It also comes with a groundsheet (aka footprint) to protect the tent floor. If the Mineral King 3 is out of stock, or if you’d like a slightly larger tent, we recommend the Marmot Tungsten 4. The Tungsten 4 shares many of the Mineral King 3’s best features, and provides 10 square feet of additional living space as well as excellent weather protection—as long as you set it up properly. Like our top pick, the Tungsten 4 is a sturdy, two-door dome-style tent that can be deployed in about 5 minutes. It uses high-quality materials such as aluminum poles, breathable mesh, and water-resistant polyester fabric, and it comes with a full fly and a footprint. The Tungsten 4’s larger size accounts for the higher price tag (about $40 more), but campers who would like that extra room may find the expense worthwhile.
(Still, we suggest that you buy a groundsheet.) The tent has two small, internal pockets—fewer than on any of our other picks—and a loop at the ceiling center to hang a small, lightweight light. The tent weighs just 16 pounds, less than any other family tent we tested for this guide. The biggest material difference between the Sundome and our other picks is its crunchy, tarp-like polyethylene floor. The other tents in this guide all have bathtub-style tape-seamed polyester floors, which is the standard among high-quality tents. The Sundome’s tarp is clearly a budget material, but for what it was, we found it user-friendly. It’s easy to mop up after wet paws and spills, and it doesn’t hold moisture.
Our only quibble with the Mineral King 3 is that it comes with only six stakes. (Our runner-up pick comes with eight.) Six is enough to secure the tent and fly but not to fully secure the tent’s extra lines in very windy conditions. This shouldn’t be an issue in most situations, but if you’re headed into a particularly windy place or simply want some backup, we suggest picking up four extra tent stakes at your local outdoor shop or online. These inexpensive stakes are comparable to the ones that accompany the Mineral King 3; these slightly more expensive stakes will serve you well in any car-camping terrain.
It also costs more, though, and is less forgiving of a careless set-up. Easy to set up and pack away, the Mineral King 3 is a lightweight, two-door tent with a generous footprint and a sturdy dome shape. Apart from the roof, this Coleman 10-Person Tent has 5 windows and 2 doors, almost all of which are pretty massive, allowing for plenty of ventilation when it’s not raining. It’s fantastic to have a gathering spot where we can all bond, laugh, and create lasting memories together.
If there are no bugs, you can increase ventilation by leaving the hinged door open, and also by unzipping the other door, rolling it up and clipping it to the side right here like this. This Coleman 10-Person Instant Cabin Tent has 2 doors, one at each width of the tent. Each window comes with a small latch to tie the fabric of the windows up, so that it looks neater.
Marmot uses color coding smartly to help you position the tent as well as set it up. Both of the doors zip open to the side that’s color-coded blue, as opposed to zipping open to opposite sides. In other words, one partner—or one partner’s gear—is always going to get a dose of weather when they head out. A full rain cover, two vestibules, and an extra-sturdy pole structure make this the best choice for couples who want to get outside in any weather.
When you wake up, you can open all the window and door mesh panels, and get plenty of ventilation through all these massive mesh panels, so it doesn’t feel too stuffy in the tent during the day. For pros, I found the Coleman 10-Person Instant Tent much easier to set up than regular 10-person tent, taking anywhere between 30 to 90% less time. And also, the hinged D-door is great and super user-friendly (though it still snags if you want to zip it up), but the other door without the fiberglass poles does snag from the outside because of the yellow rain cover. After about 3 hours of light rain, I noticed that no water seeped through the bathtub flooring, and it was still dry, which was great.
On sunny days and clear nights, take off the fly and enjoy the sky through the tent’s clear mesh canopy. Some testers, though, thought the tent was stuffy when the fly was fully closed and the sun was out. Despite having the smallest capacity coleman camping chair 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.
The product line, including its tents, should remain available through the end of 2024. Even so, you should, ideally, stake down each corner securely; in some crowded campgrounds, however, finding a flat spot with soil soft enough coleman cabin tent to do that can be difficult. A tent that requires staking to stand up—especially a larger, six-person tent—is unwieldy, and it’ll be impossible to set up on a hard surface such as blacktop or on raised wooden tent decks.