6" Trifold Mattress
Introduction
For the past few years, I’ve been using a QOMOTOP popup tent for all my camping needs. It sets up in about 10 seconds. Just throw it up in the air, and whoosh, it’s ready to go. Tear down doesn’t take much longer.
The ability to quickly set up and tear down camp has become an essential part of my road tripping strategy.
Watch the video. It’s amazing.
Specifications
My version is the QOMOTOP 4 person pop up tent, purchased from Amazon in 2021. Now it seems to be carried by Walmart, but Amazon has several very similar tents linked as an alternate above.
QOMOTOP 4 Person Pop up Tent
- 9.5’×7’ with 50” Center Height
- 10 Second Setup Instant Tent
- Rainproof Tent
- 4 Ventilated Mesh Windows
- 2 Mesh Door
Why We Like It
It’s a nice tent: spacious with large well vented windows, multiple entrances and places to hang camping lights. It does all the things I want a fair weather tent to do.
Obviously the ease of set up and tear down are what make it special. Here’s why that is essential to me.
One Night Stays
While road tripping, I often stay just one night. If a tent takes 10 minutes to set up and another 10 minutes to tear down, I’m losing a lot of time, every day.
For me, this time cost is amplified somewhat because I always have the option of sleeping quite comfortably in the back of my Prius V, the longer wagon model. This isn’t as nice as a tent on a pleasant night, but it requires zero effort.
Having a near zero-effort tent puts the camping option on more equal footing and leads to a more pleasant experience overall, especially on short stays.
Night Time Set Up
It’s not unusual for me to arrive at night. When I do, this tent goes up in 10 seconds and I don’t have to fumble with tent poles or instructions in the dark.
Likewise, if I pull in at sunset, which is much more common, I can enjoy it and don’t need to scramble to set up camp.
Spacious with Single-Handed Setup
I typically travel alone or with a big dog, and we like to stretch out. When evaluating how big of a tent we need, I double everything. One person and a big dog need a four-person tent.
Large traditional tents can be difficult to stand up by yourself. Many four-person tents make an implicit assumption that you will have at least two people on-hand. Even tents that say you can set them alone can be a challenge.
This one is a breeze and, if she could work the zipper, Ellie could probably set it up on her own.
Weather and Emergency Tear Down
Bad weather can come out of nowhere. Camping near Teddy Roosevelt, an isolated storm popped up bringing torrential rains and 50 mph winds.
One minute later, my tent and I were packed up in the car. Thirty minutes later the storm was gone and the sky was filled with a beautiful double rainbow.
If I’d had a normal tent, I might have lost it to the wind, spoiling an otherwise beautiful evening.
Easy to Dry Out
A wet tent can easily become a smelly, moldy tent. If it rains, you need to make sure you dry it out.
But what if you’re on your last night at a campsite? You’ve got to break camp and the tent is still wet. If you’re like me, you might be mixing camping with hotels, and it may be several more days before you would otherwise set up the tent.
With this, you can just wait for the sun to come out and pop it up anywhere discretely, quickly and effortlessly. Should someone complain, you can pack it up in 60 seconds.
Heck, since it doesn’t require any stakes to hold its form, you could even pop it up in your hotel room.
Safety First
Ellie can be a big scaredy moose, and like many dogs, she’s terrified of loud noises and thunderstorms. However, I’ve never seen her more scared than the night we camped outside Devil’s Tower, alone in an empty campground on the last night of the season.
She woke me up in the middle of the night, staring out the tent window, her eyes darting back and forth, sniffing the wind, trembling uncontrollably. Poor girl was truly terrified of something out there and clearly trying to locate it with her eyes and nose.
After a brief moment to assess the situation and make sure a bear wasn’t about to plow through the tent wall, I immediately got Ellie and myself out of the tent and into the car where we spent the rest of the night.
I never did see what scared her, but after 10-20 minutes in the car, she settled down nicely. It could have been a lot of things, coyotes and prairie dogs were making a bit of noise that night, and the campsite had been full of deer. There are black bears around that part of Wyoming and I did see something that looked like it might have been (old) bear poop the next day.
Looking back on the incident, I have sometimes wondered if my lack of investment in the campsite made it easier for me to abandon it so quickly. Had I spent 20 minutes setting everything up, had it been a more expensive “forever” tent, I might have been more likely to want to investigate, or to return to the tent after Ellie settled down.
With a relatively inexpensive pop-up tent, it was easy to make the right decision.
Downsides
Most of the downsides come directly from the simple pop-up design.
- It’s mostly a fair weather tent.
I’ve camped in light rain and moderate winds and it was fine. - There’s no vent or window on the ceiling, probably because there is no rain fly.
I love looking at the stars through a tent ceiling. - It is a little awkward to store in a car, a large flat circle.
It usually ends up above everything (in the way), buried at the bottom, or wedged behind the back seat. - It’s not nearly tall enough to stand up inside.
Really, few fast tents are.
Conclusions
This tent does everything I need a fair weather tent to do, with a tiny fraction of the effort required by a traditional tent. If you favor alternatives like hotels or your vehicle for foul weather, I’d argue there is no better tent for road trips. Ellie approved.
