Coleman 2-Person Popup Tent

April 4, 2023

A no-nonsense shelter that simplifies the campsite set-up process, the Coleman 2-Person Popup Tent is a budget-friendly choice for summertime campground getaways and music festivals. The tent can be pitched in just a few seconds for maximum convenience and it offers a number of storage pockets to help you stay organized during your adventures.

Contents show

SEE ON AMAZON

Comfort and Space

If you’re looking for a shelter to take with you for weekend campaign getaways, you’ll need a tent that offers a good mix of comfort and functionality. Here’s how the Coleman 2-Person Popup Tent fares when comfort is a priority.

Floor Space

The Coleman 2-Person Popup Tent is a tunnel-shaped tent with a 7’6” length (229 cm) and a 4’5” (135 cm) width. This extended length is helpful for tall adults. However, the relatively short width of this shelter might feel a bit tight for some campers—especially if you plan on storing a large amount of equipment in your tent.

Head/Shoulder Room

Like many tunnel tents, the 2-Person Popup doesn’t offer much by the way of head and shoulder room. That’s because, at its highest, this tent is just 2’11” (89 cm) tall.

For most adults, this center height is tall enough to sit upright in. But you may find that your head brushes against the ceiling of this shelter if you’re sitting toward the side of the tent. This is because this shelter has fairly steep and sloping sides. This peak height certainly isn’t high enough for you to stand up in.

Rooms/Vestibules

This tent was designed to be simple, yet functional, so it has only one room. For two campers, having just one room usually isn’t a problem. But do note that there aren’t any vestibules or screen porches on this tent either.

As a result, the 2-Person Popup tent offers just enough space for 2 adult campers, but only if you plan to store your largest pieces of gear, like your backpack, outside. While there are 2 nifty storage pockets inside the tent to help you organize your equipment, these pockets are best for smaller pieces of gear, like your headlamp.

Breathability and Ventilation

When it comes to ventilation, the 2-Person Popup Tent leaves something to be desired. The tent doesn’t have any built-in vents or mesh windows, which can limit the shelter’s breathability in muggy weather.

However, Coleman designed this shelter with a so-called multi-position rainfly. The idea with this rainfly is that you can roll it back to reveal mesh paneling on the top of the tent when you need ventilation.

While this feature is helpful for ventilating your tent in dry conditions, it doesn’t work well when you need to keep your rainfly pitched for use in foul weather. This means that the 2-Person Popup tent offers decent ventilation abilities on sunny days, but can get a little stuffy and uncomfortable in the rain.

Weather Resistance

For weather resistance, Coleman crafted this shelter to have fully seam-taped floors. These seam-taped floors help stop water from seeping into your sleeping area at night, even if you’re camping on wet ground.

Despite this seam taping, this tent is not designed for use in harsh weather conditions. The tent is made from a relatively thin 68D polyester taffeta fabric that doesn’t have the silicone waterproofing treatment that you might find elsewhere. It also doesn’t have a full-coverage rainfly, which poses some waterproofing concerns in periods of heavy rain.

The tent’s performance in the wind, however, is a different story. Since this shelter has a classic tunnel shape, it can hold up pretty well in windy conditions. The flexible pole frame of this tent is also designed to flex in the wind, so there is a relatively low risk of having a pole snap during a gale.

All this means that the 2-Person Popup Tent is best used in locations where severe weather isn’t normally a concern. Although this tent can hold its own in moderately windy conditions, it doesn’t quite have the waterproofing abilities to keep you dry in a true downpour.

Durability

When it comes to durability, the Coleman 2-Person Popup Tent is a bit of a mixed bag.

As we’ve mentioned, the tent features flexible, pre-assembled poles that are designed to bend without snapping. This is good from a durability perspective as these flexible poles are less likely to break than similarly thick aluminum models.

The downside to this tent, with respect to durability, is the fact that it features the same type of fabric on the floor, walls, and rainfly. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with 68D polyester taffeta fabric (it’s actually a fairly common material), this fabric isn’t quite thick enough for use on the floor of a tent.

As a result, some campers find that they end up with holes in the floor of this tent after just a few adventures. You can combat this by using a groundsheet for your shelter, but it’s something to keep in mind as you shop.

Ease of Use

As an instant tent, the 2-Person Popup Tent is specifically designed with user-friendliness in mind. This tent features Coleman’s proprietary 10-second set up system, which helps you get your tent pitched in no time flat.

The set up procedure for this tent is fairly straightforward: you simply need to remove the tent from its carry case and pop it open. Once the tent is open, you just need to stake it down, at which point you have a fully functioning shelter.

We should note that, although this tent is very easy to set up, it can take some practice to learn how to put it away efficiently. This shelter is designed to fold up into a ring shape (sort of like a larger version of a collapsible frisbee), so you may go through a bit of trial and error to find a packing technique that works for you.

Packed Size and Weight

With a total packed weight of about 5 lbs (2.3 kg), the Coleman 2-Person Popup Tent is by no means an ultralight tent. For example, the uber-popular 2 person Nemo Hornet packs down to just 2 lbs 5 oz (1 kg). But this shelter is substantially lighter than the 2 person Quechua 2 Second Tent, which tips the scales at 10 lbs 6 oz (4.7 kg).

As far as packability goes, this shelter is unique in the industry. It’s designed to fold down into a circular carry case that’s 34” (86 cm) in diameter and 2” (5 cm) thick. That means that this tent is fairly large when packed but that it has a mostly flat shape that makes it easy to stash in your car.

For car camping, the shape and weight of this tent might not be a concern. But many backpackers find that the 2-Person Popup Tent is simply too heavy and too awkwardly shaped to be carried into the mountains.