The main area is huge, giving you and the family plenty of room to enjoy each other’s company. Ease of setup (how easy it is to pitch and take down a tent) is pretty much always a high mark for Ozark Trail tents. These tents are built for first-time and/or fairweather campers, so Ozark Trail puts a lot of effort into making them easy to use.
The door features rollback flaps and the coverage of an awning, though some users complain it would be better with a second door (for rear entry/exit). Thanks to the dual ceiling vents and ground vent, you’ll stay cool indoors no matter how muggy the weather. And, because of the no-see-um mesh covering everything, bugs will never have a chance to find their way inside your tent.
It can be described as an semi-instant system because the roof/fly is with a pre-attached frame, and the remaining elements are then attached to it separately. Trailspace’s community of gear reviewers has field-tested Ozark Trail Camping Chairs and rated the top tents and shelters. The tent is open at the top with a weather rain fly that fits over the dome. The fly is so small it allows rain to blow up under and then runs into the tent.
One of them has an additional y-shaped piece with a rubber stopper on the top. In less than favorable conditions, the Ozark Trail 7 Person Teepee struggles to keep up, particularly when there’s a crowd. The recent addition of a rear awning has done a lot to mitigate the stuffiness, but still, it can feel pretty hot and humid when you have to batten down the hatches and have the entire gang with you. My best advice to deal with this is to try and set the tent up with the awning facing the wind. This will allow for a little more intentional airflow and help keep you dry from both the rain and accumulated internal moisture.
To clear the air immediately, the 7 Person Teepee is not waterproof. The seams aren’t sealed, and the untreated fabric that makes up the body is prone to soaking through after prolonged exposure. The phrasing that Ozark Trail uses is “water-resistant.” In my experience with the tent, that means in any serious rain, expect to see some moisture leaking through at least the seams. The bottom seam gives water a place to pool up and eventually leak into the tent. That’s why I like Ozark Trail – their tents provide strong protection against wind, rain and sun across the board.
The design change I want to comment on concerns the little “laundry room” that protrudes out the back of the tent. The short pole supplied for that protrusion splintered in two places and poked about four small holes in the black fabric of the laundry bubble. Better instructions on how it should be installed would have prevented the splintering, but I would rather have seen the “laundry room” not be an outside protrusion from the back of the tent. Rather it should have been a large pocket on the inside of the tent that requires no pole at all.
Ozark trail makes just about everything you could need for getting outside. They have an affordable option for everything from knives and camping cookware to outboard motors. Mostly, Ozark Trail is known for their hiking boots and their tents. Take each of the poles into the tent with you and start with the one with the Y-shaped piece on top. Insert the rubber stoppered piece into the tent’s apex and the “bottom” of the pole into the reinforced corner on the tent’s floor. At this point, you should take the other pole and insert it into the slot on the “Y” shaped piece, then place the bottom of the pole in the opposite corner.
The people who make your zippers should quit and get another profession. Your zippers are the worst in all camping gears I have bought. Overall this is a wonderful tent that has held up well to many years of family camping. It comes loose easily enough but over time this has put lots of little holes in that flap. On top of that, all of their tents are affordable, come with an electrical cord port, and set up in minutes. For example, many of their tents come with factory sealed seams.
Weighing only 16.81 lbs it is one of the lighter tents on this list, but will be one of the easiest to setup in just one minute. Now that we know the high and low points of Ozark Trail tents, I feel it would be good to compare them to others. There are two tent manufacturers that design tents very similarly to Ozark Trail; these include Core and Coleman. As I mentioned in the Durability section above, most tents are made of polyester; others are made of nylon. These materials aren’t as durable as canvas or cotton—which are commonly used in higher-priced tents.