Kelty - Daydreamer 6P

I have this same tent and love it. Torrential rains this past weekend while we were camping and not one drop of water got it. The vestibule is a great size for shoes, bags or even a color. And we “slept in” til 7 thanks to the blackout material!

I just upgraded an old kelty four man tent to a kelty daydreamer 6. It won't get used until next weekend but when I test set it up in the backyard it was intuitive to set up, a good layout and features, seemed like a good build quality, and the black out feature was more effective than I expected. The old kelty tent has given me no issues in the 200+ nights we have used it so I am hopeful this new tent will be the same.

The tent was great. Easy setup, very dark, materials seemed good. You get a little light bleeding in under the rain fly and through the roof vent, but you could reduce that by cinching the fly down tighter to the ground and closing the vent. It still is dark enough during the day that you would need a flashlight to look for things in a pack inside the tent, even with the vestibule open. My dog and toddler slept in hours last when they normally would because it was nice and dark in the morning as the sun coming up didn't light up the tent. It is annoying that the window on the back of the tent is just a zipped up section of the fly and can't be adjusted from the inside. We left the window closed for the most part and if we wanted to let light in we tied back the vestibule flaps by the door. In that case with rain starting you are only leaning out the tent door to close the vestibule on the fly and you don't actually have to get out of the tent.

Get a blackout tent. I have the kelty daydreamer and my toddler and dog sleep in much later in the morning with that vs waking up at the crack of dawn when the sun lights up the tent. We were also able to put the toddler to sleep at the normal bed time when it was still light outside. I'm curious to see how nap times will go and if the tent stays cool under the summer sun with it closed up to keep it darker inside, but I haven't had to test that yet.

I'm a fan of the Kelty tents. They have held up well for me over the years. If you want your kids to sleep in later in the mornings, the Kelty daydreamer is a black out tent and keeps things very dark so everyone doesn't wake up with the sun.

I just got a kelty daydreamer 6 with black out. Its very nice. However you will need a lantern or flashlight to find things even in daytime. Other than that I do enjoy the blackout material.

Kelty is my go-to “budget” brand but Coleman will work too for beginner stuff. I wouldn’t splurge on Big Agnes until later on. Get cheap basic stuff and then upgrade as you go along.

Kelty Daydreamer. It is made for your exact situation. It comes in a couple different sizes. You can find it at REI or at Kelty online.

I've never had a CORE tent, but Coleman and Kelty have both worked well in the past for car camping. The Coleman "instant cabin" would probably be an easier setup, but not much easier, and at cost of some sturdiness. Coleman Dark Room and Kelty Daydreamer are also neat; they're designed to black out sunlight, so the material is a bit heavier... and yeah, you can sleep in past dawn much more easily.

Both are solid tents. FWIW I have an older model Kelty 6P and it is amazing on rain and wind.

I've had my Kelty for about 12 years now and it has never failed to perform to my highest expectations. I highly recommend them.

We loved our Ozark Trail tent! Set out on a cross country camping trip with a brand new Kelty that we spent a pretty penny on. A week in, a pole broke in the wind and we got SOAKED through the thin floor. Went to a Walmart, picked up an Ozark Trail, and left the Kelty in a dumpster. Never looked back on that decision.

Go with the Kelty version of this same tent instead, better quality and price difference right now isn't much at all with the sales they are running

I used the same Kelty tent for 30 years. Replaced many components in that time. 6 or 7 years ago a pole broke so I emailed Kelty about a replacement. Slow response, no offer of help. They couldn't even tell me the length I should buy. Far cry from my previous experiences with them. Then I found out they had been bought out by exxel outdoors, LLC . So read into this what you want buy it was another buy out where service tanked. exxel has a bunch of other brands they've bought; Kelty, KB Tactical, UD, Sierra Designs, HEX, Slumberjack, Wenzel & SJK. Not sure how service/quality with the other brands has fared. ANNND, I'm also a side sleeper and bought a DeepSleep SOLO MAT SELF-INFLATING CAMPING BED $179.99 to use on my cot. It's 5" thick and has air + foam. Totally love this mat.

Kelty is always a solid bet. Good quality many choices Helleberg tents will last forever. But the price is high. Many other quality suggestions are listed from others too. Good luck and have fun!

