Massdrop Announces Dan Durston X Mid Tent: 2 People, 2 hiking poles, 28 oz, $199

[Roger Caffin]

Flaps an awful lot for just 15 mph.

Cheers

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

It looks like it could be tensioned quite a bit more, which would reduce that. As would the guylines, as noted.

“1154g here.  Fly, inner, stakes, stake bag, and main bag.”
That’s great. Omitting the stakes (65g) and sacks (11g + 5g) should leave the tent itself around 1074g (vs 1100g spec).

[CARLOS C.]

Yeah it was a poor first pitch. I was hesitant to over tension it and tear something. Next time I will definitely crank her down  a lot more before I even put the poles in.

[Anonymous]

I have the 1P.  Absolutely love it.  Fast , easy pitch.  Lots of room.  I can pitch it tight to the ground or up a few inches.  I can pitch one side tight and one side up.  I pitch the short side to the prevailing wind if necessary.  Its sil-poly, so there’s that.  I’m way over the sil-nylon scene.  I can remove the inner, since it’s a double wall, set the trek poles in the center and sleep two.  I can push the inner over and set my chair in there.  Very user friendly.

It’s a tent.  I sleep in it, mostly.  I hike to be outdoors.

[Anonymous]

Soory.  Had a cool set of beer goggles on.

[JCH]

“Soory.  Had a cool set of beer goggles on.”

I have a pair of those. Work great :)

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah.  My bad for not realizing this thread is about the 2P.  Idiot.  Still, I can’t get over how incredibly user friendly this tent is.

Peace,

[Todd T]

My bad for not realizing this thread is about the 2P.  Idiot.  Still, I can’t get over how incredibly user friendly this tent is.

Seems to me everything you said about your experience with the 1P applies to the 2P as well.  No idiocy detected.

[Gerard Mulford]

First couple impressions:  as with the 1P, it is well constructed, sets up the same way (easy), objectively has a lot of room inside.  Cordage is smaller diameter (…thinking I might proactively upgrade the 4x corner stake loops…).  I think I expected the end vents to be bigger, they are about the same size as on the 1P.  Mesh pockets have a very different configuration than the 1P – mostly I think I’ll like them.

[CARLOS C.]

I love the pockets and the internal d ring. That will be perfect for hanging a line inside. I was worried about not having decent storage coming from a storage of an rei tent but this is almost as good.

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

If I recall correctly, the external cordage (4 corners, peak guylines) should be the same diameter as the 1P but routed through a slightly different tensioners (basically another brand of LineLoc3) as 2.5mm can slip a bit in LineLoc3’s at higher loads. The internal cordage (i.e. what connects the inner to the fly) is smaller diameter to save a few grams.

As noted, the inner pockets are quite different. I really like the ridgeline pocket on the 1P but the 2P has a substantially longer ridgeline which starts to be too long for that style of pocket.  Unless I subdivided it a lot, items with a bit of weight would slide to the center and then hang down a lot. So it has those triangle pockets at the ends of the ridgeline that are hopefully useful for similar items (light, alarm, glasses, phone etc) but also the lower pockets in the sidewalls.

If anything, the end vents are slightly smaller the 1P because the of the shape of the panel they are on. They are similarly deep but not quite as wide. Should still be bigger than most other trekking pole tents and still easy to operate from both inside or outside. Inserting the pole via the vent is slightly harder but still works. I prefer to insert it via the door zipper. The main advantage to the new vent location is that it allows doorway to be a few inches taller, plus the tent itself is 1-2″ taller, so the doorways end up about 3-4″ taller which can be nice for getting in/out. I’m interested to here which vent style people prefer, as they have pros and cons and I’m on the fence myself.

There are quite a few other small tweaks throughout, but mostly unnoticeable stuff.

[Anonymous]

I don’t have a lot of field time with the 1P.  I do like the vent(s) where it is located.  I played with having one vent open and the opposite door open to create a cross breeze of sorts.  I really think that everything is just fine.  Life is easy, don’t make it hard.  Just sayin’

[JCH]

FedEx did in fact deliver today per the original arrival estimate.  It’s been a crazy day so all I could do was unpack it, but I did weigh everything.  Excluding the little ziplock bag the stakes came in –

Stack sack: 2.3 g / 0.08 oz
Stuff sack: 13.2 g / 0.47 oz
Stakes: 66.1 g / 2.33 oz
Tent body: 451.4 g / 15.92 oz
Rainfly: 640.8 g / 22.60 oz
Rainfly + Body: 1092.2 g / 38.5 oz
Total: 1173.8 g / 41.40 oz

My trusty 6.5 year old Duplex + groundsheet + CF panel poles comes in at 786.2 g / 27.7 oz.

