Kelty - Discovery Basecamp 6

I like the Walmart brand Ozark Trail. We have had a smaller tent from them for quite a while (it does leak now but we set up a tarp over it). Our nicer Kelty tent tore and the zipper broke. They’ll fix them for you but I lose the receipt :(  Since you’re new I’d go on the less expensive side first. 

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!

If you can get them, Kelty is a great tent for the dollar

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

I spent the summer with my family of 4 in a Kelty Discovery Element 6 that I got with a big discount (google coupon codes and wait for sales) and really liked it. Big enough for us and gear (and dogs sometimes!) and easy peasy to set up and take down.

I have the discovery element 6 and just took it on a 3 week long camping road trip where we broke down every morning and moved somewhere new. Setup and takedown of the tent was the easiest part of the whole process. All of this said above is spot on - it's user friendly, quick to set up and easy to jam back in the bag without complicated folding. I do agree that the floor is thin, so maybe both the footprint and a tarp inside to protect from digging.

I have the kelty discovery element 6, which looks like it's the same tent as the Far out but without the roll back option for the rainfly, which is sick and which I wish I'd known about when I bought mine! I love the E6, it's roomy and easy to set up and take down. We went on a 3.5 week trip where we moved almost every night this summer so it was CRUCIAL. The fly and corners are color coded so you know what goes where. The bag is also a game changer - I can jam the thing into the bag and zip it without CAREFULLY folding it just so so it'll fit in the bag, which has not been my experience with Coleman.

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.

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.