a lot of these I've put thousands of miles on them and they've never let me down so like most through hikers I live by the old adage if it ain't broke don't fix it and over the years even though there's been tons of other tents that have come out to the market I've not been interested in trying them because I always use what I know is going to work for me for months on end well one of those brands that has really blown up over the last handful of years that I get a lot of suggestions uh to check out out is durston specifically the xmid tent now durston makes a bunch of different versions of this tent from a twers to a oneperson Sil poly version to a DCF version a double wall to a single wall but the one that I have been interested in checking out was the xmid pro one specifically because it has the features that I'm looking for in a entt it's a oneperson tint made out of DCF and that's what I'm used to using so back in November remember I decided to borrow this from a friend and I've been using it on multiple trips and testing it ever since because I wanted to get it out on the trail I wanted to put it through its Paces spend multiple nights in it and see what all of the hype has been about Duren tents well while I've been testing this a couple months ago the brand that I'm the most familiar with zpx put out a new shelter that's very similar called the offset solo and I saw a lot of people saying that these were two very close competitors because they were very similar with their features so I decided to also pick up an offset solo so I could put these head-to-head and see which one I would prefer especially being someone that has owned so many zpx tents is this better or is this better for me so before I get into the review I am not sponsored by either of these companies uh Duren nor Zack asked me to make this video all the thoughts and opinions in this video are are my own and based off of my own personal experience and remember that all gear is subjective you got to use what's going to work for you that being said this video is still sponsored yep I'm doing a sponsored video and it's not by either of these gear companies it's by the company that has allowed me to get out on some of these trips recently put some of this gear through the test log some miles and not get lost while I'm out on the trail today's video is sponsored by onx next Back Country over the past year I've been getting out on a lot of smaller backpacking trips and section hikes versus these long through hikes so I'm not sticking to these main Trails getting off and doing my own routes and Onyx has been a really great tool to allow me to plan and Route my trip from home and get all my Logistics and then use it offline while I'm out on the trail to navigate not only has Onyx become a great tool for me in my kit out on the trail for navigation they also become a huge supporter of my channel allowing me to get out on trips like the recent one I just did out on the PCT and make videos like this because I've recently partnered with Onyx if you're thinking about streamlining your trip planning and navigation while you're out on trail and picking up something like Onyx Backcountry if you use my link down in the description box you can get 20% off of a subscription to Onyx again I can't thank Onyx enough for making an awesome navigation app and for supporting what I do here on YouTube all right guys so before uh I talk about what I like and don't like about both of these tents and which one that I would buy let's go over the specs the durston xmid pro is a oneperson two trekking pole tension tint that is made out of a d composite Fabric and the model that I have has the sill nylon floor but you can get it with a dyema floor it's fully enclosed with two d-shaped zipper doors and two vestibules it has a bunch of little features like dual wall Pockets magnetic door toggles and vents at the two peaks to help with condensation but the feature that makes this tent the most unique amongst other tents out on the market is its asymmetrical offset pole design that claims to create more internal Headroom and overall living space the weight on the version that I have is 17 Oz on my scale and at the time of this video the retail price comes out to5 $49 next up is the zpac offset solo it is also a oneperson two treking pole tension tint that is made out of a dyema composite fabric but comes standard with a diema bathtub floor it's also fully enclosed features two L-shaped zipper doors double vestibules magnetic door toggles and dual Peak vents the offset solo is also an asymmetrical design but it's quite different in the fact that instead of having offset poles it has an offset Peak allowing it to have more internal living space the offset also comes with this little 32in pull for the foot in to extend the length and again give it more internal space on my scale the offset solo comes out to 19 Oz and at the time of this video the retail price is $749 so when I first got these ents uh again I thought that they were very similar tints because they looked similar they had similar features but after getting these out on multiple nights I now know that they are very different in a lot of ways and what makes these tents very similar is the fact that both tint manufacturers are after the same thing making a oneperson tint have a ton of internal living room so I could start talking about all the small little features and the bells and whistles that I like and that I don't like about these tents but in the grand scheme of things when I'm looking at a shelter there are three main things that it comes down to