Outwell Montana 6 Review

“We recently spent a VERY wet and windy bank holiday...”

Written on: 16/07/2008 by shastings (1 review written)

Good Points
VERY spacious, sturdy, great for taller campers (6'6+ headroom throughout), well laid out, some thoughtful features, useful side porch for wet weather entry, quality construction, straightforward pitching (despite weight - see below). An excellent family or indulgent camper tent! (We fall into the latter category).

Bad Points
HEAVY - definitely a mans tent and definitely takes two bodies to pitch (although with two it is very straightforward as mentioned above). Tricky to get back into its bag.

General Comments
We recently spent a VERY wet and windy bank holiday weekend on the Welsh boarder in this tent - our second outing with this gear - the first being last September. We'd forgotten some of the little tricks which make pitching a little slicker (and of course we'd lost the instructions since last season), but still the tent went up (all bar the tweaking) in about 25/30 minutes, complete with footprint groundsheet. Pitching is hard work due to the sheer weight of this tent and its poles, however despite my partner being a fairly small girl we manage perfectly well and recovered quickly with the aid of a beer. Our previous tent was a Vango Collarado 600, which, although much smaller and lighter, is considerably more troublesome to pitch in my opinion. The bank holiday weather was predictably dreadful and we took a damned good belting from the wind and rain, however the tent stood completely dry and totally solid throughout despite being pitched tunnel end into the wind (the weaker side of the structure). I've read a handfull of negative reviews (among many dozens of extremely positive ones) complaining of leaks and even a collapse from this tent, which frankly amaze me following our experience! I can only surmise that either poor pitching or a hurricane were to blame.

Overall I'd recommend this tent pretty much unreservedly for family camping (despite the weight issue) and I look forward very much to taking it with us to Brittany for our summer break and to several seasons good service thereafter.