Short review of tent: Worth the price. Get one if you camp. And if you still can...
Longer review of the tent:
The good: cheap. For the price (and the service!), I have no complaints. Rooftop *is* the way to go. All the bad aspects can be improved with a bit of work and ingenuity.
No need to shake dirt, mud and ants out of the tent and footprint in the morning. Yay!
The open tent is a free sun/rain shield. Allows us to keep a couple of windows open for the dogs in the back (with homemade *real* bug screens).
The bad (at least stuff I haven't seen mentioned):
The bug netting is a joke, and the tent in general is clearly not bug proof, at least by northeast standards. There is a gap between the two halves of the floor bats could fly in. The bats, of course, then hunt the black flies.
The ladder is chintzy, but functional. This also applies to the rest of the hardware. Cheap buckles on cheap strapping attached to cheap rings. Cheap Velcro. Cheap seams.
The instructions (a cheap photocopy) transferred themselves to the outer vinyl cover (they were packed in the same plastic bag). I now have the mirror image of the second page of instructions in the corner of my cover.
The instructions are a joke. Then again, they are not needed.
The cover is fine, but the bungee cords pulled through and had to be rethreaded and the stop knots redone. I used brass rings to prevent the ends from pulling through again.
If you count the time it takes to adjust the ladder, the setup is clearly far more than 30 seconds. So is the takedown and pack-up. Still, no mud, no fuss, you can leave the sleeping "materials" packed up inside. A job easier for two people, unlike any ground tent I have ever owned. By myself, I spent most of my time running around the cruiser.
Many things to scratch your paint are included free of charge, including the cable preventing over-extension of the ladder (hits the corner of the rear door. Putting on the cover without scratching the roof is also not trivial. Tightening the bungees with a factory roof rack is impossible with normal size hands. Factory roof rack removal is on the to-do list.
The pins are a pain; I will have to modify that as well.
The tent slides side to side; the u-bolt solution interferes with the hinge. I suggest you place the u-bolts on the inside, between the tent feet.
The tent smells like a new Yugo. The foam mattresses smell a bit, the plastic floor smells a lot. The windows are nice and large, though and ventilation is awesome.
The ugly (nothing to do with this tent, but roof-top tents in general): with OEM suspension at least, the vehicle (and the tent!) rocks every time you sneeze. When the van's rocking... I'm seriously thinking about hydraulic outriggers. Makes it easy to level the tent as well, heh.
