I was thinking about getting a new tent for a trip, so I popped down to a local shop and saw the prices but they were extravagantly high. A few years ago, I went over to Europe and I had a very cheap, £10-20 tent and it did the job perfectly fine. It was waterproof, had good ventilation and so on, which makes me wonder how exactly companies can charge £100-200 for a one man tent. I just don't see any value there at all. They might be slightly better, yeah, but a tent is a tent, surely? I certainly don't see enough difference between the one I had a few years ago and a high end one now.

I think quite a few camping/survival items are overpriced. Groudsheets, for example. For what they are, there is no way they're worth £25 or whatever you can get charged.

Anyway...rant over! haha

Well, any answer to this is of course subjective !
You don"t really need someone to tell you "you get what you pay for" Do you ?
Sometimes you get something that works great and you payed half price of what you could have payed for something that did not work half as well, sometimes you pay a lot of money for something that is crap.

Better question would be recommendations for specific brands and cost/quality.

In terms of tents there's no point shelling out on a Wild Country Quasar (amazing tent) if your going to a festival, and there's equally no point taking a 20 quid pop-up tent into the Tien Shan for some high-altitude super-alpinism.

Same goes for weight savings - a mountain marathon runner is likely to pay a lot for single-skin goretex tent if it saves him 2 kg.

There is undoubtedly some high-end kit that is totally and utterly pointless..... Why anyone would pay 40 odd quid for a piece of laser-cut anodised aluminium to protect their sidestand switch when cutting the switch off and throwing it in a bin would save weight and money is beyond me!

I think that in general that people feel a big need to have the best / lightest/newest equipment.
And i know that there are Manny people that are happy like a kid with there high end equipment.
So is there a need?? Yes
Do you "really" need it??No
(Almost everything apart from food and water you do not "really" need,but it can make you feel very happy)


And i do see a difference in cheap shit ,and something better made.
But always look if it meets my needs,sometimes normal is good for me,
sometimes a bit more high end.

Saludos.

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My opinion and its only my opinion but
£20 tent probably cheap enough to last the year before a zip gets broken or the crinkly groundsheet wears holes kids borrow it and dont return it.
£180 tent good quality lasts 11 years before you have to replace it cos the groundsheet is not as waterproof as it once was.

I have recently replaced my 14 year old tent that cost £165 back in the day.

A better tent could be more spacious so you would be more likley to use it rather than the B&B option when its raining.

We have friends who bought a Tipi because you can use it in any weather and be comfortable and now never use B&B or hotels.
Tipi very expensive £1k 5 week trip to europe hotels/hostel at £60 per night very expensive tent more than paid for and you still have it for the next 15 years trips.

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Only dead fish go with the flow

I've recently upgraded to a 2011 MSR Hubba Hubba, it cost £225 brand new (including a Petzl Headtorch worth £20). Was it worth? I don't know yet but I am very impressed with it so far. I will be testing it out on a short trip next weekend, along with my large Thermarest Ventra down comforter/duvet.

Why did I pay £200+ over a cheapie? Because I wanted to! Moreover, it packs a lot smaller than even the smallest 2 man cheapie or moderately priced tent I've ever seen or used. It's free standing, it has situp headroom, it has 2 entrances/vestibules, it's green and it has that nice mossie mesh rather than that hot sweaty greenhouse inner that most tents have.

It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but perfection is a hard thing to attain in anything, but it's the best solution I could find to meet all my requirements, necessary or otherwise. Only time will tell if I'm happy with it and whether it was worth the extra money?

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www.AdventureVagabond.com Mongolia & Siberia 2012: Adventure Moto Madness

The makers of high end equipment are also the pioneers
of new products and materials. After a wile the other makers follow and copy those ideas, prices drop and high end ideas become available
for a bigger public,and become a normal standard to people.
And the pioneers invent something else,other follow....... etc etc

So it is very good that there is a big marked for high end equipment.

Haven sad that,i do have a few of those products.(but not everything)
In parts of South America it just is not available.(not easy)
And if available ,its twice the Europe price,really ridiculous.

I do ride a lot with the locals here,and see everyone with 5dollar rain ponchos,30 dollar tents,and a 20 dollar backpack.
And they do fine .
I lowered my standard since i used to live in Holland
and also use a few cheaper solutions now.
Sometimes by choice ,sometimes because it just ain't available.
The good thing about that is that you don't worry about loosing or braking
stuff,just becouse you dont have it,and that is a nice feeling.


Saludos.

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High-end (and thus expensive) gear is not necessary by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly does make life a lot easier sometimes! It depends entirely on the conditions. If you use a tent once a month only in the summer, anything will do. If you use a tent every day for a year, paying for a quality tent will make your life a lot more pleasant. A lot of high-end gear is like this, though there is a lot of over-priced junk available as well.

Also note that you should not underestimate the usefulness of a small lightweight tent if you ever get off pavement. It can make handling the bike a lot easier in difficult conditions.

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Traveling The World Since: 2011
Blog: The Seductive Life (General Travel)

^^^true, same for me. It´s adictive, harder then giving up smoking is NOT going to the next outdoor shop and search for the newst tech gear

I had a look at the hubba hubba too, but in the end the apside space was to small for us and we decidet for a Forum 4.2. A great concept and I hope a great tent (and its green too!), will take it now arround the planet and will see ...

cheers Sascha

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Round the world by bike. www.RTWbyBIKE.com

I must admit to owning a lot of tents, it's a disease!

