Sundome is much lower quality than the other options. If you're looking at Coleman, step up to at least the Skydome.
Funny enough I was going to recommend the Basecamp. Ventilation isn't great with the fly on but that's very common with cheap tents. I like wooded campsites anyway where you can angle the mesh portions of the tent into the trees and keep the non-mesh facing the walkway for privacy.
Kelty kinda owns the cheap-but-mostly-quality space. The Discovery Trail 3P is very meshy which helps with ventilation but still a lack of fly vents. If you can stretch the budget or find a good sale, the Kelty Rumpus 4 is a killer deal. Lots of ventilation, vented fly, and a great vestibule that you can keep wide open to help with ventilation.
The Teton looks fine. I like the look of the higher denier fabric and vented fly. Teton has historically been a cheap crap brand but they've really made some improvements in the last few years. I don't love that their "lifetime warranty" explicitly mentions that things like bent poles are considered normal wear.
The marmot is an excellent option if you can get it at a good price and you're genuinely okay with a 2p.
Mine was 10 or 11. He’s in a Kelty Discovery Basecamp 4. It was relatively inexpensive and he can set up and break it down independently! Also big enough for a friend or two when we camp with a bigger group.
I like kelty stuff, my bigger tent is the base camp 4 and it’s held up really well to a lot of water. It doesn’t have a vestibule, which I really wish it did but I can always throw a tarp up to make one. Super easy setup, good for the price. My new backpacking tent is likely to be a kelty, I just can’t beat the price and I’m not an ultralighter or a thru hiker so a 4 and a half pound tent is perfectly fine for me. It’s somewhere between Coleman and rei brand in quality.
The only kelty thing I’ve had some trouble with (and really this isn’t a serious issue) is that my 20 degree down sleeping bag is only comfortable to about 40 and then I can really feel the cold. And I think some of that is due to not storing it properly for the first year I had it and not having a high enough r value pad.
Do you backpack? I have a kelty base camp 4 and it’s held up really really well. I like kelty gear a lot, it’s pretty mid range but good for the price imo
I have two tents (both kelty brand) a two person for solo backpacking/short trips where bad weather isn’t forecast and a 4 person for trips where I have another person in the tent with me or I plan on having to spend more time in the tent. Totally a reasonable move and the bigger tents really aren’t usually much harder to set up unless you have some huge 10 person multi room situation
REI has a kelty pack that comes with a kelty 4 person tent, 2 sleeping pad, and 2 sleeping bags. It is around 300 I think. At least in the US.
I've used it for years and it's a good tent. The sleeping bags are fine for the summer. You may want a nicer sleeping pad, but it will work until you get something nicer.
I love my kelty discovery basecamp. It's dumb easy/quick to set up - two poles and everything is color coded (rain fly yellow straps are the front and clip into the yellow clips). I just used it on a road trip where we set up and broke down every night and it was honestly the easiest part of that situation. We have the 6, it's a good budget quick tent! We comfortably slept 2 adults and 2 kids on air mats with room for bags at the bottom.
How long is a long trip, and what are the concerns of failing? Most tents can last a good long time without issue. Make sure you are thinking about takedown time as well, just because it's fast up doesn't mean it'll be fast down as well.
We did a month last summer plus a bunch of weekends in a Kelty tent, which I could set up and take down on my own in under 5 mins. Two poles, color coded, didn't cost me one zillion dollars, easy to get back into the bag without folding it perfectly.
I think you're overthinking this.
AcingSpades
