In other words, one partner—or one partner’s gear—is always going to get a dose of weather when they head out. To test the tents, we first opened them, splayed out their parts, and tried to put them together without consulting the coleman cooler 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.
When storing your canopy tent correctly, choose an area that’s dry and cool and out of the direct sunlight to prevent dry rotting and sun wash. Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions.
During our testing, our Base Camp shrugged off both a rainstorm and a desert windstorm as if they were nothing. Despite losing some headroom in comparison with the Kelty Wireless 6 and The North Face Wawona 6, both of which measure six-foot-four in height, the Base Camp 6 offers a substantial six-foot-two. The Wawona 6 is more complex to set up than a classic dome-style tent like the Wireless 6, but not by much. We recommend doing it with two people, but one person can manage in about 15 minutes.
That mesh also keeps the tent feeling airy and cool in hot climates. 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.
Others, like the Sun Ninja, are lighter because they employ less expensive materials. So it is important to distinguish that not all lightweight and portable products are also high quality. The Eureka Tagalong scored a little lower coleman canopy but still holds its own in terms of craftsmanship. It is a lighter-weight product, which inherently involves thinner, less durable materials. This metric pertains to a shelter’s ability to offer protection from sun, wind, and rain.