Monday 28 June 2021

Review: Outwell Cloud 2 Tent

I bought my Outwell Cloud 2 tent about five years ago now, primarily as a solo tent for occasions when I was using campsites as a base for hiking (so, where weight wasn't an issue), but also for one-to-two night camps with the wife where it isn't worth setting up the big tent.

It serves both purposes admirably; as two-man tents go it's pretty roomy, with an inner floor area of 140 x 210cm, so you don't feel too cramped up next to your sleeping partner. As a solo tent you've got more room than enough and can easily fit all your gear inside with you. The 210cm length is only marginally too short for my 6'3" frame (it probably isn't too short but I like to lay with my head away from the top end a little bit), but I can stretch out nicely if I lay on a slight angle, which the generous width easily facilitates.


Outwell Cloud 2 two-person dome tent


The tent is very quick and easy to pitch, and while Outwell say it's a two-man job I've done it on my own without much of a struggle.  

The tent features a front porch which provides ample space for a couple of rucksacks (I've had two 65l bags in there with plenty of room to spare) while still allowing easy access, and the groundsheet of this is separate, making it optional if you do want to shed a bit of weight and also makes cleaning very easy after you've thrown your muddy boots in there. 

Once the fly is pitched, hanging the inner is a two-minute job (this can also be left attached and pitched as one) and there's plenty of space between inner and fly to prevent the two touching, and I have had no condensation issues at all since owning it. If pitched as one, I reckon pitch time is no more than five minutes.


Outwell Cloud 2 two-person dome tent


There's a lot of nice little details to the Cloud; mesh pole channels allow the wind to pass through rather than buffeting the main support structure; the bathtub porch has a fold-flat front to make access easy, and then folds back up and toggles to the main door from inside when closed; inner storage pockets; roll-back curtains. It manages to offer more internal room than many two-man tents while still maintaining a fairly compact footprint. 

Outwell make the Cloud in three and five-man variants as well, and as they all share the same design presumably they all take the same time to pitch - a five-man tent with a five-minute pitch time is quite impressive. The Cloud 2 is the most generous in terms of space-per-person, however, offering 70cm of width per-person as opposed to 60cm per-person in the Cloud 3 & 5.

At 4.5kg it's certainly no lightweight - in fact it's downright heavy, and there are certainly lighter (and cheaper) options available - but it's manageable if divided across two packs and roughly the equivalent of carrying two average one-man tents*, which, thanks to the reasonable internal space, is definitely a viable option. With that said, I don't think this would ever be anyone's first choice as a hiking tent and it's definitely more suited to campsite camping, which in fairness to Outwell is where they market themselves.

From what I've seen of Outwell tents they've always been well made and well thought out, and the Cloud 2 doesn't disappoint, though in a crowded market its heavy weight and relatively high price point set it apart from the competition for all the wrong reasons, and while it's a solid tent it wouldn't be my first choice if I was shopping for something similar today.

Outwell Cloud 2


*As mentioned before, when I talk about one-man tents I'm generally referring to tent's like the Vango Banshee 200, Wild Country Zephyros 2, etc, which although sold as two-man tents are really only big enough for one.


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