Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent

May 5, 2023

A popular option for summertime adventures, the Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent is a car camping tent that’s ideal for outdoor enthusiasts on a budget. This free-standing shelter features a simple pitching system and plenty of ventilation, making it a nice choice for roadside outdoor getaways.

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Comfort and Space

A man and a woman cook food over a campfire, sitting in camp chairs near the Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent

Tents are your home away from home when you’re in the great outdoors, so it should come as no surprise that interior comfort is important in a camping shelter. Here’s how the Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent performs when comfort is key at the campground.

Floor Space

The Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent has an interior living space that measures 7’ (214 cm) by 5’ (152 cm). This space is more or less large enough to accommodate 2 campers in their sleeping bags or a single queen-sized mattress.

However, this isn’t enough space to fit both you and your larger pieces of camping gear, even though this tent includes a set of interior organizer pockets. So the 2-Person Sundome is best for campers that are okay with storing some bulkier items, like backpacks, outside their tent at night.

Head/Shoulder Room

With a 4’ (122 cm) center height, the 2-Person Sundome isn’t quite tall enough to allow you to stand upright while inside. But this peak height provides more than enough headroom for sitting up while you read a book or prepare for bedtime.

Keep in mind that the Sundome is a dome-shaped tent. This means that the walls of this shelter slope fairly steeply, limiting your headroom if you’re on the side of the tent. However, most campers will still find that this tent provides enough headspace for their needs.

ALSO SEE: Coleman Tents: Full Model Lineup and Reviews

Rooms/Vestibules

Coleman designed the 2-Person Sundome to be a single room shelter. For a 2 person tent, this single room construction is the norm, but it does mean that you’ll have limited privacy during your trip.

Interior of the Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent

The downside to this tent is that it doesn’t have a vestibule or a screen porch. This means that you won’t have access to sheltered gear storage when using this tent. But the 2-Person Sundome does have a small awning that offers limited sun protection on bluebird days.

Breathability and Ventilation

If there’s one area where the Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent really shines, it’s in terms of its ventilation abilities. This tent features a large mesh canopy overhead, which provides ample airflow on muggy days.

When the heat and humidity are particularly oppressive, you can also remove the rainfly from this tent to expose more of the Sundome’s mesh canopy for extra ventilation.

Additionally, this tent features 2 zippered mesh windows on the door and rear wall in addition to an integrated ground vent. The 2-Person Sundome even has a built-in electronic port that you can use to power a fan on very hot days. All of these features combined give this shelter superior breathability in a range of weather conditions.

Weather Resistance

When it comes to weather resistance, the Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent has mixed results.

This tent is built with Coleman’s WeatherTec system, which uses bathtub-style floors, inverted seams, and welded floor corners to keep water out of your shelter in a storm.

The company also claims that this shelter can resist wind speeds of up to 35 mph. However, although the Sundome’s dome shape does provide it with natural weather resistance, we would be dubious of using a tent with fiberglass poles in such harsh conditions.

The key weather resistance concern with this tent is the fact that it doesn’t have a full covera g e rainfly. Even though the 2-Person Sundome is built with polyester fabric that has a 600mm waterproof rating, its lack of a full-coverage rainfly means it doesn’t offer enough protection in severe storms. While this tent might be okay in a drizzle, it’s not enough for use in a deluge.

Durability

The Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent is an average performer with respect to durability.

In the fly and tent walls, this tent features 68D polyester taffeta fabric, which is fairly standard in the industry. Polyester taffeta fabric offers a decent mix of durability and affordability, so it’s a common choice in budget-friendly tents.

For the tent floor, Coleman decided to use 1000D polyethylene. This fabric is impressively durable and abrasion-resistant, though it is much bulkier and heavier than polyester taffeta.

The two main durability concerns in this tent are its large mesh panels and its fiberglass poles.

Mesh is a fantastic fabric when breathability is important because it offers unparalleled airflow, even if it’s not very durable. With tents like the 2-Person Sundome that have large mesh panels on the roof and walls, there’s always a heightened risk of rips and tears in this mesh fabric.

However, mesh panels are common in camping tents, and some extra care when packing and pitching your tent can go a long way toward preventing damage during your adventures.

The fiberglass poles of this shelter also pose a durability concern. While fiberglass is an affordable material, it’s not as rugged as aluminum in high winds. These poles are still okay for use in a tent. But they’re best suited for shelters that are used for occasional short car camping trips rather than for a remote expedition in the mountains.

Ease of Use

The Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent is designed to be an easy-to-use shelter for car camping trips. This tent uses Coleman’s conventional pitch system and most campers find that they can pitch this shelter in 5 to 10 minutes.

To pitch the freestanding 2-Person Sundome, you need to lay the tent flat on the ground and stake it down. Then, you use the tent’s pole sleeves and InstaClip system to quickly attach its 2 symmetrical fiberglass poles.

When the shelter is upright, you can start assembling the rainfly. The rainfly on this tent has its own pole and pole sleeve attachment. Once the rainfly is assembled, you can attach it to the top of the tent and tighten the guylines to complete the tent pitching process.

Overall, the 2-Person Sundome’s assembly system is fairly straightforward. But it is slightly more involved than an instant pitch tent, so it’s best to practice this pitching process a few times before your first trip.

Packed Size and Weight

With a packed weight of 7.2 lbs (3.3 kg), the Coleman Sundome 2-Person Camping Tent is far from a lightweight tent. Although it’s substantially lighter than the similar Quechua 2 Second tent, which weighs 10.4 lbs (4.7 kg), the 2-Person Sundome is still too heavy to take on most backpacking trips. As such, it’s best for roadside camping adventures.

Despite its heavy weight, the 2-Person Sundome is a respectable size when packed. It measures approximately 6 x 6 x 24” (15 x 15 x 61 cm) in its included stuff sack, which is compact enough to take on most car camping trips.