WHY do tent designers still make dumb designs?

Might be dumb designs, or might be my preferences, but these are tent features that I don’t like and others haven’t mentioned.

– Door tie-backs that require tying a knot. Give me a loop and a crossbar (simple, reliable), or maybe a snap. Making me tie and untie reliable knots when speed, dexterity, or even clear thinking are required just doesn’t work.

– Half moon doors. Unzip the door and it either falls in the dirt or into your tent where you must crawl over it, putting snags in the netting or worse. And they invariably let in mosquitos and gnats because you create a giant opening that takes too long to close. J-doors just hang there when open, keeping buzzing bugs mostly out while you dive through and zip it quickly.

– No pole end adjustments on nylon tents that shrink and swell with humidity. I’ve literally spent an hour struggling to get pole tips into grommets in the desert. The same tent after several days of rain sets up looking like a Shar Pei puppy, and flaps like crazy in the wind.

– Zipper flaps designed to snag. I don’t know what the secret sauce is, but some zippers snag the flaps every 6 inches, and some almost never snag.

– No option for factory-sealed seams. I’ve sealed (and re-sealed) a few tents over the years, and still manage to have leaky flys. Please, please, please give us the option for factory-sealed seams, I’d gladly pay extra!

– Designing tents like it’s 1985 and everyone sleeps on 1/4-inch foam pads or 1-inch inflatables. Even Thermarest sells 2.5 inch pads, and I snooze on a 3.5 inch Nemo pad. Really messes with headroom sitting up, and face & foot clearance lying down, even in tents designed for tall people. Not naming any names, but initials like TT come to mind.

– Clown colors. Not seen very often now, but some tent designers insist on garish colors or multi-colored panels. At least make the fly a neutral, outdoor-friendly, LNT color.

— Rex

Tent colours can be a tricky one, I like neutral colours for mild weather walking but much prefer DayGlo/Neon for winter plus lots of retro tape. So easy to miss the tent in a whiteout without that sort of help.

Rex – you nailed it!

Sleeping pad height: ESPECIALLY for lightweight tents, you’d think the Thermarest NeoAir would be THE STANDARD for calculating interior livability.  These days.

Colors:  Definitely for 3-season tents.  Winter/mountaineering tents have different requirements.  Sierra Designs seems to be one of the biggest offenders with their recent switch back to their “classic” color scheme for what seems like their entire line of tents.

Yes – most of the time, when manufacturers show models inside a diagram or photo to demonstrate headroom, they omit the mat. This is pretty deceptive, given how tents are really used these days.

Hall of shame from MLD, Zpacks, Sierra, Hille and TarpTent, for example. But the others are just as bad. No-one seems to be taking the height of the pad into account when they dimension the tent – especially with small mid designs that offer that fun wet fabric-in-face experience…

And that Sierra colour scheme – what are they thinking??

One thing I “hate” about some tents are brand names in big letters on the things—or giant exclamation marks. Eureka is terrible about this as is THE NORTH FACE.  I suppose eventually it’ll be like Nascar where every tent maker will add Jimmy Dean Sausage or Preparation H to the sides of their tents.

And to Geoff’s point about not including pad height (and down bag loft)—it’s a big drawback to many small tents sold nowadays—and especially for several Hilleberg models with sloping end walls.  I include the Staika/Nallo/Nammatj/Allak in this discussion.

The angles of the foot/head ends are severe enough to touch the foot of the sleeping bag MOST CERTAINLY ESPECIALLY when you’re sitting on a 2 or 3 inch pad inside your 10-12 inch lofted down bag.  Such height throws off the angles in a bad way and so every night the footbox of your bag is rubbing up against the angled end wall.  And often this interior end wall is wet with condensation.

John H,

Au contraire! My Osprey EXOS 58 is the most comfortable pack I’ve used. My Thermarest sit pad stores   perfectly behind the trampoline back panel and that panel puts the pack not much further away from my back than thickly padded packs, which are HOT here in the Mojave Desert and much of the southwest like Utah.

TENTS: My favorite tent company, Tarptent, (surprise!) in an effort to keep ounces off their Notch LE and another Dyneema tent, has forsaken fly door zippers. To me this is not a proper way to save weight. A zipper is needed for its closure strength in high winds. I may order a Notch Li this summer and if I do I’ll pay for a zippered door closure and feel it was money well spent.

BUT, to Tarptent’s credit, and re. Walter’s comment above, Tarptent does have animated see-thru drawings of its tents with drawings of average height male campers inside that do include sleeping pad height. Maybe not 3″ Neo-Air heights but at least 2″ thickness. That’s honest marketing.