MSR HABITUDE 4
For adventurous families, finding the right tent for nights away can be tricky. Until now, the options for overnight camping with kids have been limited to either a huge, heavy family tent that fills your car boot and takes ages to pitch or a tiny shelter with no living space that you have to crawl in and out of. Neither is really ideal.
Outdoor enthusiasts with kids have been crying out for something in between these two extremes, and with the Habitude from MSR, their prayers may have been answered.
This is a relatively lightweight, family-sized tent with plenty of headroom and enough space for four to relax inside if the weather is bad. It’s made using the same materials and techniques as MSR’s technical backpacking tents, so you know it should be robust enough for most weather conditions.
Weighing in at just over 6kg, it’s certainly not something you’d want to carry alone for any great distance, but it could easily be split between two adults in their backpacks.
The hubbed poles and colour-coded clips make pitching straightforward, although consulting the instructions for the first pitch would be advisable.
Also make sure you’ve got enough space around you to lay the poles out flat before you clip them to the tent. As it pitches inner first, try to make sure it’s not raining when you start or, if that’s unavoidable, get the outer flysheet on as quickly as possible.
As is the way with most tents that originate in the USA, the inner has a lot of mesh, which is great for ventilation in hot weather, but not so good on a blustery night in the Highlands. So, while it should be sturdy enough to cope with fairly unpleasant weather, bear in mind that the design might make it more suitable for spring and summer camping only. For lightweight campers more used to cramped conditions, the amount of space will be something that immediately jumps out – at 1.85m, there’s plenty of headroom inside for most people to stand upright without stooping and that makes a huge difference to camping comfort.
I also like the large storage vestibule at the front and there’s good storage pockets inside for keeping small items safe.
As well as a family tent, the Habitude would work perfectly as a group basecamp for canoe trips or mountain biking.