Which tents

The Bergen Air Pro is a large premium tent, housing up to 6 people. Thanks to its AirFrame system, the unit can be quickly erected in less than ten minutes.

In the summertime, the tent stays comfortably cool thanks to its Weathershield AirFlow material - which allows it to breathe easily in warm temperatures. Made with lightweight and waterproof fabric, the Vacation has a respectable Hydrostatic Head rating of 3,mmm. The tent sleeps up to five people, with the optional bedroom divider splitting the bedroom into two. Ideal for camping adventures with friends and family, the Outwell Airville 6SA is a super spacious and well-designed unit.

The large tinted windows reduce glare and ensure privacy. Specially designed for family camping trips, the Quechua Arpenaz is an affordable four-person tent, offering fantastic value for money. When erected, the roof of the tent stands well over head height, making it easy to stand up and walk around.

Accommodating up to ten people, the Quest Touareg Bell is a tipi-style tent perfect for summer camping with large families. During the summer, roll up the sides and enjoy the spacious socialising area. In the winter, roll down the sides and socialise comfortably around the single central pole. Comfy, roomy and straightforward to pitch, the Robens Klondike Grande is a retro-styled bell tent equipped with modern technology. Designed with HydroTex Polycotton Fabric with a water-repellent treatment, the Klondike Grande benefits from reduced condensation and natural breathability.

Housing up to nine people, this model has a stovepipe port, ideal for a wood-burning stove. Perfect for a small family camping trip, the Vango Beta XL can comfortably accommodate up to three people. The tent gives an impressive space to weight ratio due to its tunnel design.

The Vango Beta gets its sturdy stability from the Tension Band System, which can be adjusted to prevent sideways movement in strong, changeable winds. Store your various pieces of camping gear in the functional porch area.

Despite its vast size, the Zempire Aerodrome is surprisingly simple to erect. As well as those admirable green credentials, the Joro includes lots of features to make family camping simple and enjoyable. There's a large living area including a roomy porch the poles are cleverly angled to maximise usable space , two doors both with mesh layers that can be deployed to keep the bugs out and let the air in. A slight drawback here — for light sensitive campers, anyway — is that the bedrooms aren't blackout, although Vango has deployed a 'Nightfall' fabric that's designed to reduce early morning light.

Head to our full Vango Joro tent review to find out more. Also in the range: Alongside the 4-person Joro , the Joro XL larger, and sleeps 6 , and both of those sizes are also available with air poles browse all Joro tents here.

No roundup of the best tents would be complete without at least one fiendishly priced offering from French outdoor brand Decathlon, and this is a doozy. One of the cheapest family tents you can buy, the Quechua Arpenaz 4.

For simple, car-based family campsite action you could spend a lot more and get a lot worse. The living space is roomy, light and airy, with a spacious porch area and mesh door layers you can close up at night if you want airflow without the bugs. The all-important blackout bedrooms are very effective: not only do they block out evening and early morning light, they also help regulate the temperature inside the sleeping compartment.

An all-in-one design and air poles mean this tent is extremely quick and easy to put up, so you can get on with your holiday as quickly as possible let's face it, wrangling with a tricky tent after hours in the car can be fraught at the best of times, let alone with grumpy kids in tow.

At a push, one person could even do it on their own — let's say, if the younger family members aren't cooperating at the time. In short, the best family tent for comfortable and relaxed family camping, whatever the weather's doing. This kind of convenience does cost though, and you'll find many similar design features in the cheaper Coleman Meadowood range, so check that out too if you're on a tighter budget. Or head to our full Coleman Weathermaster Air review for a more detailed look at what we thought when we tried it out.

Others in the range: The Weathermaster is available in XL 4, 6 and 8-person versions. The Vango Beta XL is a reliable tent at a keen price point, sleeping four in comfort and with a good size living area to boot. You'll thank us for this when you're three days into a family camping trip and craving your own space.

Although headroom is relatively low at 1. Weighing in at a reasonable 7. The tent is also standing-height throughout, with masses of non-bedroom space. Many a city house will seem small on your return. There are also dedicated power hook-up inlet points, and even an optional fitted carpet.

This really does leave nothing to be desired. The only downsides are the lack of proper blackout bedrooms although it gets pretty close , as well as the hefty weight and equally hefty price ticket. But if you want to compromise on absolutely nothing else, the Outwell Airville 6sa is the family camping palace for this summer and well beyond.

The Tentsile Safari is a tent with a difference — instead of messing around finding flat ground and hammering in pegs, simply take to the trees. The basic premise is a triangle of trees, ratchet straps and a bouncy hammock-type number, upon which the tent poles, inner and flysheet are positioned.

