There is no more stumbling over guide lines with this tent. The tent’s guide lines are reflective and can be seen at night. With these integrated features, the tent folds up into a 46” long bag. It’s not small, but if you are car camping you won’t be carrying it far. This Coleman tent has an integrated rain flap and Weather Tec system technology. The tent stood up to the weather and kept the water out.
This Coleman 10-Person Instant Tent has 5 windows around the tent, excluding the 2 doors (on the widths of the tent). I felt like there weren’t enough pole clips in this tent, and the tent body felt a bit droopy, especially on this side of the tent. For spaciousness, I looked at the peak height, slope of the walls, and base area.
I felt the most comfortable in this tent in the hot summer days, compared to my other 10-person tents. But when it’s raining, the rainfly provides very little rain protection, because it’s quite small (and its main purpose is coleman ice chest to protect only the ceiling mesh). On top of that, the tent body slants outwards a bit, so the water drips onto the window or door mesh directly. Introduced in 2014 Coleman’s Pop up Tent is available in two different sizes.
You could give this tent a knock for its weight, coming in at 18.2 lbs, and a ding for the bag size — packing this one back up did take a little extra smushing, but it wasn’t too bad. The main appeal of the Coleman Instant 6 is detailed in its name. Storing the tent properly is essential for its longevity.
The downside of this design is that the panels must be closed when it is raining. In such situations, this tent will not be a very pleasant place, you do not have mesh on the ceiling as typical for summer tents with a separate fly. Here, on vertical zippers, you have double flaps, plus Velcro tabs which keep them in place.
This season, our family has been doing several weekend camping trips. We will leave right after the kids get out of school and drive to a near by state park or area campground. There have been a few times that we got stuck in traffic and had to finish setting up camp in the dark.
The Instant Tent 4, touted to set up in one minute or less, has heavy-duty walls and hinging poles that snap into place. The coleman screen tent 6 has average dimensions for a 6-person tent, at 10’x9’ (90sqft). The peak height is 6’2”, which will allow most hikers to stand up without needing to crouch.
All of these heavy-duty materials add a great deal to the weight—at nearly 25lb, this is the heaviest tent in our 2021 review. However, this was not a bother to us, as this tent really only needs to be transported from the car to the impact pad, and we’d rather heft a few extra pounds than sacrifice durability. There’s no included footprint with this tent, and we’d recommend purchasing either a 9’x9’ or 10’x10’ footprint, which unfortunately is not offered by Coleman. You can also save quite a bit of money by opting for a tarp instead. These will run you anywhere from $10-20, depending upon your desired level of quality. The Instant Tent 6 is also lacking a couple of other features that would help it compete with several similar tents.
Our main issue with the integrated rainfly is that we lose all ventilation (and views of the outside) when there’s risk of rain, but there is a slight solution to this. For an additional $28, Coleman offers a secondary rainfly accessory made of Polyguard 2X that straps to the top and allows you to have open vents without getting your stuff soaked. Although it’s less than ideal to add a 20% upcharge to unlock this feature, it’s still much easier on your wallet than the majority of the tents in our review.