Temperatures ranged from the 50s at night to the 80s during the day. Finding a small, light tent is the logical approach when you’re backpacking. But with car camping—the industry term for what most people consider just camping—you’ll likely be parking next to your campsite and unloading. If you won’t be carrying your tent more than a couple hundred feet, more space means more comfort (as well as more room for your stuff).
A full rain fly with easy-attach color-coded clips covers the tent body and adds two large vestibules. Like the Mineral King 3, the Tungsten has aluminum poles that are connected at the top (for lightning-quick pitching) and pre-bent, which increases the dome tent’s headroom. You can also set up the tent without the fly while retaining some privacy, since the tent body has a high polyester wall on one side.
The Tungsten’s two brow poles create an especially effective awning over the tent door, so very little water gets in when someone comes or goes. Despite having the smallest capacity of the tents we tested—42.5 square feet—the Mineral King 3 easily fits two people with a full-size mattress, or two sleeping pads, and gear. Two large vestibules add nearly 40 square feet combined—that is, 18.75 square feet on either side. To test the tents, we first opened them, splayed out their parts, and tried to put them together without consulting the instructions. We assembled and disassembled the tents on all of our testing sites multiple times. We tried the rain fly for each tent as well, one time rushing to get several of them up during an unexpected rainstorm at night.
I hate to say it but this thing is a piece of JUNK. I could not even get the top frame together with ozark trail canopy out it either bending the poles or coming apart. The screen tent came with missing and broken parts.
We offer competitive prices on all of our exclusive products. We stand by our high-quality products and your satisfaction is guaranteed. That’s what we get with foreign ozark trail canopy made products. You either need six people or twelve arms to hold the thing together when assembling. Then the screening doesn’t fit right over the frame.
Now and then I walk into a store, it tends to be named ___Mart, and buy something I know is going to bring nothing but grief and heartbreak. A Pavlovian reaction to super-size doses of advertising? Greed, optimism, stinginess, and materialistic guilt thrashing together in a dance of futility that leads straight to the checkout counter? To make matters worse, sometimes I’m so ashamed of the purchase that I can’t even bring myself to return it. I purchased my tent a couple of years ago, but time passed and just got it out to put it up.
But it’s one of the least expensive tents we found that had no significant drawbacks and will truly cover your bases for three-season camping. The tent also comes with its own footprint, a groundsheet that protects the tent from abrasion, which we recommend that you have. For this guide, we focused on tents that suit the most common terrains you’re likely to encounter when car-camping—grassy lawns or clearings, beaches, dirt campsites, and basic platforms—in spring, summer, and fall. We’re not looking at tents designed for such specialized activities as mountaineering, backpacking, or winter camping, though some of our recommendations have cross-over potential. A full rain cover, two vestibules, and an extra-sturdy pole structure make this the best choice for families who want to get outside in any weather.