Best Family Camping Tents "Coleman Elite Montana 8 Person Tent with Hinged Door" 8.8 out of 10. based on 276 ratings
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
Happy With This
By Megan Kaye
This tent is very spacious (at 5'6", I can stand up quite well in it) and has a lot of really nice features. I'm a huge fan of the built-in LED light and the self-rolling windows. The door is nice, but unless purposely closed, the velcro will not catch and it will swing open. I feel it's a tent intended more for warm weather/climates - it doesn't keep heat in very well. Very satisfied with how well it handles wind and rain. Had a storm the first time I used it and it kept everything perfectly dry.
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Nice Family Tent
By John Glisson
We purchased this tent last week, and camped out Friday night. We set up two twin air mattresses side-by-side with our feet facing the middle of the tent (I prefer two twins to a single queen so my rolling over won't bother my wife, and vice versa). Our two boys were in the other side of the tent. The middle was left open for gear. We had TONS of room. It rained quite a bit for over an hour and we stayed completely dry. I treated the tent with waterproofing spray and sealed the seams on the rain fly ahead of time. I also spread a tarp on the ground under the tent. We knew rain was forecasted, so I prepared for it.
Setup was pretty easy. I did it by myself without any real hassle.
The light, which has received a lot of flack on the reviews, worked well for us. The three settings were nice. We have young boys, so the amber night-light was great when they were first going to sleep.
Here's the deal on installing it safely (the instructions are not
detailed enough):
1. There are three notches in the mount that the light MUST line up with. One notch is larger than the other two, which help you to line them up properly. If you force it any other way, it will break. Just watch what you are doing, and it slides right in without any force needed.
2. The contacts in the mount are spring loaded. After sliding the light into the mount properly, reach behind the mount, press the light in gently against the contact, and gently turn to the right until it stops (about a quarter turn). It works perfectly.
The self-rolling windows are great. It makes it really convenient.
The hinged door is easy to get in and out of. But, as others have noted, the velcro didn't line up well. I would have to manually grab the tent and door to line up the velcro. Not a big deal. It's still best to zip it up to keep critters out.
It takes a lot of stakes to get it completely set up. If you know rain is
coming, go ahead and stake out all the guy lines. Otherwise, it leaves areas where rain can pool on the fly. Again, we knew it would rain, so I didn't take that chance. When treating the tent ahead of time, I didn't stake it out at all and noticed this.
Overall - a nice size family tent, for not a lot of money. Treat your gear well and it will return the favor!
26 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
Coleman Tent
By John C. Sorenson
I have used other large tents but always with some problems of leaking or not really designed well for comfort and convenience. However useing our new Coleman Montana tent for the first time, we found it very well designed and constructed for convenience like a new door type of entry, automatic roll screen covers, plus it was fairly easy to set-up. Set-up and tear-down in the future will be even easier and faster now that we have done it once or so, but with any large tent with exterior support poles it does take two people. On the first weekend we woke-up to a pouring rain with no moisture at all in the tent. The small awning over the door is great when raining. This may be the only large tent that actually fits back into the canvas carrying bag without much trouble.
Although there may be many good camping and outdoor products on the market, I feel that you can't go wrong in buying the Coleman brand on any of their camping equipment or products. They've been
around a long time and know how to make quality designed and built products, assureing returning and new customers.