Coleman Instant Up Darkroom 8P

Could be ok, but worried it’s another lemon – We bought this tent to replace a faulty Spinifex tent (note: I’ve also done a review of the Spinifex tent for comparison). We wanted a blackout tent and since the Spinifex tent didn’t work out, we took the advice of the sales person at Anaconda and paid the extra $100 to buy this Coleman Darkroom. The tent was relatively easy to set up, (overall probably similar to the Spinifex, though as this was now our third time setting up this type/size of “instant-up” tent our previous experience probably helped). Something that makes set up that little bit easier is that Coleman have used red cord to denote the back left corner of the tent and fly, so you just find the red cords and you can tell which corner goes where.

There were already a few tiny pinpricks of light coming through the black out fly when it was first set up and by the end of our two nights there were perhaps a few more on the windows that we’d opened and rolled up during the day we were camped. Though at this stage it’s minimal, so we’re still hopeful the black out will turn out to be better on this tent.

My husband who is 175cm tall could stand comfortably anywhere in this tent without his head touching the roof.

We really like the strip lighting built into the ceiling and that it is in two sections, so you can choose to have the lights on just in one half of the tent. We tried two power banks of the same brand and both had an issue where after the lights had been turned off for a few seconds the lights would not turn back on until we unplugged the power bank for 10sec or so, then plugged it back in. But we really like the lighting, and that it has low, medium and high settings, as well as a setting where the light switches glow gently (note: the glow wouldn’t be bright enough to keep a child happy who wants a night light, but is plenty to show you where the light switches are without affecting your sleep). We’ll try a different power bank next time, but even if it has the same issue, we still really like having the built-in strip lighting even if it’s a bit finicky.

Our big complaint with this tent is that the floor seems to be of a weaker design than in our previous 2 tents. Given the amount of light that came through the floor-material section of the walls in the morning, we had wondered if it may have been weaker than our previous tent, but only discovered that this did in fact seem to be the case when we found holes in the floor upon packing it up after our very first trip with it. We spent just two nights away, camped on grass, in perfect weather, and we’d only gone in and out of the tent to set up our mattress and to sleep. There were at least 4 holes plus several areas of thinning in the floor after 2 nights on grass followed by carefully lying it out on a concrete slab to dry and clean the floor before packing it away. We’ve camped many times over the years, so we know how to set up and pack up tents carefully, and we’ve never had holes in our floor before.

The blackout fly works really well, though is not as completely blacked out as our previous Spinifex tent which we were surprised by. This seems to be due to the blackout cover not reaching close to the ground (it remains probably 10 to 15 cm above the ground the whole way around the tent, except at the front doors where there is extra fabric for the awning) and the floor of the tent potentially not being as thick as our previous tents. We could still sleep even when the morning sun was shining directly on the tent and some people may prefer to have low light to wake them in the morning, rather than no light. So this wasn’t a dealbreaker for us.

As per our old tent, we never needed to use the room divider as it’s just my husband and I, but a clip-on sheet feels a bit like an afterthought and wouldn’t offer much privacy in the case of travelling with others, as you can see around the sides.

While they call this an 8 person tent, it would be very uncomfortable indeed sleeping 8 people in here. If you’re wanting any indoor living space in your tent for when you get bad weather, this is the smallest tent size that I would recommend for two adults without children. You certainly could fit two or maybe three children in here as well, though your belongings would probably need to stay outside the tent. If you wish to have your luggage and a small area to sit or move in this tent, it won’t fit more than two people once your bed is set up. But for two adults this is a very comfortable size.

All in all, we love the internal strip lighting and are still hopeful that the blackout fly on this tent will turn out to be of better quality, though we are really disappointed in the flooring and aren’t holding much hope for its long-term survival, given how poorly the flooring survived (or didn’t) such an easy trip in virtually perfect conditions.