Been maintaining a list of ultralight tents for a few years now, and so figured it was finally time to publish the link officially. The list contains the more popular 1 and 2 person ‘ultralight’ tents, typically under 2.5 pounds.
For reasons unknown to all, vendors often make it pretty tough to find consistent, accurate specifications for their tents. In general, any assumptions or variations have been noted in the “Notes” column.
For now the sheet is restricted to not allow editing. Unfortunately it’s just too much work to monitor from stupid. However, comments are enabled, so feel free to let me know if you find any errors, or find a tent that you’d like to see on the list. Hope you find it helpful!
Updates
- 10-Jul-18: New X-Mid from Dan Durston; updated specs from Six Moons Design; Notch dimensions changed.
Added Sealed, Inner columns. Standard 50g is added to non-sealed tents.
Updated all tent prices, URL, weight, and dimensions. - 23-Jun-18: New Pleximid, and tent updates from ZPacks.
- SORTING: To sort you must first select all ROWS from row 3 to the end. Then click Data > Sort Range, and select the column(s) you want to sort on. If you don’t select all non-header rows you’ll end up sorting the top 2 header rows in with the tent data.
- maintenance:
- checked: Date that information was last verified or updated. Does not mean all fields were updated at this time.
- disc: Indicated the the tent has been discontinued or is no longer available.
- cost:
- $: Prices are converted to USD using rough exchange rate. Minimally includes an outer and an inner. Does not include optional stakes and poles which are included in “tot”.
- $ / g: Cost per gram.
- weight:
- wgt: Total reported packed weight in kilograms, including stakes and pegs if provided. Higher end tents do not include stakes/poles – refer to “tot”.
- h/w: Required hardware items not included by the manufacturer in weight listing (stakes, poles, guys). Calculated from “hardware” based on estimates weights in "ref’ worksheet. Values in hardware preceded by “x” are not included.
- tot: Total weight (wgt + opt), including tent, fly, poles (replaces trekking pole with estimated pole weight), stakes.
- oz: “tot” in ounces.
- packed: Approximate packed size. Tents are generally rolled, so length/diameter. Some tents are folded, so width is specified in diameter field.
- dimensions: All dimensions in cm.
- area: Taken from manufacturer where provided. Calculations have not been validated.
- flr: total internal floor space
- vst: total usable external non-floor space
- 1-vst: total usable external non-floor per vestibule
- features:
- slp: Number of people tent is designed to sleep (note, this is manufacturers thoughts on the matter, not reality)
- tub: approximate tub height (lowest); typically not specified by manuf, so estimated from images
- wall: 1 or 2; 1.5 where there is a significant exposed 1 wall area, with separate internal wall
- entry: Is typical bed arrangement side on to door, or front/skinny end to door?
- vest: Number of vestibules
- pitch:
- free: can the tent stand without stakes
- inner: can the tent be pitched inner/mesh only. Tents with joined inner/outer cannot be inner only pitched.
- fly: Indicated whether the tent be pitched fly first, and by definition fly-only. By definition 1-walled tents can be pitched fly first.
- hardware: Details items which may need to be added to “wgt”. “x” as a prefix indicates the weight of these items is already included included in “wgt”.
- stakes: Min-max number of stakes required for setup.
- poles: Number of poles required. Will specify “trek” if trekking poles can be used.
- sealed: Indicates whether the tent is seam sealed at the factory. Some DCF based tents are bonded, and thus sealed.