The Best Canopy Tent for Camping and Picnics Reviews by Wirecutter

As its name suggests, the Eureka Tagalong Shelter is ideal for tagging along on any adventure where shade is needed. Its drawstring stuff sack offers a long strap that can be placed over one shoulder or across the chest, giving you hands-free mobility. This shelter employs high-grade, collapsible aluminum poles for its frame and comes complete with built-in guy lines and sandbags to help keep it sturdy.

Likewise, the Pacific Breeze Easy Up does not require additional assembly. It springs into place with just the pull of a single chord, similar to opening an umbrella but in reverse. The simplicity of this design makes ozark trail shower tent it easy for one person to produce an instant sunshade in seconds. Simply fill the four attached anchor bags with sand or smooth rocks, stretch the canopy into an X-shape, and prop it up with the provided tent poles.

Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, ozark trail shower tent we’ll help you get it right (the first time). While the previous version of this tent used beachy-feeling aqua and orange, the current version is a drab olive green more typical of other tents.

ozark trail canopy tent

No other chair in our testing pool—except perhaps the extremely pricey Yeti Trailhead—came close to matching the King Kong’s build quality. Our testers consistently said the King Kong chair was the most heavy-duty-feeling model of all the chairs we tested. The E-Z Up Pyramid is our favorite canopy for outdoor sports enthusiasts. From youth football and soccer fields to motocross tracks and cross-country meets, this canopy fits the bill. If you spend much time on the sidelines, we think the E-Z Up is the perfect way to catch some shade while you cheer on your athlete or team.

The Helinox Chair One weighs about 2 pounds, compresses smaller than a 2-liter bottle of soda, and is our most lightweight pick. Other chairs we tested sacrificed too much comfort in order to shave mere ounces off of their weights, and we don’t think the trade-off was worth it. Keep in mind that lightweight chairs won’t be nearly as comfortable as traditional camping chairs, so take the word comfortable with a grain of salt. The Pacific Breeze Easy Up is a beach tent with a half-dome design and enough space to shade one or two adults.

As for the Caravan V-Series, we feel it provides excellent coverage from the sun. However, its thinner frame rocks a bit during wind gusts, and it doesn’t have weather-taped seams, so it tends to leak a little during heavier rain storms. These tents can quickly become pricey, so focusing on quality versus cost is a great idea.

Any $75 canopy tent from a big-box store—we’re talking about the common square canopy with four spindly metal legs—can provide shade during midday. 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. 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.