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. Marmot uses color coding smartly to help you position the tent as well as set it up.
There are hooks and loops on the four legs for this purpose. This tent has a base size of 7.8 x 3.93 ft so it offers an area of around 31 ft² (2.9 m²). So you realize this is more than in most of the privacy tents here in the list. The peak height is 6.56 ft (200 cm), so I find this a bit low for a shower. You have a frame that is a combination of steel and fiberglass.
The windows are double-layer with mesh and with zippered panels. This is a very useful popular privacy shelter that has been around for a number of years. The word Instant in the name suggests that the frame is pre-attached to the tent. The pictures below show the most essential steps in the setup. Note that you have two external doors, and this sets it apart from its competitors. You have great features here, they include two rooms, two windows, several wall pouches, and also a shower bladder is included.
With a deep, narrow valley surrounded by a striking and rugged landscape, Roaring River State Park is one of Missouri’s most popular state parks. The North Face Wawona 4, which we used to list in our Other Good Tents section, has been redesigned; it’s now made of polyester, not nylon. Weighing just 7 pounds, the tent is light enough to double for backpacking trips, especially if you divide the pieces among hikers. It is a good idea to put some palette under the shower floor to raise it off the ground and avoid mud created when you take a shower. You can use one of the rooms as a shower room and the other is up to you.
An avid hiker, camper, and long-haul road-tripper, Claire Wilcox has slept in (and 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. A full rain cover, two vestibules, and an extra-sturdy pole structure make this the best choice for families who want to get outside in any weather. The structure is freestanding, but you have 10 steel stakes included for the tent and for the fly, together with all necessary guylines. So do not miss fixing the shelter to the ground, it is tall and better avoid trouble in the case of a sudden wind.
The Wireless 6 lacks some of the premium materials found in pricier tents, but it features solid workmanship and should provide dependable, comfortable shelter in most three-season camping situations. Some campers might find the Wawona 6’s footprint unwieldy in smaller campsites, or they might simply prefer a tent with a more straightforward design. If you want a six-person tent made with high-quality materials but a traditional profile, we recommend the similarly priced Big Agnes Spicer Peak 6, or Nemo’s Aurora Highrise 6.
We found that company representatives are reluctant to estimate the lifespan of their tents. When pushed, most of the reps we talked to estimated five to 10 years, though the actual lifespan will vary widely depending on care and frequency of use (for more advice, read REI’s excellent tips). In conducting research for this guide, we heard multiple tales of careful campers who had been using the same tent for 15 years or more.
As with most six-person tents, the Wawona 6’s footprint is sold separately. Like our couples’ tent pick, the Wireless 6 is a dome-shaped tent with a tried and true two-pole design. It has an interior footprint of 87 square feet, which sleeps four adults on single pads, or two adults and two or three children, and can accommodate a crib. That wasn’t the tallest we encountered—the ozark trail instant cabin Eureka Copper Canyon LX 6 and the Alps Mountaineering Camp Creek 6 each topped out at 7 feet—but it’s enough space for most adults to maneuver standing up. The tent comes with a full rain fly that adds two vestibules for storage (each 14 square feet), totaling 115 square feet of livable space—which is fairly generous yet still practical for most campsites.
As mentioned, this is also an instant setup structure with spring poles sewn-in into the tent, so you just throw it in the air and it will deploy itself. There are one external door and one door between the two rooms. This is an instant-type structure so you have telescopic poles, this all is very easy to use.
When we awoke, we could roll back one part of the vestibule, make coffee, and watch the sky lighten even though it was still raining. To test the tents, we first opened them, splayed out their parts, and tried to put them together without consulting the 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.
