The E-Z Up Pyramid is our favorite canopy for outdoor sports enthusiasts. From youth football and soccer fields to motocross tracks and cross-country meets, this canopy fits the bill. If you spend much time on the sidelines, we think the E-Z Up is the perfect way to catch some shade while you ozark trail canopy cheer on your athlete or team. At the forefront of features, this canopy has a roller bag with large, wide-set wheels so one person can easily pull this beast across gravel, dirt, or grass. The E-Z Up also has a simple setup and can even be deployed solo, depending on age and strength.
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). 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. An avid hiker, camper, and long-haul road-tripper, Claire Wilcox has slept in (and ozark trail chair occasionally improvised) tents in 11 states. She covers outdoor gear for Wirecutter and worked on the most recent update of this guide, testing couples’ tents and family tents. 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. Yeti has clearly set themselves apart as the biggest player in the cooler space.
At 5.4 pounds, it’s the lightest canopy in our lineup, making it very portable. We like the built-in sidewall pockets, attached floor, and roll-away side drapes. However, the tarp-style floor becomes a little hot in the sun and tends to collect dirt, sand, and water. The Easy Up is a self-contained product with no assembly required, making it easy to set up, take down, and store in your garage, coat closet, or car trunk. It is also quite sturdy and resists wind well if staked down.
It’s worth noting that the Pacific Breeze Easy-Up scored lower due to a very low interior height, but it has extra built-in features like storage pockets, roll-up windows, a built-in floor, and attached sandbags. The partial fly does a great job of keeping rain out of the upper, mesh areas, and cleverly placed vents maintain airflow so it never feels too stuffy. The separate fly, which covers the upper half of the tent, uses a third, shorter “brow” pole to form protective peaks over the door and the back window. In our tests, an experienced camper took only about six minutes on the first try to set up the tent body alone and stake it out. Getting the fly placed and staked properly took about five more minutes.
Its heavy steel frame and massive metal stakes easily hold this shelter steady, even during wind gusts, and glaring sun and rain are also no threat. Adults as tall as 6-foot-3 can move about this tent standing upright. With a 44-square-foot vestibule, and 86 square feet of interior living space, the tent has plenty of room to house beds, cribs, gear, pets, and camping furniture. Zippered doors can enclose the vestibule fully, so it serves as a separate room for the tent, or you can leave one or both open, so the vestibule can act like a porch or mudroom. The main tent body has a giant front door that’s oriented to make entry and exit easy for all the tent’s occupants at night, and a smaller back window that doubles as a second door.
And as with any experienced camper, we all know that tents are not waterproof, even if it says money back guaruntee. That’s why you buy a tarp to put over and a tarp for under. So next time you go camping instead of relying on a Walmart special, use your head. Over a hundred and seventy dollar Ozark Trail tent completely fell apart on me and my daughter. I had to tape the tent together with military issue 100-mile-an-hour tape.
It has two main that thread through sleeves, stretching between the four corners of the tent. Generally, we like clip-on designs better, since those are easier to put together, but in the case of the Base Camp models, the sleeves add extra tension and stability throughout the tent fabric. There are also two poles that ozark trail backpack arch over each doorway and down the sides of the tent to add extra shape and support; these attach to the tent body with clips. The rain fly has an additional tent pole, too, to support the vestibule. Overall, these poles—all of them aluminum—contribute to a particularly sturdy structure, with or without the rain fly.