The tent I use on my big trips (3 -4 weeks) is a Hillerberg Nallo 2 GT. I've had it for 5 years and it's in as good condition as the day I bought it. I have the footprint groundsheet as well as this gives you a floor in the vestibule. But, it's a very expensive bit of kit, currently a new one with a groundsheet is £700!! No-one needs to spend that kind of money on a tent. Take my experience with tipi's...

A few years ago I bought myself a nice new Tentipi, a lightweight 5 man. I'd seen plenty in Norway and Sweden and I wanted one. How cool would that be? I'd been invited into a couple and just loved the whole idea of having all that room and being able to cook inside it.

To cut a long story short Tentipi had a manufacturing issue with the thread the seams were made of and it leaked. I tried another 2, one was even posted to me from Sweden, but they leaked too. Taunton leisure were great and tried to resolve the issue for me but in the end I had my money back and roughed it in my Hillerberg. So my tipi was not to be.

Then this year, a couple of weeks before Ripley I noticed that Argos had a tipi in their sale for £40. Now I like a bargain and thought I'd give it a go. You may have seen it, hard to miss really, the brown one next to all those Serows. I gave it a head start by proofing it with £10 worth of Fabsil, bugger the expense! As those of you that were there know we had a little rain over the 4 days and did it leak? Not one bit!

Currently a Tentipi Zirkon 5 man is £729...

Tentipi... Zirkon 5 light - Zirkon - Tentipi Tents & Accessories - Nordic Outdoor

The Argos special is now reduced to £36!!! Go get one whilst stocks last.

Argos...Buy 4 Man Teepee Tent at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for Limited stock Sports and leisure.

Even if you only use it once a year at Ripley like me it's worth it. It even packs down pretty small, I did bring it to Ripley on a Serow after all.

That Argos teepee tent looks the business for that price , how do they hold up in windy conditions

Hi,

I used my $50 Iglu tent for more then 10 jears wild camping in europa and around africa (but left the two front sticks at home). Only after that time finaly the ziper broak so i got exactly the same to ride around southamerica now.

Transafrika - Riding on a motorbike through africa part 1

I think these days many people do have money but no experience with adventure so they dont know what to look for and get the moast expensiv stuff because they think this will be best but its not.

Travel save, Tobi

In 1995 I bit the bullet and paid £250 for a Eureka Hobbit 2 man tent in Australia. Over the next 12 years I probably spent 12 months in it including a couple of months in the winds of Patagonia and it finally expired with worn out zips, leaking seams and fracturing poles, money well spent.
At the same time I bought a cheap self inflating matt which fell apart in two years, I then did the right thing and bought a Thermarest which I still have. If you use it a lot it pays to buy quality, the other point is in many parts of the world you cannot replace camping equipment so it has to last.

An Inuit mate of mine gave me an igloo last winter.
It only lasted until the sun came out.

The original posters question is really unanswerable.

What you need is equipment that will handle the conditions you experience. The trick here is being able to predict those conditions.

For me I do "summer" camping in Europe. This includes spring and Autumn. I like to be warm so I carry a Coleman Hudson 450 sleeping bag. I have never found it wanting even in icy conditions in the Alpine mountains, frost pockets in North France or snowed in in my car. I have two tents. A four man double skin tent that is very warm and waterproof (£30 Argos) and a cheap £10 dome tent, that keeps out rain including heavy thunderstorms in the Pyrenees, but being single skin is a bit warm in the sun and cool in cold wind. The bag compensates for this. It does not need any pegs to be erected, but works better if they are. Can be moved easily when erect so you can squeeze it into exactly the right position when wild camping or seeking shelter.
Of course in unpredictable conditions either of these tents could fail but the balance of probability is they wont.

I have three stoves, a £10 one that fits on top of a 270/470 cartridge, an Optimus omnifuel and a gas double burner with grill for car camping. I have just completed a 2,000 mile trip with wife in the car to Rhein falls Switzwerland, bike rally in N Germany and back. Despite being in the car and having room, my stove of choice was the £10 single burner. because it is very quick and simple to deploy for a quick cuppa and will simmer properly when heating or cooking food.

In the end it is down to luck and your own perceptions of risk. I have chosen to break down the functions of different pieces of equipment. The tent to provide shelter and keep me dry. The bag to keep me warm so I can sleep. Mt camp bed to keep me off the floor. the stove does its job of heating drinks and cooking.

As I said, making the perfect choice is impossible, often even with hindsight. Same as looking for the perfect bike.

Oh! yup, I went by car as my Enfield is still in bits after the crank failed last year in Poland, but rattling or not it did get me near enough home to get home.
Ok so the Enfield was on that occasion not up to the job but without it I would not have chatted to the German biking couple at the campsite in the Alps, or the hotel manageress in Germany who wanted a small enough bike so she could ride with her husband. Nor the two young Czech lads on a country road who were riding harleys that were older than themselves which they had both lovingly restored. They reminded me of my early biking days back in the early 1960s (1961 to be exact) when I and most of my friends rode bikes as old as we were, many ex WD from the war. Courtesy of "Pride & Clarke".