Customer Reviews

Coleman Instant 14- by 10- Foot 8- Person Two Room Tent

5 star:		(142)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

We got this tent this spring to replace an OLD Coleman external frame tent that used to leak on us like a seive, even when all we had was a heavy dew. Anyway, this tent has performed like a champ for the camping we did this summer.

First of all, the plusses...and there are plenty:

1) This tent is EASY to set up. The external frame and tent never come apart, so you don't have a chance to lose anything. I have set the tent up on my own, but, frankly, it's easier to set up when you have the help of one other person.

2) The set up goes like this...after you have the tent out of its bag you reverse the bend of the corners of the external fram so the poles extend out and down rather than down and up (the way they are stored). Next, extend the four telescoping poles that go from the center of the tent to the four corners until they snap into position at their maximum extension. After you have done that you extend and vertical poles (I recommend doing the corners first) until they snap locked at their maximum extension. Then do the same for the side poles, and you are done with the basic set up. Lastly, use tent pegs to secure to corners and sides of the tent in place.

3) Our first outing it rained, but we stayed nice and dry (be sure to use a ground cloth or tarp under your tent). Thanks Coleman!

4) There are plently of windows in the tent, and the tent can be divided into two rooms - front and back.

5) The engineering of this tent is such that it is able to give and sway a bit in the wind, and that's nice.

6) The tent is made of good materials.

The minuses...

1) The carry bag that the tent comes in seems a bit too small when you try to put the tent back into it when you break camp, but with some grunting and impolite shoving it finally will go back in. (Why do tent engineers always make the bag always do this!?)

2) This is NOT a back-packing tent...i.e., it's HEAVY. That's OK for us, since we camp in campgrounds where we can drive close to where we set up camp.

3) The metal L-shaped tent pegs are inadequate for high wind conditions...and if the gusts are heavy enough the tent will slip out of these pegs and partially collapse...not what you want to have happen to you and your family at night..which leads me to the part of the review where I tell you how to make this 4-star tent into a 5-star tent.

Here's how to make your 4-star tent a 5-star tent. It's easy. The one significant weakness of this tent is that the tent pegs are not substantial enough to hold up to prolonged exposure to wind (and in Idaho where I live it can get mighty windy). So, to correct this flaw simply repalace the light-weight metal tent pegs with more substantial tent pegs, such as COGHLANS Tent Stakes / Pegs 9" ABS Tent Pegs Md: 9309. or Coghlan's Ltd Tent Pegs 12In Abs 6Pk 9312. A half dozen of these pegs will do the trick, and viola, you have a 5-star tent!

The last time we went camping (last week) I had the impression that I should throw some of our old tent pegs in with our gear, and I'm glad I did! They worked wonders.

I hope this review and suggestion was helpful to you.

So, without the alternative tent pegs, 4-stars.

We just returned from our 1st camping trip with this tent. We usually camp once a year, for 4 nights/5 days, at a campground. Our family consists of my husband & I and our 3 kids, aged 13, 14 & 17. Our must-haves in a tent when we were looking were a room divider and a non D-shaped door (D-shaped are too vulnerable to zipper blow-outs with lots of not so gentle use...). We bought this tent based on those requirements, the dimensions & # accomodated, the ease of set up & reviews.

Our two cents:

PROS
1) this tent definitely is easy to set up. My husband & his mom (I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant) set up the tent straight out of the bag for the 1st time in about 15 minutes. I read the directions but it wasn't even really necessary, it was that simple.

2) take down was just as easy.

3) plenty of room for our family of five. It would be 8 man as long as everyone was very comfortable with each other! It fit our family on 2 queen and 1 twin mattresses with space for our gear and our boys gear. My daughter is too particular & kept her stuff stored in the car! We're going to have to store more gear in the car next year when we add the pack & play though!

4) the room divider was WONDERFUL. My husband didn't think he'd like it (being separated from the kids) but he admitted he liked having our stuff separated from theirs & not having to paw through everyone's things & bedding to get to our own.

5) two doors. One was T shaped, which is exactly what we wanted, and the one the kids used. The other was D-shaped, and not what we wanted, but we put it at our end where we were more conscious of the care needed to operate it without zipper blow-outs.

CONS:
1) there is no rain fly and therefore no ventilation in the ceiling. Heat rises. Even with the walls being almost completely screened & open all day to allow air flow the tent was warm. And humid. I was thankful the temps got down to the 40's & 50's on a couple nights to allow more comfortable sleeping conditions!

2) there are no ties to secure the windows with when they are rolled down to expose the screens. You roll them down and sort of tuck them into themselves at the bottom. It's not quite deep enough for them to stay & they wind up falling out. Some ties would be nice to help them stay in place.

