what's up everybody welcome to another episode of the REI cough your guides I'm
Miranda and I'm hoe Tech and today we're gonna be talking about the best
backpacking tent so you can find at REI this year
so to pick our tents this year we talk to our customers and our members in the
store while they were get picking up their new tents and we also looked at
customer reviews and these are our picks our first category is the best
backpacking tent for solo backpacking and for that we've chosen the REI co-op
quarter dome sl1 so in choosing the best tent for solo backpacking we knew we
were looking for something that was relatively light we also wanted a lot of
interior volume or interior space in the tent since we knew we weren't going to
go with a bivy so if you're gonna go with the 10th we
wanted that added room so this tent is pretty easy to set up it's actually a
single pole system so it's all hubbed in right here and the poles are
color-coordinated it is asymmetric so you've got a dark pole going over here
and you've got two brighter colored poles out there this tent is semi
freestanding which means that you have enough poles
to pop the whole tent up but you do need to stake out the foot box so that's
going to be over here and over here just to get all of your room yeah the main
difference with a semi freestanding versus a free standing tent again is
that a freestanding tent with just the poles you get all of your interior space
so many freestanding you need stakes to get all of these interior volume right
this tent is a single door entry so we've got one door and one vestibule in
the front of the tent this is a great spot to store your dirty gear since this
is a small ish tent it's a lightweight tent you probably have lightweight small
gear so you should be able to fit all of that on the exterior since you're not
gonna want anything on the interior with you it's gonna be tight so there's a two
numbers we want to pay attention to and we're talking about weight of this tent
there's the package weight of the tent which is two pounds six ounces and then
the minimum trail weight which is a pound 15 so the package trail weight is
going to be everything you purchase with the tent but the minimum trail weight
will only include the tent body the rain fly at the poles and the stakes no
extras so if you leave all the bags extra stakes and guylines at home you
can significantly drop on the weight of the tent the peak height in this tent is
38 inches and you have almost vertical sidewalls which really helps it not feel
like an attic they don't come in on you otherwise it even the tent can be pretty
high it can feel really really tight just cuz the walls are right up to your
necks to your face yeah and then there's a number of pockets on the inside
this tent to help you organize your gear and you do have a vent in the fly
our next category is going to be the best tent for livability and that's
going to be the Big Agnes copper spur hvu l2 so in choosing the best tent for
livability we knew that we were looking for something that had vertical
sidewalls lots of interior volume lots of vestibule space and was still
relatively light so we chose the Big Agnes copper spur HV or high-volume ul
or ultra light two-person tent this tent clocks in at just over three pounds
packaged weight which is two pounds 12 ounces minimum trail weight and this
tents really easy to set up so there's one primary pole that runs like this
it's all shockcord together and it's hugged right there and poles are
color-coded so you've got dark poles over there and then you've got bright
colored poles over here and then there's one cross bar which is also shot corded
and that just pops right in and that keeps the walls nice and vertical and
nice and far away from you and this is a two door tent so you have two door entry
as well as two large festivals for storing your gear which is just gonna
get help with that livability feeling on the inside you've got a bunch of pockets
up top so you to organize all your gear and then there's some hang points in
there where you can put in your your tent lanterns and we've got that one
vent right up top so one thing I think is really cool
about this time are actually the doors so the way that Big Agnes designed this
is with the zippers coming together at a point at the bottom so rather than just
meeting and going wherever on the tent it's always really easy to find the
zipper that you're looking for which allows you to sneak out of your door
without waking your sleeping partner our next category is the best tent for
bad weather and for that we have chosen the REI co-op or Rhett ASL 2 so in
choosing the best tent for bad weather we knew that we're and we looking for
something that could withstand light snow heavy rains and heavy wind so we
chose the REI co-op a Rhett ASL or all season light two-person tent because
this is a pretty burly tent for its weight the weight on this tent is 6
pounds 5 ounces packaged weight that's about 5 pounds ten ounces minimum trail
weight this is a single door entry tent so there's only one door in
doubt it's got a nice big festival though so put all your gear inside the
vestibule right here this tent was actually designed for snow use so if you
take a look at these stake out points right here they're actually expert big
so you can actually use your skis as a stake out points on that guy and there's
a good amount of ventilation right here through this bed and that ventilation
actually helps the tent stay up during win because it allows the wind to pass
through the tent as opposed to knocking it over
okay so wolf the rain fly off we can see the pull structure of this tent a little
bit better this guys set up pretty differently from
some of the other guys so it's separate poles so we've got two poles that run
across through the sleeves they're color-coded so we've got a green side
over there and then we've got a dark side over there and then we've got two
brow poles here and here so the brow poles add extra structure and strength
to the tent when it's in bad weather but it's starting to rain what you can do is
you can just punch the poles through these sleeves and then just jump into
the tent and I'll still stand up one really cool thing about this tent that
makes it great for bad weather is that you have fully sealable mesh on the tent
so if you are on a good weather day you can always unzip this and you get a nice
view from the mesh but for more protection from the elements you can
fully closed up the mesh on this set nice our next category is me the best
tent for families and that's me the Marmot limelight 4 so if you're
backpacking with the family or with young kids the limelight for person is
about the closest of car camping comfort that you will get in a backpack will
wait the stunt does weigh about eight and a half pounds packaged weight so
that's 7 pounds 15 ounces minimum trail weight but that does include the
footprint also since you're probably going to be going with a group of people
you can always divide up the fly and the body and the poles of the tent to divide
weight that way it sounds pretty easy to set up too so we've got an orange hub
pole and the orange pole goes to these orange tabs over here and then we've
also got a pair of grey poles which will go with the grey tabs up here and that
will create the vertical walls and keep everything nice and far away from you
yeah there's a ton of interior volume in this tent which makes it feel really
livable you also have two door entry and two large vestibules these vestibules
are I mean they're massive a ton of cupboard space on the outside
of the tent if you're backpacking with three other people you're probably gonna
want that for storing your extra gear and our next category is gonna be the
best tent under $250 which is going to be the REI co-op Half Dome 2 plus so I
really feel like the REI co-op Half Dome 2 plus deserves a ton of credit not only
is it less than $250 but it's also just a great all-around tent a version of
this tent many years ago was my first set my - yeah it's just it's a really
great backpacking tent it does weigh about 5 pounds 5 ounces or 4 pounds 15
ounces minimum trail weight um but it's also really good for car camping it's
just all around a good tent yeah and it's super super easy to set up the
poles are totally symmetrical the tent is totally symmetrical everything just
snaps together so we got four corner poles and then we've got one crossbar
that goes through the hubs and that gives you totally vertical sidewalls so
you've just got a ton of room on the inside doesn't feel crammed at all yeah
there's a ton of interior space there's also lots of pockets on the inside and
this is a two door two vestibule tent so you've got a large exterior vegetable
for storing your gear on the outside of the tent that's it for the best
backpacking tent so you can find at REI as always if you have other questions
you can watch our other videos if you haven't yet go ahead and subscribe to
our Channel and yeah come into your local REI and talk to the experts there
will be happy to geek out about tents with you see you later