Cloud Peak 2

The Chinese tents you find on Amazon and other online marketplaces, like Naturehike, are generally copies of tents made by western companies. For example, the Cloud Peak is a copy of the Hilleberg Allak, which _is_ a four season tent. Broadly speaking, these companies in China aren’t actual outdoor companies designing their own gear. They’re simply manufacturing sites that produce copies; the problem with this is that while the gear does superficially resemble the original, it often lacks the strength and durability of that original. This is because the copies are being made by people who don’t necessarily always understand the features of the original. This isn’t just about tents either. For example, I’m a kayaker and in winter we wear garments called drysuits, which are basically fully waterproof suits that you seal yourself into, to protect yourself from the cold water in case of immersion. They’re very expensive because they’re highly specialised; every seam requires very strong taping, the fabrics themselves need to be extremely durable, and they need high quality latex gaskets at the wrists and neck to keep water out. My own drysuit cost £1900, as an example. But because they’re such a significant investment, a lot of kayakers have started buying ones of AliExpress and other Chinese marketplaces, and once again we see this exact same issue where gear does sort of look like a western manufacturer’s suit, but when you start looking inside, you find all kinds of problems. And this is because they’re being manufactured by companies that don’t actually understand how drysuits are used. I watched a video on YouTube of the owner of a Canadian kayaking gear brand compare one of their drysuits to a Chinese copy and it clearly showed how the intention of certain features was lost on the copy. Furthermore, all the taping peeled right off and the suit failed a pressure test. Basically, that suit would not keep a paddler safe. It _looked_ the part but didn’t function correctly at all. I’m not saying all Chinese gear is bad but rather illustrating, in a somewhat roundabout way, why a lot of it uses certain terminology that doesn’t actually apply to it. It’s because the companies producing the gear don’t always understand the features that give the gear specific functionality. A clear example of this is the constant labelling of tents as four season when they aren’t. The primary feature of a four season tent is the ability to handle snow loading. This is achieved with thicker poles (usually at least 9mm), and stronger fabrics. They should also have fly sheets that extend to the ground to prevent spindrift getting in. The way the tents are sewn also makes them stronger; eg they have flat felled seams. These features are generally not present in the many so-called four season Chinese tents being sold on Amazon. I should mention that despite these many Chinese clone factories, there are one of two companies there that _do_ actually design their own gear, like 3FUL. Although their Lanshan is, broadly, a copy of a Hilleberg Anaris, they’ve done their own kinda thing with it. Flextail is another company that do actually design their own interesting gear. As for the hype you see about Naturehike and other cheap tents - they’re cheap, they get people out and about. And that’s about it. They’re better than the crap you get from Lidl or Argos. Without wanting to sound elitist (although this will sound that way), there’s definitely a phenomenon of people who have only ever owned very budget gear insisting that it’s amazing and just as good as more expensive gear. Which is a comparison you can’t really make if you’ve not actually used a full spectrum of gear, but it doesn’t stop them. Once again, we see this in all gear markets, not just camping - I see it in the kayaking world all the time too. And the internet has made it very easy for hype to spread. Is a Naturehike tent a worthwhile purchase? Yeah, if you’re starting out and don’t want to invest much up front, absolutely. It’ll get you out on some camps, keep you dry, and allow you to spend time in some cool places. Is it as good as a Hilleberg? Absolutely not. Do you need a Hilleberg? Not necessarily.

The Anaris model is relatively new but is based on the Keb, a trekking pole ridge tent which Hilleberg was already making in the 70s 🙂 The Lanshan took the design and made it ultralight (as indeed, ultralight is something Hilleberg simply don’t do). And yes, lots of YouTubers hype up budget gear. I see I’m already being downvoted (and no doubt this comment will be downvoted too), and I knew I would be, by people who don’t like to hear even a totally reasonable discussion about the spectrum of gear out there (my post above has no hot takes, simply an overview of why the term four season is erroneously used on so many tents), which actually brings me to another thing I didn’t mention in my post: the strange phenomenon of gear allegiance. There’s definitely a tendency amongst some people, especially young men, to develop an inexplicable loyalty to brands of gear they own and use. And this applies across the spectrum - from budget all the way to high end (some of the people on the Hilleberg FB group are downright cult-like). And just as they will go and declare the gear to be “amazing” and claim it “held up to BRUTAL conditions” (always without evidence), they’ll also react very negatively to any perceived criticism of their chosen brand’s gear. YouTube has amplified hype to the point that it can be difficult to really discern facts from opinions, the latter of which are often not especially well-informed. For what it’s worth, I’ve been camping for 35 years, on three different continents (mostly campsites but in the past few years almost entirely wild camping), and have owned a full spectrum of everything. I’ve literally lost count of the number of tents, sleeping mats and sleeping bags I’ve owned (I got my own first tent when I was about 10!). As such, I feel I have a reasonably informed view of things. A lot of people commenting online about gear, especially recommending budget gear and claiming it's the best thing out there, have simply never used anything else, so they actually have no real basis for comparison. These are the people who will downvote this post and the one above without actually offering any kind of meaningful contribution to the actual discussion. This sort of weird loyalty to gear definitely skews things like online reviews.