For pros, the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent is very, very inexpensive, and is by far my least expensive tent for the size. The 14 steel stakes that came with the tent are just your standard tent stakes, nothing impressive. The mesh doesn’t exactly feel soft and silky, and I’m pretty sure it’s not no-see-um mesh, though it’ll keep the bigger bugs out. There was quite a bit of this sort of inconsistent mesh in some places, so not very well put together. I also found a bunch of loose threads on the floor when I first got into the tent, and excess material on some parts. Also, I noticed that some water was already seeping through the blue fabric at the bottom of the tent, and the fabric is pretty much soaked.
While I paid between $250 to $350 for both my 10-Person Coleman Tents, I paid only about $100 for the Ozark Trail 10-Person Cabin Tent, which is less than half the price of my Coleman tents. This is also a 3-room structure and the rooms are depicted in the picture above. This is a very typical cabin-style tent with very tall and straight walls, the peak height is 76 inches (193 cm). The easiest models to pitch are pretty much always “instant tent” shelters, which use a system of preattached poles than only need to be unfolded and locked into place. Ease of setup (how easy it is to pitch and take down a tent) is pretty much always a high mark for Ozark Trail tents.
I have both the Coleman 4-Person Instant Tent and the 4-Person Pop Up Tent, and in this blog post, I’ll go through all the differences between these tents. While the Coleman Instant Tent takes double the time to set up and pack away as compared to the Coleman Pop Up Tent, it has more pros…. Ozark Trail is basically Walmart’s house brand, or private brand, and I think the reason Walmart and Coleman are able to keep their prices low is because all these tents are made in either China or Bangladesh.
This is a tall and boxy structure so it is best to use it in a quiet area. But I have seen some users reporting of using it in the winds of 50 mph. This is a freestanding construction, self-supporting and stable as you can realize from the ozark trail canopy tent picture below which shows the tent without the fly. But you should certainly not miss staking it properly, the stakes and guylines are included in the package. If you’re expecting no rain at all, this is a great, reasonably-priced tent.
I also noticed that the fabric of most of my Coleman Tents tend to stay dry in light to moderate rain, and would only start getting wet after 45 minutes to 1 hour of super heavy rainfall. As for my Ozark Trail 10-Person Tent, it was able to stay dry only for about 10 minutes of mostly light rain and some moderate rainfall, not even heavy rain. One of its great features is the front screen room which you can see in the picture below.
This two-room cabin tent also offers electrical cord access, and it even includes a carrying bag for your convenience. In terms of drawbacks, this is a particularly budget-friendly model from an already budget-focused brand, so you’ll need to be mindful of a few shortcomings to get the most out of this shelter. First, Ozark Trail uses sealed seams on this tent, but the fabric itself isn’t made for a rainstorm. You’ll want to give the entire tent a thorough Nikwax treatment before taking it on the road. Second, the fabric feels thin, and a few users have reported ripping it during setup, so you’ll need to take your time both setting up and taking down this tent.
If there’s no rain, you can unzip the windows for more ventilation, and there’s a bug net to prevent larger bugs from getting in. The lowest height in the tent, which is at the four corners, is about 65 inches. This is slightly taller than my height, so I could stand up everywhere inside the Ozark Trail Tent, even at the corners. The 2 green pole sleeves are for the longer diagonal poles (with 9 fiberglass segments), and the 1 blue pole sleeve is the for the shorter pole (with 5 fiberglass segments). Tent is made of polyester and steel with large windows and mesh screen.
With that being said, Ozark Trail does a good job of seam-sealing their tents from the factory in most cases, and with a little help, these budget-shelters can keep you dry when unexpected rain hits. Take time to treat the entire ozark trail canopy tent tent with a DWR coating like Nikwax (not just the rainfly) and never leave the house without a tent repair kit in case disaster strikes. Second, Ozark Trail tents are affordable because they use very basic materials.