How to Save Money When Buying Sports Tent

When it comes to buying a tent, you can trust my advice. I have learned important lessons after years spent field-testing every variety imaginable, from teeny floorless pup tents to extravagant luxury models larger and better outfitted than some homes I have owned.

View Details

Lesson one: Buy a tent with a floor. If you don't, unexpected guests could ruin your campout. I've awakened to find everything from copperheads to fire ants and skunks sharing my sleeping space.

Lesson two: Buy a tent with a door and screened windows that can be zipped up. Refer to lesson one.

Lesson three: Buy a tent appropriate for the season in which you'll be camping. This was another lesson difficult for me to grasp. I have gotten frostbite in tents made for summer camping, and been nearly asphyxiated by heat and lack of circulation in tents manufactured for polar explorers.

Lesson four: Read what follows before buying a tent. Benefit from my broad range of experience. Buying a tent isn't rocket science, but as I've proven time and time again, it's not a purchase one should take lightly.

What Size Tent do You Need?

Choosing a tent that's the perfect size can be tricky because people vary in their comfort levels and in the amount of stuff they carry around. Experts recommend an absolute minimum of 12 square feet of floor space per person, which is barely enough room to stretch out and sleep. To accommodate camping supplies, clothing and the like, figure 20-25 square feet per person, if your activities (backpacking, car camping, etc.) are suited to a tent that size. If you're a multifaceted camper, you may require different tents of different sizes for different activities.

I learned long ago that the floor diagrams and height measurements provided by manufacturers can be misleading. These usually indicate nothing more than how many average-sized campers can wedge themselves inside and try to sleep in a human puppy-pile. For a sure fit, have the seller set up the tent and allow you to get inside to check it out. Is there room to sit up, stand up and move around in a manner you'll be comfortable with? Is the interior space adequate for your needs? Do the tent's shape (dome, A-frame, etc.) and interior configuration (high walls, slanted walls, etc.) allow maximum use of the living space? Be sure before buying.

It's also wise to snoop along the seams. Many tents come with taped seams, which saves you the nasty chore of slathering seams with sealer goop. If the seams are not bound, sealed or taped, then read the instructions for the manufacturer's recommended seam sealer. Do the job on a dry day in an airy location, and allow the sealer to cure a full 48 hours before stowing or using the tent.

Tents and Seasonal Considerations

Three-season tents are the most common on today's market. These are designed for use in spring, summer, and fall. They have good ventilation for camping during warmer months, and usually have mesh windows with covers that can be zipped closed when the weather is cooler. The design of these tents allows them to withstand strong winds and rain. Backpackers and car campers generally choose a three-season tent.

If you plan to camp often in winter, in locales where high winds are prevalent or anywhere your mettle might be tested by less than favorable weather, consider a four-season, or mountaineering, tent. These are designed to withstand extreme conditions year-round. Extra poles, zip-down windows, and extended rain flies allow adjustments for added summer ventilation, and greater warmth and stability in winter weather. These tents tend to be more expensive, however, and often heavier than three-season alternatives.

Lightweight, highly ventilated summer tents are great for hot, dry nights, but they aren't very versatile when temperatures drop or rain hits. Avoid these unless your camping is restricted to desert realms.

Backpackers use tents that are as light as possible, yet still need durability.

Whatever you buy, be sure the fabric is flame-retardant. In California, and possibly some other states, the law requires all tents sold to be thus treated. In other areas, however, the tent you purchase may not be flame-retardant unless you check. I have learned the desirability of this feature on no less than five occasions, when sparks or flames from campfires--and in one case, a flaming marshmallow--ignited my tent fabric. The resulting conflagrations were frightening, dangerous, embarrassing, and a host of other adjectives. For your own safety and that of your fellow campers, buy a tent made with flame-retardant fabric.

Further Define Your Needs for the Perfect Tent

The carrying weight and packed size of a tent also are of prime importance to most outdoor enthusiasts. Three-season tents that accommodate two to three people usually weigh four to nine pounds. (The weight is given by the manufacturer on the tent's hang tag and should include tent body, rain fly, poles and stuff sack..) Small, ultralight solo shelters (often called bivy sacks) have bare essentials and weigh as little as one or two pounds. Family, cabin and expedition or outfitter tents often weigh more than 20 pounds.

Choose a model proper for your needs. Will you be trekking solo when the weather is likely to be fair? Then a bivy sack and tarp may suffice. Will you be backpacking? If so, weight and ease of setup are important. Fair-weather hikers won't want to lug a heavy, blizzard-bearing mountain tent, and in rugged alpine country, you don't want a light-duty shelter that can get trashed in short order. Family campers may want to trade off pack-ability for more floor space.

Generally, lighter is better, but don't sacrifice important features to save a few ounces. Manufacturers often reduce tent weight by using fewer zippers (hence fewer openings), fewer and lighter poles, and smaller rain flies and storage vestibules. That can cause problems in situations where these accessories are beneficial.

