Like a decent sleeping bag, the right tent is imperative to your camping comfort and can absolutely make or break your family holiday. There’s nothing worse than trying to put up a tent in bone-drenching conditions while your kids sit grumpily in the car (been there!) or waking up with several small elbows, feet and a collapsed canopy in your face (been there, too). There are 6 vents either side of the tent just above ground level for airflow plus three zippered openings for power distribution. One at the rear left hand side adjacent to the bedroom inner at ground level for power access plus another ground level zippered power access into the open area of the porch plus a ceiling level zippered access into the enclosed part of the porch (these latter two are not mentioned on the tent specs) these could be used for running a mains powered lamp into the enclosed part of the porch and for running mains into or out of the tent on the open part of the porch. This will be useful for us when working with astronomy equipment as it will allow us to feed out our 12v cables from the mains supply in the tent. The could be used for other purposes of course. The lounge area has two positions for hanging lights/lanterns with a ring being centred on the poles immediately adjacent to the bedrooms and another ring centrally located to the lounge. This is good news as I often find tents have the lantern hanging point next to a tent wall which restricts the power of the bulb and also forces the use of low power bulbs so you don’t fry any fabric. This is less of a problem now that cold LEDs are so readily available but its still welcome for a central light position to get even spread of illumination in the tent. The main lounge/living area of the tent is a very generously sized and we found it great to have so much space. Although we used it little on the only long trip to date (the weather was a scorching 30’) it will be much appreciated when it rains forcing us indoors.

However, if you’re planning on a week's holiday or longer, you may want to go even larger. Or perhaps you’re planning on a family hiking holiday and want to carry your tent everywhere, in which case a lighter, smaller tent, purely for sleeping may be the right choice. You also need to think about weather conditions, if you’re camping in the summer look for tents with good ventilation and mesh panels to keep out bugs. Early spring and autumn campers will need to prioritise waterproofing and warmth; accessories such as tent carpets can keep things toasty.There are also some Velcro tabs between the centreline of the tent and the electrical access point for taping down any mains cables that need to run to the tents lights.

The tent comprises 5 fibreglass ‘Powerflex ‘poles, flysheet with sewn in groundsheet and a separate groundsheet for the covered element of the porch which is attached using toggles. Pitching was fairly straightforward and took two of us around 60 minutes to set up on both attempts to date. The first was something of a learning experience with a tent of this size and the second attempt we were working with a gusty wind which made pitching a bit awkward. After first pitch we left the bedroom inner installed so we can pitch it in one go. We found that getting it pitched perfect was a bit of a challenge – the enclosed part of the porch always seems to pull the pole down a bit and cause a slight lop-sidedness to the tent. To be fair this may have been caused by somewhat uneven ground. In practice it did not cause any problems.

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The open half of the porch is much larger than you might suppose from pictures with enough space for two adults in sizeable camping chairs to get together under it. Given the extreme conditions we were camping in with phenomenal sunshine and heat we found it did not offer enough protection. The side window in our view should not be there and it should just be blanked off which we will do as an afterthought. We found the sun just streamed through it and made the porch a sun trap rather than a shade – it was so hot it felt as if we were in an oven in the porch. Lesson learnt and we have now bought a tarp to mask off the window and create a larger shaded area. A more normal British summer (ie cloudy and raining or at least merely temperate) would not have caused a problem. We bought the Vango Casa footprint for the tent. It’s a weird thing with one large decent quality footprint for the main tent plus a strange lower quality thing for the front porch areas which seemed extremely badly thought out. It runs the full width of the tent which would create a footprint into the open part of the porch – perfect for funnelling water into the non-sewn in groundsheet area of the front room/enclosed area. Further if this were rolled out to the full width the of then it would provide no openings for some of the tent pegs in the porch area. We just folded it in half and put it under the enclosed part of the porch groundsheet but it seemed a bit of a botch. Its not the end of the world by any means but just very strangely/badly thought out. For the perfect family camping trip, you need a tent that’s easy enough to put up, big enough to sleep everyone, plus store all their belongings comfortably and a quality structure that won’t fail you even in the worst weather conditions. With this in mind, we’ve found the best family tents for the ultimate adventure in nature. Best family tents at a glance: We found the tent roomy enough and would easily accommodate 4-6 adults if need be. Personally I always think tent manufacturers, much like boat builders and airlines over egg the claims on capacity. You could get probably 30 in the Casa at least if you didn’t mind a crush. Vango state 7 which would be believable and would work but it would seem crowded. We like our space so its just for the two of us and its great. With so much space on offer it meant we weren’t elbowing each other all the time and gave us space to stretch out and read a book, make a cup of tea and toast, fiddle with equipment and generally mess about without getting in each others way all the time. As you’d expect for such a huge tent, the Outwell offers plenty of headroom and awesome panorama windows to give you that living-in-nature feeling as well as lots of incredible functionality such as power access points, crafty ventilation and speedy-to-put-up air beams. What size family tent do I need?