The result is a magnificently comfy tent, as there are no hard spots or cold ground to deal with, and with the 70D PVC coated nylon flysheet protecting you from rain, you're set for anything short of a major flood. The downside is the need for three trees, and a bit more setup than a standard tent, but the newest iteration v3 has a ground conversion kit that allows you to pitch on terra firma if you're dedicated to missing the point.

In use, it's a solid combo, with anti-roll straps preventing the heaviest person creating a slope for the other to slide into, and a decent flysheet to keep the weather out.

However, peering up into the night sky through the insect mesh is a real treat. This highly rated festival tent delivers plenty of space and features for the money, putting quality camping within reach of smaller budgets. And it's packing some genuinely useful features A minute pitch time and a roomy porch top off a robust offering. Modern tents for camping, backpacking, hiking and for general outdoors living come in a range of shapes and sizes.

The most popular ones are:. There are lots of newcomers entering the muddy field too, with innovative designs coming from brands such as Tentsile, with its sublime floating tree tents, and Cinch, with its nifty pop up modular tent.

Fortunately, the world of tents is a competitive place, and choosing the best tent for your needs might be initially confusing, but rest assured there will be an ideal answer to your needs. This, in turn, means you can choose larger size accommodation and heavier materials with impunity, which can keep costs down, and also leads to needing furniture and the like.

Learning to pitch your tent just as you like it is a whole art form in itself. These are all great things to keep in mind when reading through our picks for the best tent below. Mark Mayne has been covering tech, gadgets and outdoor innovation for longer than he can remember.

A keen climber, mountaineer and scuba diver, he is also a dedicated weather enthusiast and flapjack consumption expert. Save some money on your next inch TV this holiday shopping season in the run-up to Black Friday.

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T3 is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number Select your region. Sign up to our newsletter Newsletter. Outwell Pinedale 6PA. Specifications Sleeps: 6. Weight: If you're camping with a family, let senior associate reviews editor Adrienne So make an argument for backcountry camping. Paddling out to a distant shore might be preferable to figuring out how to keep a rambunctious dog or toddler from annoying everyone around them in a campground.

The Habitude is just as sturdy, but less than half the weight of the Kingdom 6. It fits easily on a canoe or paddleboard and is easy to set up—the design is simpler and the poles are color-coded.

There's plenty of floor space for two adults, two toddlers, and a large-ish dog. It also has storage pockets, places to hang lights, and a vestibule. The only major downside is that there's not quite as much airflow as our other picks. But otherwise, this is a good option if your family is ready to move past car camping, but not quite ready to snap the handles off everyone's toothbrushes and go full-on ultralight. I used this with my three kids and there was plenty of interior space. That said, three adults will be more comfortable than four.

The mostly-mesh design provides great ventilation on warm summer nights and leaving off the rain fly gave my kids and I a great view of the stars at night. It has double vestibules with enough room to keep boots and other gear out of the weather. One thing to note about this tent, MSR does not factory seam seal its lightweight tents, so you'll need to get some seam seal and do it yourself. It's not hard, though be sure to do it and let it thoroughly dry before you head out.

REI has a good guide to seam sealing. When weight matters, but you still want a free-standing tent, Big Agnes's Copper Spur series is tough to beat. I've used both the 2-person and the 4-person models over the years and Big Agnes has continually refined the design to the point that I have nothing left to complain about.

If you can afford it, this is one of the best tents on the market. It's lightweight, easy to set up, stable even in strong winds. The Copper Spur is also very livable, with interior mesh pockets and an ingenious "awning" design that makes getting in and out a snap. My only criticism is that it can be a tight squeeze.

For a long trip where your partner isn't your significant other, you might want to do with the next size up. For example, the 3-person will be a spacious comfortable living space for two people with all their gear, and still be lighter than most 2-person tents available. We're not saying Decathlon is lying, but if you can get this tent up in two seconds, you're doing better than we are. That said, it sets up plenty fast, far faster than anything else in this guide.

It's freestanding, although for maximum ventilation you'll want to use the side guy ropes, which help open up some space for air to flow. Aside from the quick and easy setup, what makes the Quechua special is the black fabric, which gets you pretty close to darkness even in broad daylight. That makes the Quechua a good choice for festivals, or a day at the beach, or anywhere you want to take a nap, or just get out of the sun for a while.

There are hundreds of tents out there. If none of our top picks quite work for you, here are a few things to keep in mind while doing your own research. Keep the weather in mind. A 3-season or 4-season tent usually refers to how much ventilation that is, mesh the tent has.