Serving the biggest brands on the planet as well as your local High School, if you want the perfect blend of quality and American craftsmanship, we’ve got you covered. Like we mentioned above, we’re here to educate you on the different styles of pop-up tents. We know everyone isn’t a good fit for professional-grade TentCraft structures, and that’s OK! But if and when you’re tired of replacing cheap tents, reach out to us to learn more about what American-made quality looks and feels like. Getting our hands dirty with the top-rated 9×9 Neso Grande lightweight beach canopy tent. We typically see pyramid frames built with flimsy trusses and thin struts and reinforced (if you want to call it that) with cheaply made plastic joint connectors, and unfortunately this 10×10 Ozark canopy is no different.
After all, you can find plenty of smaller and less-expensive items to help you fight bugs, guard against the sun, and shrug off rain. Our favorite canopy tent is a simply designed, comfortable shelter that offers protection from bugs, sun, and rain. Most of the cheap 10×10 slant leg tents weigh about 25 pounds, so you can assume the material is extremely thin and delicate, making the tent susceptible to breaking after minimal use, especially if you’re using it in windier conditions. It’s also important to note that nearly all recreational-grade tents — no matter if they’re straight leg or slant leg — use thin steel frames, which are significantly weaker than anodized aluminum frames of similar weight. Aluminum tent legs not only have a larger leg diameter (1” for steel vs. 2” for aluminum) but the thickness (or gauge) of aluminum is twice that of steel. That team is also pretty helpful to have when our marketing team needs to explain why a straight leg canopy has more structural integrity than a slant leg canopy.
But when you’re camping or eating outdoors, you’ll likely want protection from insects, as well. That’s why we focused on collapsible camping shelters with mesh walls to keep bugs at bay. The weight of this Ozark Trail is lighter than most of the same size alternative steel frame canopy tents, coming in right about 29 lbs. From a positive perspective, the lightweight design increases portability which is certainly important in carrying the tent to its intended location. From a negative perspective, the weight is indicative of a lack of high quality material and components used throughout the shelter. The included carrying bag does not have wheels to aid in transportation, but at only 29 lbs.
Most new tents incorporate this ventilated canopy design to increase airflow and reduce the trapping of hot air, helping to keep those in the shade cooler and more comfortable. The most popular product in their line is the 10×10 Instant Slant Leg Tent with a blue canopy top. It is made with a steel construction frame and polyester material for the canopy, which is in line with just about every shade tent on the market today. The frame is that of a pyramid structure, which are generally found in all value brand canopy tents as they require less material to manufacture vs. that of a full truss system and as a result can keep the price lower. Since 2015, I’ve tested camping shelters and large car-camping tents on weekend trips involving more than a dozen families, and I have talked to dozens more about their tent travails.
We tested the Coleman 10 × 10 Instant Screened Canopy and Walmart’s Ozark Trail 10′ × 10′ Instant Screen House during our first round of testing in the winter and spring of 2016. These two shelters are the same size and shape (7-foot peak height, 17 pounds) with an almost identical design. The cap-like roofs on both models provided far less shade than we wanted, especially in the beating desert sun.
Though the two tents have the same footprint, the REI’s roof is 6 inches taller; we found that the higher ceiling made the REI shelter feel significantly roomier inside. The REI Co-op Screen House Shelter is an intuitively designed, easy-to-erect picnic tent that offers protection from sun, bugs, and mild rain showers. Though the boxy design ozark trail canopy is basic, in our tests we found that this camping shelter offered the best combination of functionality, durability, and affordability of all the tents we tried. That’s not the case with a slant leg canopy tent which, as you may have guessed, features legs that are slanted and form an angle of less than 90 degrees with the floor.
Rest assured, too, when we say we’re not using this article to sway you to buy a heavy-duty pop-up canopy tent from TentCraft. We manufacture and sell professional-grade, custom structures at prices that likely aren’t in the budgets of consumers who are shopping for a 10×10 pop-up tent in the $100-$300 range. Those are recreational-grade tents that wouldn’t hold up to the type of use our customers demand. We simply want you to get the best bang for your buck, even if you are shopping for recreational-grade pop-up tents.
Fellow campers consistently gravitated toward the REI shelter over the L.L.Bean. “There’s less scissor material, which means less total metal – and that’s why some of these companies can sell a tent for under $100,” Gemmell said. There’s a reason why makers of professional-grade canopies only use straight-leg frames. “When the legs are slanted, it’s completely dependent on those connection points,” Gemmell said. Digging our toes in the sand under one of the best full-overhead coverage beach tents on the market.