for me and what makes a perfect tent number one is the setup the actual usability of the ENT how much room does it have on the inside and how simple is the design I want something that's not going to break and fail on me in the field so first off let's go with setup both of these tents were very easy to set up both of them pitched nicely after I figured out how to do both of them so when you first get a trkking pull tent it takes a little bit to kind of figure out that pitching method but once you get it figured out you know how to do it uh the offset solo has a very standard footprint size pretty similar to most of the oneperson tins that I have and the xmid pro has a much larger footprint so as far as the room that you're setting it up in the offset solo can definitely be squeezed into much smaller spaces when I was through hiking the PCT and the Continental Divide Trail I had to pitch my tin in a lot of spaces where there were a lot of big boulders or trees that I had to kind of fit in these small spaces and I feel like I could still do that with this pretty easily with the Duren I feel like uh I need a much larger room to be able to pitch this because it does have a very large footprint because the fly is a big rectangle but the inside is SL planted of where you actually lay so you kind of have to have a little bit more room to work with when you're pitching this so as far as uh the amount of space to pitch it and kind of fitting it in I'm going to have to give that to the offset solo now when it comes to pitching it and getting it taught uh what I found with pitching both of these tins was once I got this figured out and I I figured out my angle and how much space I needed I was able to easily get this staked out slap trekking poles in it tension it and it was perfectly taut ready to get in and go to bed the offset solo took a little bit more time even though it was pretty straight on I could lay on it find my flat spot get it staked out it took a little bit longer to get it taut because it has that extra pole there's an extra tension point that you have to worry about when you're trying to get the entire ENT taut so sometimes I would get some of it taught and then other walls would be kind of floppy so it took a little bit longer to get this taught so as far as uh ease of pitching and how fast you can get it taught I'm going to have to give that to the xmid pro next let's talk about internal room again both of these ents are very big on the inside because of that asymmetrical design on both of them trying to accomplish the same thing but very different the Duren xmid Pro what I found has a ton of foot and head room honestly the most I've ever had in any one person tint I didn't even get close to the walls head and foot but the actual internal width was very narrow it kind of felt a little bit like a coffin it's one of the reasons it reminds me of my Skyscape treer but all the width seems to be in the vestibules the vestibules are very very large there actually might be more width in both of the vestibules than there is on the internal width of the tent for me I'm not somebody that keeps my gear in my vestibule I like to keep it in the tent so I wish that this had a little bit more width internally and less in the vestibule or the offset solo has a fair amount of room in the head and the foot end I found that the foot length was more than the head I still felt like the wall was a little close to my face on the head end but I did appreciate having this to get that wall off to make sure that my uh my foot box of my quilt didn't touch the wall and on on top of that this had much more width on the inside so I had a lot of room to be able to put my pack next to me next to my sleeping pad so this definitely has more room uh for the head and the foot end this definitely has more room in the width so it's kind of a tie right um kind of depends on what you're looking for and then the last thing is going to be uh Simplicity how simple are these ents now both of these ents have a lot of bells and whistles they both feature the Dual vestibules the peak vents the magnetic toggles things that honestly I don't really care about I've hiked thousands of miles with tins that don't have those features and I've never felt like I need them so that stuff is not important to me what is important to me is kind of those extra things how simple the actual tint is how quick I can throw it on the ground get it pitched and get inside of it in case I'm hiking to Camp late or the weather is bad and for that because the offset solo uses this extra pole uh because it's a little extra thing that I have to carry that I could possibly lose or break um I feel like this tint is not quite as simple as this ttin is um you know one of the reasons I started using trekking pole tins was because I didn't want to carry extra poles I didn't want to carry all these extra bells and whistles it's one of the reasons that the uh tarp tint Aon Li didn't work out for me because I couldn't stand having all these little extra stays I had to possibly worry about so this is a big bummer to me um again one of the reasons I've been using zpx tins for years is because they don't have things like this so that was a bit of a Miss for me so as far as Simplicity goes I would say this is much more simple now where I will kind of give a knock to both of these tents are all those little nitpicky simpli simplicity things um number one is going to be the fact that they both have dual vestibules I don't know why a single person tint needs dual vestibules um the whole point of dual vestibules is for a twers