Product

Coleman Instant Tent 8

Promise

A two-room, eight-man tent that you can assemble instantly in under two minutes

Performance

We didn’t believe it either. WideWorld already had one of French manufacturer Quechua’s fantastic two-second tents, which we love and still use regularly. But an eight-man tent, made by outdoor gurus Coleman, big enough to stand up in, and that erects in about a minute? No way! Prove it, we said, and that’s exactly what they did.

First thing to note is the size of this tent. No matter how clever the designers are, it’s tough making an eight-man behemoth light enough to pop on your back in a small, compact rucksack. Eight-man tents with enough room for everyone to stand up in are inevitably going to use a lot of material. And so the Coleman Instant Tent 8 isn’t light. But that’s not the point. This tent is designed to stick in the back of your car, which you can then drive to a camp site, pop up in 60 seconds or less, and then spend the rest of the time having fun, hiking, eating and watching the sunset while those around you are still fumbling for tent pegs in the dark.

It has several flaps that you can tie down to let in oodles of sunlight through the mosquito nets, should you want to watch the sun rise. Or zip ‘em shut if you’d rather sleep in. There’s so much room in this baby that you can use one side for your blow-up double bed, and the other for your lawn chairs and bags.

Now we’ve got the “you need to buy one of these now” command out of the way, here’s how this nifty bit of kit works: there’s only one skin (no fly sheet to worry about), and it already comes attached to cleverly designed telescopic poles. Just pull the tent out of the huge duffel bag it comes in, lay it out on the grass, extend each pole until they click into position, then peg the whole thing down. Hey presto, you’re done in 60 seconds or less.

We worried slightly that putting it down wouldn’t be as easy, but it actually proved to be an even quicker process.

Verdict

We can’t speak highly enough of Coleman’s 8-man wonder tent. If you want something lightweight and back-packable, look elsewhere (Coleman has a HUGE variety of tents in all shapes and sizes if you want to stick with this manufacturer, which makes decent tents at an incredibly reasonable price) but if you’re looking for a tent with oodles of room that you can stick in the car for family camping trips (or if you’re off camping on your own but want to sleep in a mansion), this is incredibly priced and if WideWorld had four thumbs it would get a glowing four thumbs up.