Inflatable tents - yay or nay?

[logfiresspit]

So, there are 5 of us. Weekend campers - 2/3 weekends/year max, I suspect (has been less, as we've been relying on borrowing/renting pitched tents).

Time has come to buy our own.

This seems the most appealing tent so far:

Opinions?? It's a LOT cheaper than other tango air beams, especially given that it's an 8-man. What am I missing?

To be honest, ideally we'd spend half of this, but if this is going to work for us then I'd rather buy once buy right.

We don't need an 8-man tent, and would rather have a smaller one, but do like the vis a vis layout, and DH is super-tall so the sleeping pods need to be a minimum of 220...

Definitely takes longer to strike - but very fast to pitch. It is a huge bag when it's packed away. Love it though. Some of the ones we saw had to have internal straps to make them rigid. We bought our tent from outdoor revolution cos it didn't have this.

The tension band system (ie straps on the beams) isn't meant to be used except when it's windy OP, so the tent you're looking at is fine for that. Except if you plan on camping in exposed windy places?

We bought outwell airbeam last year and love it quick inflation by hand pump [I believe there is now an even quicker pump operated by car] but is is so easy and quick by hand we are not going to bother with another pump. The good thing about outwell is when fully iflated each beam can be individually turned off so if one beam does spring a leak the tent stays up and you can just repair it when you go home. As for striking we have never had any problems with deflate then fold it lie on it to remove any air left then fold again until correct size to go in bag if you plan it there is no problem just keep an eye on the size of the bag and keep folding until it fits in.

We are so glad we got an airbeam no hassle with playing around with poles and if it does rain you can have it inflated in about 5 minutes which does not happen with a tent with poles.

Yes it is more expensive but well worth it.

My Dfil (a caravanner) has spent many an amusing hour watched many people trying to get the air out of their inflatable awnings. His tales convinced us not to get one. We have a Kyham awning for our camper (they also do tents) and have always found it very quick to put up and put down. The pegging out still takes a while but I'm guessing that's the same with airbeam tents. Because the fabric and poles are all attached together it does take up a lot of room and I think it's heavy but not so heavy that I can't move it. DH can put it up on his own if he has to.