Substituting the X Mid Fly + Body is an extra 306 g / 10.8 oz.  I am hoping this yields more trustworthy/durable materials, better storm protection and arguably more sophisticated design all for $400 less than replacing the Duplex.

 

[Anonymous]

.88# difference if my math is correct.  The extra vestibule space will be the bonus feature.

 

[JCH]

0.68 lb increase in my case, but yes I prefer the overall X Mid design over the Duplex.

I had been looking at my almost 7 yo Duplex and thinking that when it fails, it will likely fail catastrophically and with what would I replace it?  The only other tent that appealed to me was the Stratospire Li which is even more expensive. Then along came the X Mid which was just as appealing as either of the other two, more so in some ways, for a fraction of the cost and only a small weight increase.  I just had to jump at the opportunity.

I hope to get some experience with it soon and will share my thoughts.

[Boyan B]

Is there a way to unsubscribe from a thread on BPL?  It seems that once you participate and forget to uncheck the “Notify me” box you are subscribed for life.  Not a reflection on the quality of discussion or product, I just don’t have interest in this particular topic any more, and it is likely to be very active for the upcoming weeks.

[Anonymous]

I’m new here but when I click on the upper right people icon then click on My Account, it appears the lower right will show how to subscribe and unsubscribe. Dunno if this helps.

[Todd T]

The main advantage to the new vent location is that it allows doorway to be a few inches taller, plus the tent itself is 1-2″ taller, so the doorways end up about 3-4″

Bless you!

[CARLOS C.]

Dan

I saw in the drop discussion that the peaks of the 2p are higher than the 1p. That may have been one of my issues with the first pitch. What is your recommended trekking pole height on the 2p for correct tension.

also do you prefer the 4 rectangular end guy outs to be fully extended or contracted during initial setup?

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

The 2P pitches about 1 – 1.5″ taller, so the optimal pole length will tend to be 47 – 47.5″. That does depend on how high the fly is pitched, and normally I wouldn’t measure the poles but rather just insert and extend until you have good tension.

The length of the 4 corner lines affects how high the fly pitches. Short cords is low to the ground (less drafty), longer cords is raised up (more venting). The tent will pitch well with the 4 corner lines at any length as long as you have them relatively consistent (so some corners aren’t higher) and set them to roughly the desired length before pitching. This is a bit tricky to explain, but if you pitch it with short cords and then decide you want long ones, that’ll make the base slack when you lengthen them. You can extend the poles higher to compensate but the shape won’t be quite right but the entire tent needs to get both taller and wider (e.g. staked out in larger rectangle by moving the stakes out 1-2″). If you just length the cords and extend the poles, the shape will be a bit off. So you want to start with the cords set for the type of pitch you want, and then only use the adjusters for tensioning/fine tuning. I recommend pitching it with the cords at about the middle of the adjustment range, so you can go either way a bit as needed. Usually I just go tighter from there to crank it down.

A common pitching problem is that when the poles are extended it takes tension off from around the base of the tent. This is most pronounced if the base isn’t that tight, and then the poles are cranked tall in an attempt to tighten it up. A better way is to snug up the rectangle pretty tight, and then add the poles and extend until they are nicely taut but not crazy tight, and then finish by going back to the four corners and pull them a tighter to compensate for any tension the poles removed.

[JCH]

“Is there a way to unsubscribe from a thread on BPL?”

You should find an “Unsubscribe” link at the top of the thread just above the page links:

[CARLOS C.]

Thanks Dan. That pretty much summarized what I struggled with my first time along with trying to make sense of the lack of tension with 46 inch length.

Next pitch should be much cleaner and taught knowing everything you just outlined.

Here is another huge bonus for me with the Xmid 2P.

[JCH]

“Here is another huge bonus for me with the Xmid 2P.”

Duplex on left, X Mid 2P on right

LOVE the new editor…rotated the photo 180 deg on its own. Reverse the left/right descriptions :(

[J R]

Maybe I missed it, but any photos of the pockets on the 2P X Mid? I’ve read that they are different than the 1P pockets but want to know more. Thx.

[JCH]

“…any photos of the pockets on the 2P X Mid”

Check Carlos C’s post near the bottom of page 21.

[Author]

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