To wonder why it's so tricky to find a good family tent?

[OhwhyOY]

Looking at reviews for best family tents and every site has a completely different list, whereas for lots of products the best list usually has at least a bit of overlap.

Every one I've thought sounds good based on 'best' lists, even on reliable sites, throws up problems when you look up that specific tent e.g. one brand of very expensive tents apparently doesn't provide spare parts in the event that anything breaks. So you could spend £700-2000 on a tent that becomes unusable because e.g. a pole gets damaged. Anyone got any suggestions on a robust family tent that they really like? 4 person family but would like a good bit of space as planning some lengthy camping holidays.

We’ve gone back to poles from air beam. Partly due to how bulky the air beam ones were but also on a campsite in high winds it was only the air tents which got damaged (ours included).

We have a range of tents for different purposes. Ultimately you just need to work out what your priorities are, for us it’s black out sleeping pods, we have three adults and a dog I n a 6 berth and have loads of space. Living and storage space and a porch. I think it’s an outwell castle pines or something.

Like I said, we have a 16 year old outwell and a 2 year old outwell and both are excellent. No idea about brand going downhill but people love to moan about stuff on geeky forums. And as far as I can see there are loads of spares sites online for outwell?
Second hand tents can be great - go for it! But take a look at some in person to get an idea of what you want.

We have a berghaus 4xl air for two adults and 1 4yo, occasionally my 8yo niece as well. We love it, so much easier to put up and take down. Never had any issues with it at all and was the only tent that didn’t leak when we had torrential rain on a scout camp. You’re best of going to somewhere such as go outdoors (not necessarily buying from their) as they tend to have a number of tents up, that way you can see the size of the tents and look around inside to get an idea before buying

We have an Outwell 6 Airtent. No punctures in 5 summers use. I believe the AirTunes can be swapped out and replaced they become irreparable, but I have seen small repairs done with a bicycle puncture repair kit. The airtubes are so robust I'd imagine that punctures are very rare indeed. They are several layers thick.

We chose it because it had 3 bedrooms, blackout bedrooms, wasn't massive but still big enough for 4 people to hang out in the rain.

We have a berghaus air 6 tent & porch, it’s amazing, takes 10 mins to put up (even quicker with an electric pump) we’ve had it a few years now and it’s been heavily used never had an issues with the air beams. Only downside is it’s very bulky and takes up a lot of boot space.

On one camping trip with really strong winds our was one of the only tents still stood the next morning.

Our other tent is a vango Diablo (which is massive) I’ve had that a fair few years longer than the air beam one! Again fantastic tent a couple of broken poles but easily replaceable.

Go and have a look at some and get a feel for what you’re after.

My scout group uses Vango for cubs and Royal for Scouts (cubs use 5 man tents for 2 nights whereas scouts need a whole patrol of 8-10 in a tent for 10 days at a time).

I have a Vango for 10 years that has been used a lot and fairly abused in that time! I have the kit to replace one pole which cracked on the next outing (or a quiet weekend at home). But the pole cracked 2 trips ago and a bit of duct tape worked grand in the meantime. And I can pitch solo after dark late on the Friday night of cub camp...

I got a Vango Padstow in 2019, to have a canopy for cooking and getting out of wet gear. Great but too big for me (took 7 cubs with oodles of space to spare last camping trip). So I will sell that having just bought the 3 man Vango Harris which also has a canopy but I can pitch solo.

We have an old Outwell - Norfolk Lake? something like that - but it was bought in 2008 so it truly is old. Everything still works on it and it's pretty solid. It's an 8 man tent for the two of us but came in useful during Covid when we had to live in a camper van plus tent for 8 months. Spare part wise, we probably would have just cobbled something up had we needed anything.

I have a Decathlon air tent and it's fantastic. Not too heavy (I can easily cart it around on my own) and very reasonable in price.
https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/4-man-inflatable-tent-air-seconds-4-1/_/R-p-157653?mc=8384152

What spares do you think you need, specific to a particular tent?

Repairing the fabric etc is just standard repair tape/material, and unless the poles are really weird and unique to the tent any old spare set of poles that are more or less the same length will do the job, or just make one yourself to the correct length. Absolutely no need to think that you need to match stuff exactly.