Despite the omission of the flyscreen we still found it a useful addition as it provides a nice covered space for cooking which is better than in a conventional open porch as you are completely out of the elements. Due care please people for gas/electrical safety in this kind of environment. It follows a fairly straightforward, peg, pole and clip system to put it up, but details such as reinforced peg points and lightweight alloy poles should mean it will last through many years of summer camping weekends. Zipped mesh entrance door and part mesh inner door – allows ventilation at the same time as keeping bugs outThe lounge does have nice large windows which would give plenty of daylight with curtains that can be toggled at the halfway or fully closed position. These are of a substantial size with a smaller window facing the open area of the porch. The Vango Casa is a billed as a family sized 7 person tent. It has a unique porch area which is half covered and half open and features super large bedrooms with darkened interiors, sewn in bathtub style groundsheet, ‘Powerflex’ fibre poles, 4000mm hydrostatic head and Vangos ‘TBS II’ Tension Band System. The tents total footprint including porch areas comes in at 725 x 450 cm.

No substantial problems were found in pitching although its worth noting its quite a heavy amount of fabric due to its size and most definitely a 2 person pitch which is pretty normal for a tent of this size. When choosing a family tent, there are a few different things to consider. Firstly, how much space you’ll need so that all your clan can all be comfortable. If you have younger children, you may be bringing a travel cot and prefer to share a sleeping space so you can keep an eye on them, whereas older kids may want their own bedroom. The layout of the tent is two darkened sleeping pods set around one middle, full-height living space, with the option to split one of the bedrooms further, so you end up with one large bedroom and two small ones. The bedrooms were great even allowing for them not being as dark as I had hoped – we had the rooms split 70/30 which gave us plenty of bedroom space for camp beds and getting dressed without a squeeze plus a junk/storage room for our hiking gear and storage of equipment boxes and with the addition of the useful front room as a galley it left the lounge area free for lounging, dining, laying out maps etc. If your family is larger, or you’re planning a longer trip and would like some more space, take a look at the Adhara 700 Nightfall Tent too, which has many of the same great features, plus an extra 2-man sleeping pod and extended living area.Many serious camping families have a few different tent options, depending on the type of holiday they are planning. What to look for when choosing a family tent Even after first pitch the tent was pretty much ok – all the doors opened without problems and there was nothing much wrong that a little bit of adjusting later on wouldn’t sort out. Like the rest of the tent it has two large full sized windows for light and these would work well – we had them closed most of the time as it was so hot. The tent has a front door with separate flyscreen and a side door with no flyscreen plus a zippered door into the front part of the enclosed porch. The front door zips around on two sides only and the foot of the door is not zipped – this area is covered by the separate flyscreen door. I would have thought it would have made more sense for the flyscreen to be part of the main door which would give one zip to open rather than two to get in and out of the tent.