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★★★★★

“The Khyam Quebec Deluxe Tent is a very well designed...”

written by Reaction on 20/06/2009

Good Points
Just to be clear, this is a review of the 2009 model "Khyam Quebec 8 DLX" (as shown on the tent's badge).

1) Steel poles. After suffering snapped fibre glass poles used in our old Vango Diablo 900, it is very reassuring to have steel poles. They are heavy, but are so solid you feel they should take any battering. And there's only three different pole lengths (all clearly colour coded) so sorting them out when pitching is easy.
2) The pole sleeves are made of stronger material than our old Vango, and are quite short (only about 2m long). This makes inserting the curved top sections very easy, and reduces the risk of tearing.
3) Outer-first construction. This makes it much easier to pitch in the rain, since as soon as the outer is up you can get 'indoors' and build the bedrooms from the inside. Or just have a cup of tea and wait for the weather to break!
4) Modular bedroom system consists of:
* One large bedroom, divided into three sections by unzippable 'walls'. The two outermost bedrooms are each big enough for double beds, while the central section is big enough for one person. This means our two children have separate bedrooms at each side, with a thinner 'wardrobe' section (rail included!) between them.
* Two smaller inner bedrooms. When I say 'smaller', these are each big enough for a double bed plus lots of bags. We only take one of these with us, leaving the other at home. This gives us a large extra area of living space in addition to the main central living area. All of the inner tents hang up very quickly from colour-coded attachment points inside the main tent.
5) Double doors on both sides of the tent (i.e. 4 separate doors), so you can choose which side to use. This makes pitching easier, because you don't have to have the tent facing in one particular direction.
6) The fitted bathtub groundsheet has sides that lower at the doors, so you don't constantly trip over the edges as you enter the tent. If there's heavy rain you just fix them in the up-position.
7) Easy to erect compared with a dome tent. The short pole sections are easy to understand and easy to deal with in a tight space.
8) Fits on a Camping & Caravanning Club standard pitch! If you are a member of this highly caravan-centric club, it's quite likely you'd find them grumbling about huge family dome tents like the Vango Diablo 900 (we certainly did!). Well, they reviewed the Quebec 8 DLX and stated that it fits within their official pitch size, so they can't grumble about you violating their fire-break distance or taking up two pitches!

Bad Points
1) The tent is relatively expensive compared with similarly sized tents from other manufacturers, but I feel you get what you pay for.
2) One of the two tent bags is extremely heavy (as delivered) since it includes the pole bag *and* the main tent. We took out the pole bag and keep it separate, so the two main bags are easy to lift.
3) Peg ration is a little bit mean, considering the price. They give you far too many standard pegs, but only four of the extra sturdy V-shaped pegs. This hasn't caused any problems yet, but I think they could have included a few "deluxe" pegs too.
4) Instructions don't use any diagrams! It's just pages of block-capital text to plough through.

General Comments
The Khyam Quebec Deluxe Tent is a very well designed tent, with configurable inner tent arrangement to suit your needs.

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