Easy Assembly Tent Poles

Unless you can work a jigsaw puzzle in the dark, be sure the tent you purchase, regardless of the model, has poles that are shock-corded for easy assembly. These have an elastic cord or chain running through the individual sections of each pole, allowing them to be put together in a snap, even in the dark. Tents with poles that don't have this feature can be frustratingly difficult to assemble.

Remember, too, that cheap tents often come with flimsy poles that may bend or break when stressed during a rainstorm, snowfall or windy conditions. You'll be better served if you invest more money on a quality tent with quality poles, which usually are made of lighter, stronger carbon fiber or aluminum, not fiberglass. Being awakened in the middle of a stormy night by a collapsed tent is no fun, as I can fully testify.

You also should check to make sure the pole sleeves are easy to thread (continuous sleeves are the easiest). Tents with clips that fasten the poles to the tent body are faster to set up than those with sleeved poles, but you'll sacrifice strength in bad weather.

You will get efficient and thoughtful service from Spark Glamping.

Tips on Tent Care

Having slept in many tents that were mildewed, leaking and falling apart, I also can comment on proper tent care, a moderate amount of which will allow your tent to last many seasons. Here are the basics:

• Sweep out all refuse and remove dirt with a damp cloth. Then allow your tent to dry completely before you pack and store it, even if you have to pitch it again when you return home.
   
• Sun will eventually cause a tent to deteriorate, so if possible, camp in the shade to avoid harmful ultraviolet rays. It also helps to leave your rain fly on during the day. Rain flies are  cheaper to replace than entire tents.
   
• Tent floors can wear out, so use a ground tarp when possible. Thin polyethylene sheeting from a hardware store is a lightweight, inexpensive option.

To wrap things up, I offer one final suggestion. Be sure you can set up your new tent for the first time, in the dark, with no instructions. If you can, it's a good design. If not, look for a more fussless model.

An average camper can erect the average tent in five or ten minutes, but there are exceptions, like the sultry August night a friend and I went river camping. The air was dead still, and the mosquitoes were horrible. We tried our darnedest to set up my friend's tent before being eaten alive, but our accumulated experience and advanced degrees were no match for the designer's convoluted fantasy.

"It can't be that hard," my friend said. "My wife set it up by herself the last time we went camping."

Bottom line: if the skeeters are swarming or it's threatening a deluge, head-scratching is the last thing you want to be doing.

The right tent can be one of the most important pieces of kit in your gear arsenal. It will keep you safe when the weather turns, provide a comfortable space to spend the night and transform the great outdoors into your own adventure playground, allowing you to camp in the most picturesque places imaginable.

When you’re in the market for a new tent, however, you’ll quickly see that good shelters from big-name brands can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Depending on the level of protection you require, the seasons you intend using it in and the size and weight you're willing to carry, the price range of tents can vary wildly. So, when it comes to tents, do you always get what you pay for? Or can you rely on a budget tent just as well?

What makes tents so expensive?

Numerous things dictate how expensive (or cheap) any given tent is, though price does tend to be dominated by the three key factors of weight, packability and durability. If you want a tent that delivers on all three, then you’re going to have to shell out the big bucks. But if just one of those characteristics is less important to you, you’ll quickly see that you can shave hundreds off your price tag by concentrating on the other two.

The reason for this disparity inevitably comes down to the materials used in production. Creating a flysheet that will keep you dry and shielded from the wind while still being packable enough that you can comfortably carry it over distance is no easy feat. Combine that with the fact that you also need pegs, poles and some sort of inner and you’ve got a surprising amount of innovative tech behind the best-performing (and highest-priced) options.

Regarding materials specifically, for most mass-market products, you’ve usually got three options: polyester, nylon or Dyneema Composite Fabric (DCF, previously known as Cuban Fiber). Which you go for will almost certainly be decided by price, with polyester being on the lower end (in general), nylon tents occupying the mid-range of the market, and DCF shelters sitting firmly at the top, costing several hundreds of dollars for even the smallest tents. This is ultimately down to the manufacturing process of the materials themselves, as well as the availability of skilled manpower to work with your chosen fabric.

In the field, the main differences between the fabrics are weight and packability, with polyester being the heaviest and least packable (generally speaking) and DCF being the lightest and most packable. But the debate isn’t over with that sweeping generalization. When used out on summit camps, thru-hikes and backcountry escapades, each fabric's unique advantages and disadvantages come into play.

