Serious question, is there a right way to review a tent in the rain without sounding like a complainer?

I was at REI in Boulder last month and this older guy in the camping aisle told me he wouldn't trust any tent review that didn't mention how it handled a full night of steady rain. He said most people only test them in light drizzle or dry conditions. Made me wonder, do you guys think a tent needs to get soaked for a real review, or is that just gatekeeping how we share gear experiences?

3 comments

3 Comments

jessica92112d ago

Oh totally, I had a tent fail on me once because I didn't check the seam tape after a storm and woke up in a puddle. The real thing is, you gotta set up the tent in your backyard or a park and hose it down for like 15 minutes straight, then actually get inside and feel around all the seams, especially where the fly meets the poles. If the tape starts peeling or looks bubbled up, that's a hard pass no matter how dry the first hour was. And another thing, those reviews that just say "held up fine" are useless - I want to know if the zippers got stiff from the water or if the floor had any condensation underneath after a night of rain. Plus, don't forget to check if the stakes held firm in wet ground, because a tent that slides around is just as bad as one that leaks.

wren23012d ago

Don't you need to test it for longer than that? Fifteen minutes of hose water isn't the same as eight hours of steady rain that soaks the ground and the pressure on the tent changes overnight.

ward.anna13d ago

Has anyone actually checked if the tent's seam tape is still intact after a full night of rain? That's the real test, since most failures happen when the tape lifts, not from the fabric itself. A proper review should say if the tape held up, not just if water beaded on the fly.