What Are Some of the Best Tent Manufacturers?

There are literally hundreds of different tent manufacturers, and trying to list the top-five tent makers is an exercise in futility, unless you have a set of guidelines for what the tents are to be used for, how many people will be sleeping and living in them while camping, and what you want from your tent systems. From mountaineering, hiking and canoeing trips, different types of tents, with different additions and qualities would be needed. With that in mind, what are the best tent brands, for use in a multitude of situations?

Of the tent manufacturers, Woods, Coleman, North Face, Mountain Equipment Co-op and Broad Stone make up five of the better, and better known tent manufacturers, for the family camping genre. From quick, pop-up style assembly tents that can be set up, from opening the tent bag to putting your gear inside the tent, can be completely assembled in under two minutes. Some other tents may need poles inserted into grommets, criss-crossed poles and other forms of setting them up.

There are newer tents on the market that are modular in design, meaning that they can be added to, in order to make a more complex and complete camping system. These are called modular tents, and they have connecting tunnels, smaller tents that can be added to the tents or tunnels and used as sleeping spaces for smaller kids and for dogs, as well as storing clothes, gear and toys.

The best tent brands are those that last the test of time, provide what is expected of them, and survive the eagerness and sometimes carelessness of excited children and dogs. Storage areas, small mud floor vestibules, attaching tunnels and smaller sleeping quarters, as well as other amenities make the modular tent the ideal tent for the growing family. Most manufacturers are starting to jump onto the modular tent system bandwagon.

Most tents require the hammering of tent pegs into place, in order to keep the tent from flying away in a wind storm, when you are not in it. However, there are some tents that rely on their shape and windows to allow the winds to flow over and through the tent, making the wind more of a tent refresher than a tent destroyer. The better a tent is made, the more likely it is that you can be a little on the rough side with them.

Woods makes a very sturdy tent, made with a rugged family in mind. With a long and established reputation for making quality tents, Woods is one of the better manufacturers for tents, as far as connectivity and different styles for different purposes are concerned. Coleman is another tent manufacturer with many different styles of tents for different purposes, and are meant mainly for the public and back woods campgrounds. For mountaineering and hiking, North Face and Mountain Equipment Co-Op are two of the best tent manufacturers. Broad Stone is a maker of fine family tents, but their emphasis is on smaller, more aerodynamically designed tents.

There are tents that are quite inexpensive, from $200 to well over $1,500, but any tents that come in at under the $100 mark should be looked at with trepidation. As well, using the number of people that can sleep inside the tents, as claimed by most tent manufacturers, can be quite disillusioning. A four-person tent is more likely best suited for two people, but an eight-person tent may be well suited for five to six people. Unless you like sleeping touching, or bunched up against all of your sleeping neighbors, that is.

If you are looking for your first tent for a camping trip, the best thing for you to do would be to go to stores, campgrounds and sporting goods stores, and see which tents offer the qualities that you are looking for, at a price that you can afford. For your first tent, if you are not even sure that you and your family will like camping, then an inexpensive tent, or two if you have kids would be your best bet. Even Woods offers some cheap tents in the starter price range, which is under $100.

Camp smart. Camp informed.