tent so if two people are laying side by side you're not crawling over each other to get out you both have your own door now I know there's a lot of people out there that are going to say well it's for better ventilation and airf flow I can tell you that with both of these tents I got condensation both both of them I had condensation even though they had dual vestibules even though they both had dual Peak vents I still got wet on the inside of my tent and where this was in the Grand Canyon a very dry environment and this was on the PCT in the first 100 miles a very dry environment I still got condensation because there's still single wall shelters and that's just going to happen so I don't really see the advantage to having two vestibules I'd rather just have one vestibule and a PE vent so to me kind of seems like a thing that I would rather not have in either of these tents um and then it comes down to the actual doors so on both of these tents you can only roll back one door and then they have either the d-shaped door or the L-shaped door I don't know why people like doors like that for me if I'm sitting in the tent because one vestibule is shut I have to get over to where the door is going to come up and then I have this angle right here in front of me I really like to sit in my tent in the morning with a big rainbow zipper door roll back both doors and get this big panoramic view of my area be able to get these beautiful views in the morning listen to the birds chirp while I'm drinking coffee and I can't do that with either of these tents because the peak is not as high because it has that slanted wall and because this side of the wall doesn't open I have to sit off to one side and I have to kind of my head this way and that drives me nuts I can't stand that about either of these tents again if you're a person that likes to sit outside of your tent and have coffee it's probably not going to be an issue but I like to sit in my tent I like to enjoy the morning and I can't do that with either of these so that's kind of a knock against both of these tents and then the last little thing would be uh kind of a couple little annoyances on features uh the X-Men pro has very very short guidelines so over the years I've had to kind of guy my tin out around obstacles rocks and roots and logs and these are really short and I feel like I couldn't do that at all actually I had a little bit of a problem in the Grand Canyon I had a big rocky area and I didn't have enough guideline to get my steak over the rock so I had to actually move the entire tent where this has regular size guidelines as far as I'm concerned and I can kind of Route this over different things on the trail I know that sounds silly but I've had to do that a lot and yeah I could swap out these guidelines for another one but it's just kind of a a little bit of an annoyance that they have such short guidelines right out of the gate and then again I'll keep bringing it up my biggest little uh knock and annoyance for that is this little pole odds are over thousands of miles I'm probably going to lose this or break this so I can't stand having this all right so with all that being said which tint do I think is the better tint which tint would I buy over the other again I could go into all these little well this is better than this at this and this is better than this at this but it really comes down to those three main things for me it's setup it's internal room because I'm 61 and it's Simplicity as far as features and setting it up and even though I think these both have a great amount of room different in different ways but a ton of room for a one person 10 because I think that they're pretty simple for what they are they're lightweight and they both set up pretty easy easily I found the Duren xmid Pro to be a little bit better at those three main things I do wish this was a little bit wider but I appreciate all that head and foot room for being 61 that's the most important thing for me when it comes to internal room and uh I think that this set up a little easier than the offset solo simply because I don't have to mess with an extra pull figuring out different tension points so because of that I would buy this if I was going to buy a two trekking pole two vestibule single person tint but to be fair I'm probably not going to buy either because what has worked for me over thousands of miles is still what works for me so for right now I think that I'm just going to use what I have and not really get either of these but again if I had to get one it would probably be this guy for the reasons that I explained so which one of these tints would you be interested in buying which one of these has the features that you want more do you want more overall internal room or do you want more length uh do you like big vestibules or do you not really want that big of vestibules um which one would you buy leave me something down below and let me know your thoughts guys I hope you're doing well hope you're taking care of yourselves I hope you're taking care of each other I love you and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Darwin onthetrail

Views: 48,113

Keywords: UL Backpacking, UL Hiking, UL Hiking Gear, AT, PCT, Pacific Crest Trail, PCT Thru Hike, AT Thru Hike, Appalachian Trail, Backpacking, Hiking, Adventure, Hiker Trash, Long Distance Hiking, Thru Hike Gear List, Favorite Backpacking Gear, LOng Distance Hiking, Backpacking Gear, New Backpacking Gear, Zpacks Offset Solo, Durston X-Mid Pro 1, Zpacks Tents, Durston Gear

Id: rMdWFb-O128

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024