The Coleman Screened Canopy Tent has double-thick fabric so you can be confident it will stand up to the elements year after year. Coleman has created the top contender of the best screenhouses for coleman chairs camping. The Coleman Instant Screenhouse protects you from the sun and bugs so you can enjoy the day with your loved ones. It has a double-thick fabric to keep you protected from the elements.
If we were camping somewhere infested with mosquitoes or no-see-ums and could fit the Clam in our vehicle, we’d prefer it over any of our other picks. One wall comes fully unzipped and stashes into an internal pocket. Like the REI model, the L.L.Bean tent has ample interior pockets, a lantern hook, and a roomy carrying bag, though the bag is of the typical drawstring-sack variety. L.L.Bean’s Woodlands Screen House is remarkably similar to our top pick, REI’s Screen House Shelter; the two canopies have an identical footprint and pole structure.
But the L.L.Bean tent’s peak ceiling height of 6 feet 6 inches is half a foot lower than that of the REI tent, making it feel notably darker and less spacious. It typically costs more (in fact, the price has risen substantially—more than $150—since we first tested it) and lacks the convenient strap-equipped carrying bag we like. In early March, we took our second trip to the oceanside Sycamore Canyon Campground (PDF) near Oxnard, California. A later check of the weather at nearby Point Mugu Naval Air Station confirmed top recorded wind gusts of 40 miles per hour.
The roof is with their UVGuard material and they claim it offers 50+ UPF protection. This is a waterproof Polyguard 2X double-thick fabric material so you have some rain protection here. You have telescoping poles and they are easy to extend and to lock into place thanks to what they call pinch-free Comfort Grip technology. Note that the poles are with large feet so that the structure can stand on while you set it up. There are three main elements here, the frame, the roof, and the screen around. So the fabric elements are separately removable and you can use this structure as a gazebo with the frame and roof only.
We also timed setup and breakdown times for each shelter, and we repeatedly zipped and unzipped doors and windows, looking for annoying snags. Since 2015, I’ve tested camping shelters and large car-camping tents on weekend trips involving coleman screen tent more than a dozen families, and I have talked to dozens more about their tent travails. Over the years, I have evaluated gear for magazines including Wired, Popular Science, and National Geographic Adventure, where I was a senior editor.
Not long after the wind started, I looked up from my book to see that the right side front pole had buckled and turned inward, causing that corner of the tent to cave in. I’ll just toss on the rainfly and stabilize the tent with the attached cords and some additional stakes. I personally found the directions confusing, so it probably took closer to double the advertised time to set the whole thing up. Fortunately, the color-coded poles made figuring things out on my own a little easier. Heather and I thought we’d solved two problems at once during a recent visit to our local Costco.
Despite the change in fabric, this REI shelter still weighs just 13 pounds, several pounds less than many others of this type. The REI Co-op Screen House Shelter is an intuitively designed, easy-to-erect picnic tent that offers protection from sun, bugs, and mild rain showers. Though the boxy design is basic, in our tests we found that this camping shelter offered the best combination of functionality, durability, and affordability of all the tents we tried. In between trips, we turned a neighbor’s large, flat yard into an ad hoc camping-gazebo testing ground. We erected our shelters just in advance of a 24-hour rain and checked for leaking and rainy-day ambience midstorm.