Nobody wants to spend all day sitting in direct sunlight either though, and that’s where a tent with a screen room like this Ozark Trail 9 Person Cabin comes into play. Ozark Trail is all about big family camping tents on a budget, and few are as big and budget-friendly as the Ozark Trail 10 Person Two-Room Cabin. Our favorite Ozark Trail tent currently is the Ozark Trail Three Room Instant Cabin. This tent’s combination of floor space, livability, and value make it a home run for large groups or families looking to spread out in style, but this 12-person behemoth won’t be everyone’s first choice. Every year, thousands of new campers get their first taste of the outdoors in an Ozark Trail tent. Their combination of space and affordability catches the eye of many campers, but the details on these shelters can be lacking.
If you don’t have time to let the fly dry before you pack the Wireless in its duffle, we recommend laying it out when you get home so it doesn’t mildew in storage. Despite having the smallest capacity of the tents we tested—42.5 square feet—the Mineral King 3 easily fits two people with a full-size mattress, or two sleeping pads, and gear. Two large vestibules add nearly 40 square feet combined—that is, 18.75 square feet on either side. After our longtime top-pick tent for two people ran into some stock issues in 2021, we researched new models and redesigns, and we assembled a batch of small tents for testing in March 2022, on Oahu. During this period, winds rose up to 35 to 40 knots, and we experienced passing showers as well as direct sunlight and 80-degree temperatures.
To mimic heavier rain and to test the tent’s ability to withstand soggy ground conditions, we also soaked our tents with a garden hose. A few weeks later, we brought the front-runners to a platform in an area that had higher elevation, near the Waianae Mountain Range, and camped out overnight in intermittent but consistent rainfall. Its fly extends into a huge front vestibule that can store large items like bikes, or even accommodate a ozark trail instant cabin table and chairs. Adults over 6 feet tall will be able to walk upright inside this tent—which has almost-vertical walls that can easily accommodate beds, cribs, and cots—as well as in the vestibule. I highly recommend investing in a slightly better tent for the long term, I can recommend way better dark rest tents or instant camping tents. I’ll link to them here when they’re ready, so that you can find something better for yourself.
All the windows and doors also have to be closed, because otherwise, the rain would drip right into the tent. Even in light rain, the rain does get on to the window and door mesh, so it’s best to keep them full closed. The mattresses that I used in the picture above are slightly smaller than queen size, but almost queen-sized, give or take a couple of inches. These 4 mattresses take up the entire tent, and there’s hardly any space leftover for camping gear. The instant set up with previously attached poles is one of the best features. Setting up a huge tent is already difficult, so having this streamlined experience makes things so much easier.
Like our couples’ tent pick, the Wireless 6 is a dome-shaped tent with a tried and true two-pole design. It has an interior footprint of 87 square feet, which sleeps four adults on single pads, or two adults and two or three children, and can accommodate a crib. That wasn’t the tallest we encountered—the Eureka Copper Canyon LX 6 and the Alps Mountaineering Camp Creek 6 each topped out at 7 feet—but it’s enough ozark trail canopy tent space for most adults to maneuver standing up. The tent comes with a full rain fly that adds two vestibules for storage (each 14 square feet), totaling 115 square feet of livable space—which is fairly generous yet still practical for most campsites. And this tent is easy to set up and pack down, especially considering its size. As with most six-person tents, the Wawona 6’s footprint is sold separately.
On top of that, the zippers for the windows are small and feel flimsy, even though they’re SBS zippers. Does the Ozark Trail Dark Rest Cabin tent truly have “innovative dark rest technology”? The three-room cabin is definitely one of Ozark Trail’s more expensive models though, so if you’re shopping on a budget, there are plenty of other models worth considering. The Clip & Camp dome is particularly affordable, and also happens to be one of the most dependable models the brand currently makes. The main thing to know going into an Ozark Trail purchase is that you need to do your due diligence not to overstress the materials because a heavy hand can absolutely damage them.
The lowest height in the tent, which is at the four corners, is about 65 inches. This is slightly taller than my height, so I could stand up everywhere inside the Ozark Trail Tent, even at the corners. There is electrical cord access in this tent, and it can be fully covered when not in use. You can cover up any long extension cords without the risk of tripping over them inside the tent.