Coleman 6-Person Instant Cabin Tent is a 3-season tent, sleeping up to 6 people and featuring an integrated rainfly for added protection from the elements.
The Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent is a 10’ X 10’ cabin style tent that’s designed for summer car camping adventures. The entire tent set up is completed in less than two minutes via pre-attached telescoping poles. Large doors allow for easy transitions and maximize airflow throughout the tent.
Contents
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Comfort and Space
Floor Area
The Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent provides an interior space of 10’ (305 cm) by 9’ (274 cm) equating to 90 square feet (8.36sqm) of floor space.
Six grown adults will not fit into this tent, but two adults and two children will fit quite comfortably.
With an Interior Peak Height of 6’2” (189cm) the Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent allows average-sized adults to stand comfortably in the center of the tent.
Head Room
The Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent is a cabin-style tent. Cabin tents are constructed with steep exterior walls. The steep wall construction provides greater “usable” floor space and a roomier feel to the tent. You have a great deal of shoulder room in this tent that you won’t have inside a dome tent. You may position your sleeping bag and air mattress in the corner of the tent to maximize sleeping space. This is quite pleasant when compared to a dome tent where the tent wall may touch your face as you sleep.
Doors and Vestibules
The front and rear D style door heights are spacious. No crawling in or out of the tent required!
This is a single-room tent with no vestibule. The lack of a vestibule will leave you searching for somewhere to cook meals outside your tent on rainy days. A small awning above the front door provides drip protection and sun shade, but isn’t large enough to protect your gear from the rain.
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Gear Storage
You have enough space to store small gear at either the foot or head of your sleeping bag. You’ll definitely want to consider your automobile as the closest mud room if you have a tent full of campers.
Gear lofts are located on three sides of the tent for easy storage of small personal items.
Perhaps you brought a generator to cover your electrical needs? An E-port provides easy access to your electrical extension cord. Fire up the generator, turn on the projector and stream a movie on the tent wall while charging your devices.
Breathability and Ventilation
The Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent provides a great deal of ventilation through zippered No-See-Um Mesh windows on both the front and rear doors, as well as ventilation via the tent side panels’ zippered mesh windows. Having mesh windows on all four sides of the tent allows for bug protection, privacy, and maximum ventilation.
Ventilation Features
A great feature of the Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent is the mesh overhead canopy that allows moisture to be ventilated from the tent. If wet weather is in the forecast you can easily attach the rainfly.
If you’re wishing for maximal privacy you can close the lower mesh widows and leave the overhead mesh canopy open to allow a breeze to pass through the tent.
Weather Resistance
Wind Resistance
Cabin tents are not well suited to high winds and this tent is no exception. The tall vertical walls allow the wind to push strongly on the tent. Too much wind and you may just find yourself looking in the neighboring campsites for your missing tent! Coleman rates all of their tents as being able to withstand 35MPH (56KPH) winds.
If you plan to camp in windy conditions, you should replace the tent OEM stakes with something a bit heartier, like the Neso stakes.
Rain Resistance
The Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent is constructed out of a single layer of 150D weather-resistant coated polyester fabric coated with Polyurethane combined with an anti-wicking thread that repels water.
Protected Inverted Seams are created when the fabric pieces are stitched together and the needle holes are intentionally positioned on the inside of the tent. Plastic tape is applied to the seams to provide additional moisture protection.
Provided the rainfly is deployed this level of rain resistance is adequate for short bursts of summer rain. For longer, extended periods of heavy rain, a waterproof tarp laid across the top of the roof of the tent will supply a hearty moisture barrier.
The rainfly’s truncated nature is a weakness since the rainfly doesn’t cover the windows or doors in order to maximize interior ventilation. This equates to moisture creeping inside the tent through the uncovered openings if there’s a strong horizontal wind blowing rain into the tent.
Durability
The bathtub floor of the Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent is constructed from heavy-duty, 1000-Denier polyethylene. The tent wall and rainfly fabric are made from weather-resistant coated polyester fabric coated with Polyurethane.
Typically seams fail before the waterproofing on the tent body fails. It’s a reasonable expectation to plan to reseal the seams each camping season and apply new waterproofing to the tent fabric every two to three years, depending upon use.
The telescoping poles are quite hearty with a diameter of 16 mm on the main corner poles. The roof poles are 12 mm.
Ease of Use
The simplicity of setup is a key feature of the Skylodge Instant Camping tents.
How to Set Up Coleman Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent:
- The tent contains four pre-attached telescoping poles that are the backbone of the exterior frame.
- Lay the tent flat on the ground. Each pole has been pre-attached to the correct corner of the tent.
- Extend the telescoping poles to predetermined, clickable extensions, and then anchor the tent.
- User field tests indicate casual weekend campers raise this tent within five minutes.
- The rainfly can be easily oriented and set up with the color-coded rainfly and brow pole sleeve.
Packed Size and Weight
The primary concern with instant setup tents is the weight and packed size of the tent itself. This isn’t the tent to carry into the backcountry unless you have a pack mule for transportation. You will need to plan ahead and set room aside in your automobile for this tent. This is a large, heavy piece of gear that will gobble up your home storage shelf real estate.
The Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent tips the scales at a total weight of 26.2 lbs (11.9kg).
The weight of this tent renders it impractical for almost any kind of camping, except car camping. The Eureka Copper Canyon LX 6-Person Tent is very similar to the Skylodge 6-Person Instant Camping tent and its weight is very comparable at 25lbs (11.06 kg).
The packaged size of the tent is 48 x 9sq inches (122 x 23sq cm). This compares to 28 X 9sq inches (71cm X 23 sq cm) of the Eureka Copper Canyon LX 6-Person Tent.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Ease of set up
- Interior space
- Headroom
- Gigantic windows-Enjoy the breeze
- Port for electricity
- Price point
Cons
- Gigantic windows-Potential rain entry
- No vestibule
- Lack of mud room
- Truncated rain fly
- Weight
- Collapsed size
- High Profile
| Comfort and Space | 10 |
| Weather Resistance | 7 |
| Durability | 8 |
| Ease of Setup | 10 |
| Size and Weight | 7 |
