It take 2 people at least to set this screen house up. We bought this screen house at an auction for $5. Great for our buffet line for family camping. Sadly it blew over over in a storm last night breaking two corner pieces and the middle X broke. We are looking for these pieces if anyone wants to sell.
The screen tent came with missing and broken parts. Their solution was for me to pay for replacements out of pocket. The product is garbage and the customer service is worse. I borrowed this screen tent and thought it was a pain to put up…the center hub broke forcing me to duck tape it to keep it together.
This is totaly wrong that a company doesn’t keep parts in stock. I was told to try and return it to the place I purchased it or wait the 4-6 weeks. Well I’m a camper and I intend to use this weekly. After setting it up, it seems to me folks just don’t know how to exercise a little common sense and patience. The overall construction is about what you expect for the price.
It goes up OK, poles have color coded stickers on them. Been through several severe storms while camping with no issues. Keeps sun and bugs at bay which was my main reason for buying it.
The Tungsten 4’s larger size accounts for the higher price tag (about $40 more), but campers who would like that extra room may find the expense worthwhile. A full rain fly with easy-attach color-coded clips covers the ozark trail canopy tent body and adds two large vestibules. Like the Mineral King 3, the Tungsten has aluminum poles that are connected at the top (for lightning-quick pitching) and pre-bent, which increases the dome tent’s headroom.
(Our runner-up pick comes with eight.) Six is enough to secure the tent and fly but not to fully secure the tent’s extra lines in very windy conditions. This shouldn’t be an issue in most situations, but if you’re headed into a particularly windy place or simply want some backup, we suggest picking up four extra tent stakes at your local outdoor ozark trail screen house shop or online. These inexpensive stakes are comparable to the ones that accompany the Mineral King 3; these slightly more expensive stakes will serve you well in any car-camping terrain. 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.
We placed the screen house over a picnic table at the campsite and it did a fairly good job of keeping insects out while we were eating. The biggest material difference between the Sundome and our other picks is its crunchy, tarp-like polyethylene floor. The other tents in this guide all have bathtub-style tape-seamed polyester floors, which is the standard among high-quality tents. The Sundome’s tarp is clearly a budget material, but for what it was, we found it user-friendly.
With nearly 60 square feet of floor space plus two large vestibules, the Tungsten 4 is roomier than our top-pick tent for couples. It also costs more, though, and is less forgiving of a careless set-up. Coleman makes no dedicated footprints for its tents—the idea being that the polyethylene is tough enough ozark trail canopy not to need one. (Still, we suggest that you buy a groundsheet.) The tent has two small, internal pockets—fewer than on any of our other picks—and a loop at the ceiling center to hang a small, lightweight light. The tent weighs just 16 pounds, less than any other family tent we tested for this guide.
The separate fly, which covers the upper half of the tent, uses a third, shorter “brow” pole to form protective peaks over the door and the back window. 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.
The Mineral King 3’s fly attaches intuitively with plastic buckles and has well-placed guy tabs. You can secure the fly to the poles with Velcro ties underneath the fly, so that the extra lines anchored the whole tent, not just the thin protective fabric, but we only needed to do so in very windy conditions. When the fly is fully deployed, the tent has two vestibules, which provide additional gear storage and also help ventilate the tent in inclement weather. And in a stroke of design brilliance, a small loop sewn into the top of the fly makes it possible to roll up one half of the fly, exposing the full mesh canopy while still providing shade and privacy. Our only quibble with the Mineral King 3 is that it comes with only six stakes.