We had great weather and a tarp covering the tent & area around it in the event of rain - so we can't speak to the weather resistance of the tent. We did seal the seams, as one should do with ANY tent anyway. Oh - and get some beefier tent stakes. The ones included are pretty wimpy!

This is a great tent! Do yourself a favor and instead of taking it out of the box and trying to beat the 1 minute time for assembly, read the directions and familerize yourself with the proper way to put it up and take it down. After 1 or 2 times you will be setting up in about a minute.
I am 6'3' so I can easily lift and reach all the moving parts. It is a heavy tent (45lb) and its about 4 feet when in its carry bag. 45lbs may not sound like a lot but when it is stretched 4 feet accross it can feel more like 100 lbs. My wife has a hard time lifting and manuvering it by herself. Keep this in mind if you are short and not very strong. That being said Coleman does clearly state that set up is a 2 person job. I suggest that even carrying it is a 2 person job if you are small.
Taking it down is a slower process but still very easy and I love not having to seperate any parts to do it. However since it is all one piece you will definently want to put a tarp under it to keep the bottom as clean as possible. Remember when I said it is a heavy tent, well rolling it back up is a job in itself and I have used help for this since day one. You will get dirty doing this if the tent is dirty. There is no way around it, you have to man handle this thing to roll it up. Thats not a bad thing (you gotta take the bad with the good) I'm just speaking from my expierence with it and being honest. The bag is very large and you
shouldn't have a problem putting it away.
It is awesome inside. Its huge and I love that so much of it is screened. The room dividers role up real nice and they are permantly attached to the tent so you dont have to keep track of them if you choose not to use them. The windows/walls role in and tuck into the screen when zipped down wich is convienent and easy. Other reviews have stated that the wind can make them unrole and flap around, I have not had this issue.
I have been through 2 good rainy days with this and so far so good. Make sure the windows are zipped all the way up to keep the rain out, if they are even down a little than the rain will flow off the roof and into the crack. If you have little kids they will not be tall enough to zip the windows if it rains so be prepaired to do it yourself. This is a problem when it is hot because it can get very humid and stuffy in the tent without being able to have any air circulation. Camping fans are the solution I have used for this. Also if it is raining and you go in or out of the tent the rain will flow off the roof and in through the door while it is open making a wet spot on your floor. I have found no solution for this. As stated in the description, there is no need for a rainfly on this tent, nor is there one available or neccassary. That also means there is no screening on the top so looking at the stars while laying down is not an option. This is not a problem for me because I have never in my life camped without putting a rainfly over the roof screen "just in case it rains".
I have read other reviews stating that the frame rails have got stuck and they couldn't collapse the tent. I want to comment that. I have had that problem as well but if I twist the stuck pole a little to each side it has loosened it allowing me to collapse it. Once again though I am a big guy and for a smaller person this could definantly be an issue. The poles feel very sturdy to me and I trust the system that Coleman has used but it is inevidable that dust, debri, sand, moisture, ect. are gonna stick to the poles and jam them up a bit. Wiping them down before breaking down the tent may help with this. I also want to add that even with the few stuck poles I have dealt with I am still confident with the system and would not want those comments to take away your trust in this tent, but it is something to conider if you will be lacking man power on your camping trips.
In closing, I love this tent! One night camping trips are know worth the effort becasue there is almost zero setup/takedown time. It is the first and only easy up tent I have used so I cannot comment on what other companies offer in comparison to this. For me the price is right and Coleman is a trusted name. As with every product it has its ups and downs and I tried to be fair and disriptive with both based on my expierence with it.
My suggestions for the next generation of this tent would be -
Utilize the "real door or "D" door as I call it" like many of your newer tents use, that is the number 1 suggestion I have and the greatest progression in tents ever.
Add atleast 1 door on the side, the 2 doors on it now are great but 1 more would elimate having to step over other sleepers to get out when your the person sleeping in the middle of the tent.
It definantly needs more than 2 storage pockets, this is an 8 person tent so there should be 8 storage pockets. A lantern hanger in the middle would be great too.
I would love to see versions of this tent in bright colors, orange being my first choice. Beige and black look great on the outside but from the inside it feels gloomy in my opinion. It just doesn't let the light come through the way brighter tents do.

This tent is exactly what I was looking for. It sets up in less than 5 mins and is roomy as hell. I love being able to open up all the windows for a screen house effect. The tent also packs up pretty good too. The bag supplied is ample and extra straps are supplied. What I don't like about the tent is for the size of the tent I was expecting more storage room to hold things, more pockets and compartments. It also lacks access holes to the outside. I used my tent in the rain and it held up without any leaks. One other dislike I have is the strength of the poles I feel the poles should be a tad bit thicker. I look forward to many years with this tent.

