Tent footprints are available to buy separately from tents at outdoor retailers. They're essentially an extra groundsheet that you can pitch before your tent, with the aim of pitching your tent on top of it.

A tent with more than one door can help with airflow, assisting with ventilation and also gives you more flexibility to enter and leave the tent through the most convenient doorway. 8) Number and size of windows However, for actual camping, this is a couple’s tent. They claim it can fit two queen-size beds, but there isn’t an inch of space left. A well-ventilated tent will make for a more comfortable, condensation-free camping experience, and well-positioned vent panels and doors with fly screens allow for the free flow of air while keeping bugs out of your sleeping space. 4) Indoor space and flexible sleeping compartments The only thing worse than spending the night in a leaky tent is spending the night in a leaky tent with young children and/or a family pet. If you plan on camping rain-or-shine, pay close attention to both the design and water worthiness of your rainfly. We prefer tents with full-length rainflys that stretch all the way over the tent and stake in close to the ground. They give tiny details regarding this tent, which is highly disappointing. But the poles are fibreglass; you wouldn’t expect any other material for the price. This heavy yet highly resilient material requires some care to avoid damage. One additional pole goes above the door and has a small brim.

Get Out With The Kids!

The Pronto is the most compact camping tent Zempire offers, but with roughly 84 square feet of floor area, it’s no slouch in the livability department either. The Pronto 5 even has its own attached “gull-wing” style awning, which makes for a big shady hang-out spot when the weather is good, but also converts into a weather-protected space with doors on each side when closed. As far as cons go, Mountainsmith shelters look, feel, and perform like premium products, and they’re priced accordingly. That means the Conifer 5 is a little on the pricey side, but we wouldn’t consider it a splurge either. Other than that our only other real complaint is that the canopy uses a three pole clip-in/sleeve hybrid design, which takes a little longer to set up than a clip-in only design, especially if you’re using the rainfly since it uses a fourth pole to maximize vestibule space. Those are minor complaints for an otherwise exceptionally livable tent with plenty of space for two adults and three children to sleep comfortably rain-or-shine. Pros: Climate-wise: The tent is designed for warm-weather camping in a quiet setting. There are large mesh sections, which is fine when you need a lot of air circulation but could be better when it’s cold outside. The dome shape is aerodynamic, and this tent should perform well in theory, but such an awning would not perform well in high winds. There are also tents with inflatable poles. You'll need to pump up each pole individually, so it can take a bit of effort, but you can avoid trying to feed the poles through the tent canvas. Not all tents have indoor communal spaces that can house all the campers if the weather turns, and even those that do aren't always large enough for everyone to be comfortable.

You'll want to ensure your tent footprint is the same size as the tent you're pitching – several manufacturers sell footprints specifically to fit certain tent models.Up next on our list is the Coleman Waterfall 5 Deluxe, one of the most well-rounded and surprisingly feature-rich tents in our roundup. Once the tents are up, we closely inspect the interior of each one and rate them on how likely campers are to have a comfortable and enjoyable experience that meets their needs. Combines the convenience of an inflatable airframe design with high-quality materials. Surprisingly affordable for a Zempire shelter. See Review

It's very common for manufacturers to be generous about the number of people they say can fit inside their tents. The number they give will be technically true, but it probably won't account for the space needed for campers' belongings, or the space people need for a comfortable night's sleep. They claim to provide an easy way for you to plan where you're going to place your tent without having to pitch it fully, and provide an extra layer of waterproofing and insulation from the ground below.

An incredibly rugged tent with more features and interior space than you can imagine. Unique airframe design is sturdy and surprisingly fast to pitch. See Review Tents with rigid poles made of stainless steel or aluminium are for building a rigid frame that will keep your tent sturdy in the wind. They can be heavier and more cumbersome to pitch, though. Most tents have thin, collapsible poles made from fibreglass. They often fold up into a compact size and are connected by an elastic cord. They're usually flexible and will need to be bent to fit the shape of the tent canvas during pitching. A high-quality traditional dome tent with tons of interior space and a great rainfly. A feature-rich tent from a brand you can trust at a fair price. See Review

And, of course, if you’re just getting started learning about 5 person tents, we’ve also included a handy buyer’s guide in the list below to help explain the pros and cons of these unique shelters. In the guide we break down everything that makes a tent worth buying from the poles to the floor plan.

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We inspect the interiors of the tents during and after testing to see how each fares against the elements. Some tents manage to stay firm, but others blow over and even have puddles in the sleeping compartments.