Get a Kelty, way higher quality and will keep you dry

Seconding this comment. My first tent was an ozark lasted me almost a decade, upgraded to a nicer Kelty eventually but still have the ozark pop up. Great stuff for the price highly reccomend

Completely disagreeing with this. This is a well known influencer site and list. So, it is merely a sales pitch. Lets check out the list: North Face Stormbreak. 200$ for a polyester tent in 2025! Half of the amazon junk would be more resistant to weather, and weighs half. It is an amazing tent, but only if we are in 2000s. Kelty, is it half covered in mesh, it is horrible in summer and it cannot stand winter. Then there is Hilleberg. Top of the top winter tent. If the list contains a Hilleberg I dont think there would even be a place for MSR in the list. The list then should be dominated by other Hillebergs. Also, where is the Zpacks, or Xmids? Where is mongar, or lanshan? Those are amazing <1 kilo tents .. some of which are on amazon. I agree, Amazon has a lot of junk. But also a lot of very high quality products not paying influencers. There are many better tent makers outside of this list and for many of the items in the list, they are indeed amazing products. However, for many I dont think their brand name justifies their price in 2025 anymore.

Ok let me pitch on the list then: This is an incoherent list: contains tents with different sizes and persons count, so it is creating more confusion than being helpful. Apart from that several of the tents there have well known problems: \- Hilleberg is a winter tent; if you rely on this list and buy it for a summer holiday you will die. \- Elixir does not use seam sealing and instead use a sealing technique mostly seen in cotton fabric tents, and it is known that it leaks. So late autumn it is a dangerous tent. \- North Face Stormbreak is a very old, reliable tent, but uses polyester, so it weighs around 3 kilos. You can easily find a tent with the same specs, much better material for half the price and would weigh around 2 kilos. \- Rei and Nemo tents in the list are all dome tents, which are literally replicas of each other (i would even say knock offs of Big Agnes there with inferior build quality). Many of them are half covered with fabric instead of mesh in their inners, which is terrible for summer. Always go for as much mesh as possible for summer. For early autumn, late spring they are probably good. But definitely master of none. I dont know how they are in a "best" list \- Kelty again is an old reliable tent, but has pole sleeves, so setting it up is a chore. It is covered with fabric again, so not so good for summer, would be good for mountain weather in the summer though. Still, material is outdated and setting it up is much slower than current lines of tents. \- Hillebergs are top of the top, and big agnes clearly earns its place in the list. \- MSR tents there are both very light options, but nothing special there. Personally i would carry 500 grams more instead of paying premium to a tent design that is so common. It is a very good alternative for ultralighters. \- There are other tent types, such as inflatables, such as popup tents, such as summer tents. The list contains none. So, if you are trying to find a tent to buy .. ditch this list and check out other sources. It is incoherent, it misses out a lot of different alternatives and it doesnt factor in criteria such as who? how? where? when? how many people? duration? conditions? It is basically the sunday paper of tent recommendations. A potpourri of cool images.

I just bought a Kelty on sale and it's a remarkably solid tent for the price. They occasionally go up on Sierra (formerly sierra trading post) for steep discounts, so it's worth it to look there as well.

Buy once - cry once Don't skimp on shelter. A good tent (like the big Agnes) will last you a lifetime. Kelty is a decent second option (but usually heavier) and Coleman is more likely to tear or break a pole (I have one for family car camping and it broke a pote...repaired the pole but still swapped for TNF Wawona 4) It only takes one failure to make you wish you'd just spent the extra $. Buy the Big Agnes and move on.

Kelty or Coleman are my recommendations. The Big Agnes tents are certainly nice but but I recommend you go with the cheaper options to make sure you enjoy yourself, then go more expensive later. Kelty and Coleman are budget friendly without being trash for car camping and you can keep it in your closet as a backup if you ever need it again.

Idk why manufacturers keep selling 1 man+some stuff tents as "2 man tents". Even with my vestibule on my Kelty there is barely enough room for me and all my unpacked hiking stuff. I couldn't even share that tent with a dog.

Yeah, I’ve done Shasta with a good 3-season tent and it held up fine — as long as you pitch it well and use proper anchors. A full 4-season feels a bit overkill unless you’re expecting heavy snow or crazy winds. I’ve seen that Kelty model on Ubuy before, and it’s honestly solid enough for trips like this.

I'll start by saying that we camp in the Catskills in a remote area with zero amenities or other campers around. My son started staying in his own tent around age 5 or 6, my aunt had given him an Ozark Trail, probably 2-3 person. His tent was reasonably close to ours, and the dogs slept with him, and I would give him the key fob to my truck, if he were scared or needed us in some way he knew how to use the "panic" button on the remote. He used that tent till the wheels fell off, until I bought him a small Kelty when he was like 17 I think. My daughter started sleeping on her own a little later, probably 7-8, but would switch between our tent and her big brother's for a couple years before that. But same for her, she got the dogs and the key fob and an inexpensive, well reviewed Amazon tent that got replaced in a year or two with a Kelty since since her first tent had gotten damaged, not by her.

Kelty and North Face have the most reps among my son's scout troop. They set up easily and are durable. You can get replacement and repair parts and are comfortable for everything down to below freezing. When things get that low, we tend to move the boys to a canvas tent with a stove.