I have taken this tent on four camp trip now. The tent goes up in minutes unlike my other tent that takes a good 30 minutes with at lest 3 people. I love the easy in which it goes up. But there are some major problems with it. Our first trip the tent did great, weather was in the high 80's and sunny. The second trip it rain 7-1/2 inches of rain wind gusts up to 50 miles an hour. The tent clamped, but to be fair so did a lot of other tents. The camp ground looked like a tornado went through it. We dried out put the tent back up discovered the one door zipper broke. With some rigging with duck take we were nice and dry. The next night another storm came the tent flooded, but stayed up. One the side with the broken door. Dried out again the rest of the trip was sunny and dry the tent was fine. When I got home I fixed the zipper, then headed out on another trip weather was sunny and Hot 90's. With all the windows we kept nice and cool, and had no problems. We set off on another trip another freak storm with major winds. It flood once again. I think if Coleman add a pole above the door ways this would stop the flooding, every time you open one of the doors while it is raining the water pours in because of the lack of support. I really like the whole ideal behind the tent and I do believe it could be a great tent with some miner adjustments. I would recommend this to a avid camper but not a beginner. There is too many things that could go wrong with this tent.
I read some of the other reveiws the person that had problems with the poles not going down, you need to make sure the poles are in lined. The poles will not go down if they are not straight. And to the one that had problems getting it back in bag gather all the pole to the center be sure they are all together then fold the tent around the poles as tight as possible. Then take the bag and place bag over one side. Flip tent and bag over you will need two people. Then you should be able to shove the rest of the tent into the bag. This is another reason I like this tent. This tent wont aloud you to fold it up the same way twice. If you do fold your tent up the same way each time, the folds cause weakling of the tent walls.

OK, So here we go.. I've tried to write this once and it failed, so I'm gonna give it one more shot :)

My partner and I purchased the Coleman Instant 14 - 10ft Two room tent a little while back and were very much looking forward to recieving it. We are both seasoned travellers/campers and have been doing both for many years. We were very excited about the idea of an "Instant" tent, one that would be up in a matter of seconds/minutes and minimal fuss. When we recieved our tent we did a test-run under the carport and were really chuffed with what we saw. It's a big, spacious tent, with what appears to be good quality materials (Albeit the floor was quite thin but we could deal with that) and all-together well constructed. We were very much looking forward to taking it away with us the following weekend.

So we did just that. The first night we were away was dry, and although there was condensation on the interior walls of the tent when we woke up in the morning, it wasn't too drastic, so we put it down to the fact that we were quite warm (The tent does do a good job of keeping the heat inside.) It dried out through the early morning so we didn't think much more about it.
That night the rain came. It rained most of the night (From about 9:00pm onwards) and by around 10:30pm/11:00pm when we got back inside to go to bed we found that things were starting to look pretty dire.
We did our best to wipe down the floors etc of the tent before we went to bed, but by around 12:00am we were practically floating. The ceiling of the tent was quite literally raining on us. We were both pretty miserable by this stage but hoped it wouldn't get much worse and tried to get some sleep.
When we woke up, we were horrified to find that our tent resembled more of a blow-up swimming pool then a tent (Which, may I remind you was GUARENTEED to keep us dry.) Our bedding was completely saturated, and I mean saturated, and the walls and roof of the tent were literally dripping with water. We spent the rest of the weekend pretty miserable, and soaking wet.

When we went home we promptly reported the problem to Coleman via the customer service section of their website. We were quite rudely informed by them that this wasn't their problem. We took offence to that considering they manufactured the product AND Guarentee'd it.. So we replied that that didn't seem fair. Once again we were impolitely told it wasn't their problem and if we wanted to do anything about it we would have to take our issues up with Amazon. We responded that this didn't seem particularly reasonable considering, as I mentioned, that Amazon neither manufacture the product OR privde the "WeatherTec Guarantee." and it's ability to keep the weather out. We haven't heard back.

Last weekend after some research we went and found a suitable water-proofing spray that was ok to use on vinyl etc as well as canvas (Alot of them can only be used on canvas surfaces) and proceeded to spray the bejeezus out of the tent to try and ensure that it was waterproof. We are yet to see whether or not this is successful but will find out soon enough.

