Reader Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5

.This may well be the lightest 2 person double wall tent available in Britain.
Laser 1.3kg £200+ one hoop 2 small end poles, only just fits 2 short 120 x 50cm mats, with a small amount of room for books valuables, torches etc above the head position. 4 guys to the bottom of the fly and 4 longer storm guys. Long side porch. Symmetrically ended so you can face an end into the wind and never sleep head down the slope. Tall in the middle, lower at each end. You sleep with your head near one end so it is more claustrophobic than some tents, 2 people cannot stay away from the inner walls. Bathtub upstand 25mm, so can easily be pressed down. 5'9" person can sit up easily. The second person needs to climb over the person by the door to get out. Does one of you have a reasonable bladder? If not can one of you sleep like a log whilst being trodden on?
Conversations with Laser owners have come up with 2 reports of the single pole collapsing under wind and/or snow and recovering. Having pushed the tent around in a wind I believe the 4 storm guys, which all face to the centre point of the tent do not resist the hoop buckling sideways into an S shape on plan, rotating the fly and then collapsing. Terra Nova do supply 4 webbing loops for 2 more storm guys at ech end, they do supply enough titanium skewers too. They just do not supply guys. Owners do not add these guys so the tent can collapse. I have added thin guys. I believe this will stop the hoop collapsing in this way. The fly is stretched between 3 guys at each end. This forces the pole to stay in plane. Under side wind I still expect the laser with its one hoop to fail before the other tent I have experience of the Nallo with its 2 hoops but the difference is now much less. I have added thin elastic tensioners to pull the sag out of the inner at the head end, whichever that is. This gives more volume around our heads.
The laser porch like the inner is just big enough. You can cook in the porch with the fly zipped up, but I find it gives more clearance to unhook the groundsheet and pull it back a bit. You have to lay out the second mat after cooking is over.
Our exped down mats cannot be cut to shape to fit in the inner better. I have made a pertex corset to pull the 2 mats tight together and squash the 2 outer corners of the mat that is away from the inner door. This makes the 2 mats a unit that fits within the Laser bathtub upstand. If you sleep on closed cell foam it is easy to trim these corners away.
If conditions are mostly dry, or intermittent rain this tent is fine. I think it will stand up to most winds. If you are only going for a long weekend to Scotland this tent will be fine. It is also luxurious for a solo camper.

Is it the best for the TGO challenge? 200 miles across Highland Scotland in May. We are going to try the Laser to find out. My concern is that in the worst case it is too tight inside to be able to keep your bedding dry. If it is one of those years where it rains continuously you may slowly gets sodden, with no chance to dry out. This has not happened to me it may be that good technique would keep you dry. 750 grams less weight than my alternative tent is however a big incentive.

Rating: 5 / 5

Nice to see some one appreciating this tent more than the Laser competition. I bought this to replace my Hilleberg Akto as I was fed up of being cramped do to poor head room. I love the Laser and its given me more room with less weight. I have re guyed mine and it been as stable as the Akto. Two can use this but it’s cramped.

Steve Perry on his first continuous winter round of the Munros used a Laser and this convinced me to buy this tent. I have loaded a photo to show my guying arrangement. Some ways I am looking to save weight is by removing the pole hood and seam sealing it, replacing guys with 1.5mm Dyneema and very light Mini Line-loks. In all this is a great tent and 5 out of 5.

Rating: 3 / 5

2009 version adds a rear door and 2-way zippers on both sides. It looses the second main zipper and ability to open up the porch all the way and claims to loose a few ounces of weight...but this ended up not being the case. Theoretically the 2-way zippers on both doors should aid in ventilation near the peak, but this is a non-field tested review. I do like the design of this tent in many ways.

Set up was reasonably easy; it pitches nice & taut. It is very tight on space for a 2 person tent, however (~ 22 sq. ft. - which makes it probably the smallest claimed 2 person tent around). I bought it to use camping with my daughter, but returned it because it seemed even too crammed for me & my 7-year old + there were some places where the stitching was already causing tension lesions in the fabric on the inner tent and the weights were over mfg. specs.: I'm also not to keen on sending it overseas for repairs, which it appeared that it already needed.

Mfg. specs.:
- 2 lb. 7.5 oz. min.
- 2 lb. 11.7 oz. max.

My weighed specs. are as follows:
- Poles w/ rubber band 5.8
- Stakes (12 ti special shep) 0.9
- Pole Storage Sack 0.2
- Main Storage Sack 0.7
- fly + inner combined 37.5

- 2 lb. 12.2 oz. min. (which is actually over the stated max.)
- 2 lb. 15.1 oz. max. (includes the mini-repair kit, which I forgot to measure...although by deduction it would be about 1 oz. and the instructions booklet, which were measured at 1 oz.)

Normally I wouldn't be too put off by specs being this far off (almost 5 oz. for the min.), but this tent is so small, it is a rather large percentage and this company prides itself on the lightest gear. They also made a point of saying that they lowered the weight for this year, but I found it to be even slightly heavier than the old specs. This tent ends up being about the same min. weight as a Big Agnes Seedhouse SL2 - which has +6 sq.ft. of floor space, albeit a netting inner.

One of the things I was really looking forward to was the fabric inner rather than mesh walls for additional warmth, but unfortunately, half the door is mesh and has no zippered cover. The end vents have covers, but use velcro tabs, which would most certainly allow wind to pass through and cool the tent. That said, it should still be warmer than an all-mesh tent and the low interior volume would also help with this aspect and necessitate a bit more aggressive venting for most situations anyway.

It is/could be a great tent.

The added features are nice, but not enough to make it a legitimate 2 person tent. I would peg it a normal sized 1 person tent, by American standards.

One thing to note is the vestibule is very nice and has a lot of usable space.

One more gripe is that the adjustable low fly vents on the ends were a bit cumbersome (although a great feature), put a lot of strain on the inner tent and did not seem to go down as far as they should have in order to block wind adequately.

The rating would be a 4 if stitching wasn't an issue and the vents covered better.

The rating would be a five if they didn't claim it a 2 person tent and the weights were not so far off of spec.

(Again, this was a non field-tested review, but I hope you find it useful despite this aspect.)

Edited by biointegra on 04/19/2009 22:45:17 MDT.