For example, nylon – while being lightweight, packable and wonderfully durable – stretches when it gets wet. This means that even if you get a drumskin-tight pitch before you go to bed, a bit of light rain will inevitably mean your tent is flappy by the morning. And although DCF flysheets are even lighter and easier to carry over big distances – as well as not stretching like nylon – the material is significantly less durable. This means you’ll likely have to replace it after a few seasons due to wear and tear. So even though both might save you quite a few ounces when compared to a budget polyester model, when the clouds roll in and the heavens open, you might be better off in a £200 full polyester Robens Starlight 1 than in a £500 DCF Zpacks Plex Solo.

Do you even need an expensive tent?

Whether you even need an expensive tent for your activities is a difficult question to answer, as it truly depends on what activities you’re participating in. If you’re planning on spending the night at Camp 3 on Everest ready for a summit push in the morning, then you’re almost certainly going to want something that doesn’t consist of the cheapest and most basic technology. A $50 budget shelter from Aldi is obviously not going to cut it, for example. But if you’re heading out on a backcountry adventure in pleasant summer conditions, camping somewhere flat near to the car where wind is at a minimum and rain isn’t forecast, then a bargain basket shelter might be all you need. It all depends on how far you’re going to carry your tent (and how much weight you can comfortably haul with you), where you’re going to pitch it, and at what times of the year. But also consider the impact your chosen purchase will have on the environment: if you buy cheap, it may only last a season or two. This might be more than enough for you, but if you’re a keen camper who will get multiple year-round uses out of a tent, it would be kinder on both the environment and your wallet to buy something that you won’t need to replace at the first sign of trouble.

Another consideration is the ‘season number’ attributed to specific models of tent. Three-season tents, designed for use in spring, summer and fall conditions, tend to be less adept at staving off stormy winds and don’t come with things like snow skirts for camping in super wintery conditions. Four-season tents, on the other hand, are much more capable of withstanding heavy wind, driving rain, and many pounds of snow load. The downside, of course, is that they tend to be heavier, larger and more expensive as a result. So, when buying a tent, only spend money on the things you need. Don’t intend on camping under several inches of snow? Then don’t splash out on a structure that is built for that.

Which brands can you recommend for budget tents?

When shopping for budget tents, a great place to start in my opinion is Decathlon. With a huge array of products for numerous types of adventures, activities and demands, you can tailor your budget depending on your needs and find a shelter that best suits you. Take the Forclaz MT500 2-Man Trekking Dome Tent, for example. This shelter retails at £119.99 when bought directly from Decathlon, yet it performs so well in a variety of conditions that you could easily be convinced that it should be priced in the £200-£300 range. I even tested this tent on an exposed hilltop on Dartmoor National Park in temperatures down to -13°C / 8.6°F and left the next morning feeling incredibly impressed by what this tent can do – irrespective of its super low price. If you’re looking for something lighter and more packable, the Forclaz MT900 Minimal Editions is a fantastic choice at £129.99: It weighs 920g / 2lb, packs down to the size of a Subway sandwich (albeit a big one) and is impressively easy to pitch for a trekking pole tent. Finally, if you’re on a strict budget, Decathlon even offers very budget models, such as the Quechua MH100 Fresh&Black, which I tested on top of a blustery mountaintop towards the end of fall . Designed for campsite campers and less-adventurous escapades, these models could be all you need depending on your plans – you’re just not going to want to camp at elevation in inclement weather in them, as I learned the hard way.

If you’d prefer to look elsewhere, one of my favorite tents of all time is the Robens Starlight 1, an ultra-strong and durable one-person backpacking tent that comes in at a touch over £200. Alternatively, being regularly on sale for less than £100, Mountain Warehouse’s Backpacker tent is also worth a look. If this isn’t currently on sale, however, I think you’ll get a better-designed tent for the same price from Decathlon.

So, is it worth buying a budget tent?

In the world of tents, more expensive doesn’t always mean better. Expensive generally will mean lighter, more packable or more robust, but depending on your adventures, those characteristics might not be that important to you. If you’re campsite camping or pitching somewhere removed from the harshest weather, then it is absolutely worth looking into buying a budget tent. If you’re looking at heading into the Arctic tundra in February, or you want a super lightweight shelter that you can pop up on an Alpine crag during a rapid ascent, then maybe you should prioritize safety, durability and reliability over price.

So if your adventures allow it, do take a look at the likes of Decathlon, Mountain Warehouse, GoOutdoors or similar. Oh, and keep an eye out for sales, especially towards the end of the main outdoor season, which in the UK is from the end of September through to December. Then, before you purchase, just think about exactly what you’re going to be doing with your tent; if you intend on using it on a multi-day trek or a thru-hike, you might want to spend a tiny bit more to shave the weight down. Trust me, your shoulder, back and hips will thank you for doing so when hauling it across open country for hours at a time. But if you don’t want to spend too much, a tent made with mid-range tech offering mid-range specs will keep you safe and comfortable in the vast majority of situations, while empowering you to visit some spectacular places in the backcountry. And at the end of the day, that’s what counts.

For more information, please visit Sports Tent.