All in all, we're both pretty disappointed not only in the faulty nature of the tent but in the way Coleman has chosen to handle our enquiries. There is no other word than "rude" to describe thier dealings with us.. They simply handballed us to Amazon which we felt was pretty pathetic considering the situation. As I have mentioned, my partner and I are seasoned campers.. We are smart enough to follow all the usual rules for keeping dry (Nothing up against the tent walls, etc) so the fact that we ended up saturated was purely and simply the fault of the tent, not us. We have since had to spend more of our own money to rectify a problem that was guarenteed not to happen in the first place. Suffice to say what was supposed to be an enjoyable experience became anything but.

I would suggest anyone considering purchasing this tent think twice. If you're not going to deal with any bad weather, then this tent is fantastic (Apart from a few design flaws that have already been mentioned, the main one being that due to the lack of fly the windows can't be left open of a night etc) but should you encounter ANY form of wet weather, be prepared to go swimming.

I used to own an 8-man Coleman tent that was almost as large as this one: Old tent was 14 X 9 whereas this one is 14 X 10. The old tent took me 30-40 minutes to put up by myself and I was tired at the end of it.

The new Coleman Instant tent took me two minutes to put up by myself (I took my time) and when I was done, I just stood there for a few minutes not believing how easy it was! I am almost 6 feet tall and could walk around in the entire tent without ducking. There was plenty of ventilation because of the two large doors and multiple large windows.

The tent material is sturdy and well sealed. The tent poles expanded and locked into place with ease.

The tent came down as easily as it went up. Hardest part was getting it back into the bag it came in but that is something you go through with any tent.

The only thing I will probably do away with is the room divider panel that hangs down in the middle of the tent; I have no desire to break up the spaciousness of this tent!

In closing let me just say that I love camping with all my heart and I would give up every piece of camping gear I've ever owned in order to have this tent!

Bravo, Coleman. Well played, sir!

This was definitely a good buy for us! I selected this tent for our 5 person + dog family and the size was perfect. I also chose this tent because I knew I would need to be able to set it up by myself, with no previous experience. At this typing, on 8/24/10, we've set it up three times and it's easy! I haven't yet set it up alone because the 7yo helps, and I do need another set of hands. You just pull the diagonal poles until they click into place and the thing comes up! It's got a door in the front and another one in the back and windows all around. It gets very humid inside so you need all those windows. Taking it down is also simple, but that is to be expected. What's surprising is that it really does fit back into that little bag!!!

This tent has been up a total of 8 nights and has experienced powerful rain for most of that time. The worse that happened was the humidity formed drops of water that fell in random places... those were NOT leaks. We are new to camping and did not know how to get rid of the humidity; we also kept our tent open past dusk, and dew got in. We won't do that any more.

The other problem I have is one pole gets twisted. The support poles are shaped like a D on the cross-section. They telescope into each other when they collapse. If the sections twist, they won't collapse, and it's frustratingly difficult to twist them back so they fit together again. While this is unsatisfying, this complication would not deter me from buying this tent again.

In summary, if you are new to camping and have no prior experience setting up a tent, this is the tent for you!!!

I'm using my wifes computer my name is Rex.I have been looking for the right tent for many months. I take 12 to 14 people camping at a time so set up and especially take down ease is very important,when providing for that many.I'll need at least 3 more of these instant tents, and look forward to buying them. Allot of bang for the buck. I have not yet waterproofed this tent and was some what worried about the rain. I have yet to go camping, without it raining. I have 5 tents and it was the dryest, with no rainfly,thats really cool. Wind blew hard and I had some fear as to how it would hold up. The tiedowns worked fine.One problem is when you take down the ceiling rods, some seem to stick, what I have so far found out, is if you twist the ceiling rods a little left and right they collaps right away. I don't know about long term how well it will hold up. I'll know next year. Room to walk is great and we actually used 3 twin on one side and they were oversize a little but worked.Any 8 man tent is only a 4 man tent for me with 4 airbeds and room. I can put 5 twins and it actually worked with 2 in the front to walk around.Set up and tear down time is crutial for me. I don't know about the 1 minute thing it seem to take a few to take down and pack:)in closing, this is so far the best tent I have found for a guy like me to have, really do hope they hold up.Last but not least no rain fly, to put on and take down thats a big deal and it's the coolest tent I have, with all the windows available during the day.Sure hope it holds up!

I used this for the first time for a camping trip in Vermont. It took myself and my 14 year niece about two minutes to put up. It was so easy that I thought I missed something. It goes down just as quickly. It is very spacious. My nine month daughter loved crawling around inside. It did rain whilst away and inside stayed dry. Although there were a few spots where leaks occurred. These were around the inside pockets and dividers. I've sealed the seams when we got back for extra protections. It also went back into the bag with ease. An excellent tent.