How to Pick a Backpacking Tent (Without Falling for Marketing)

Three of us on the team — Jake, Mia, Owen — have together pitched something like 1,200 nights worth of backpacking tents. Here's the cheat sheet we wish someone had given us in year one.

The five specs that actually matter

1. Trail weight, not packed weight. Packed weight includes the stuff sack, stakes, guylines, instruction card. Trail weight is what you actually carry. Some brands are cute about this.

2. Floor area divided by occupancy. A “2P” tent at 28 sq ft is genuinely small for two adults plus packs. Aim for 30+ if you want sleep that doesn't involve elbows.

3. Vestibule volume. Where do wet boots and packs go in a rainstorm? Tent reviews underweight this and you'll feel it the first time you camp in three days of rain.

4. Pole hub design. The cheap fiberglass pole sets are the first thing that breaks. Aluminum, single-hub, color-coded clips.

5. Re-orderability of stakes. Y-stakes are great but if you lose three of them in granite scree, can you buy replacements? MSR, Big Agnes, NEMO — yes. Some boutique brands — no.

What we ignore

“Three-season” vs “3.5-season” — a marketing term, not a meaningful spec.

“Bombproof” — describes how a tent survives marketing photos, not your weekend.

Color of the rainfly. (Red is more visible in photos. That's the whole story.)

Patent-pending pole geometries. We've never seen one outperform a Hubba.

Where to start if you're new

The MSR Hubba Hubba NX has been our default loaner for the last six years. It's not the lightest. It is the easiest tent on the market to pitch in the dark in the wind, which is the test that matters at the end of a 22-mile day.