This popup tent from Walmart can hold your entire family

Camping as a young, single man is easy: Toss on a backpack, go somewhere, and set up for the night. Camping as a family of five is…considerably more complex. There’s a lot of work to be done in setting up and breaking down camp, triply so when you’ve got three kids to wrangle as you do it.

For the past year, my family has been camping in this six-person Ozark Trail instant tent from Walmart, and its $165 MSRP has proven well worth it. With floor space of 10’x9’, it’s a luxurious space when I’m camping with my two boys, and it’s capable of cramming in my wife and little girl as well. It has space for two queen-size air mattresses—great for the reluctant campers with bad backs—with just a little bit of floor space left over for gear.

One thing that makes this tent great is that it’s a pop-up. Pull it out of its bag, place it on the ground, unfold the legs, extend them into position, and boom, you’re done. It helps if you have a second person to help with this, but if you’re solo you probably want a smaller tent anyway.

But maybe my favorite feature about this tent is the built-in overhead light. Inside the tent is a zippered pocket that holds a box containing 6 D batteries. The box plugs into the tent via a USB-A port, which then powers the dome light and illuminates the power button by the door. The power button stays lit at a constant low level, acting as a night light. Press the button to turn the light on or off and cycle through three power settings. If you want to run real power inside your tent, it has a covered flap for an extension cord.

The tent has good airflow for hot summer days, with three large mesh windows, including one in the door. It also has an AC port at the bottom rear. Supposedly, if you brought a portable AC unit with you, you could feed it into that, but for the rest of us, you can use it as another vented opening.

In cooler months, keep those flaps closed and the rain fly on to keep the tent reasonably warm, especially with five people inside. Despite that, it doesn’t condense much at all, even with my whole family in there.

Downsides of the Ozark Trail 10’ x 9′ 6-Person Instant Cabin Tent with LED Lighted Hub

I love Ozark Trail gear. For the money, their stuff is durable and packed with features. However, the one downside to Ozark Trail gear is that it’s not light—though who would expect a six-person popup tent to be light? At 25 pounds, you don’t want to lug this thing very far, and if you have a bad back, you may want a lighter option (or larger children who can help).

My least favorite aspect of this tent is that it’s very easy to pinch your fingers when you fold it back up on itself, and I manage to do it every time. Thankfully, it’s never broken anything or caused any damage, but it hurts like hell. Other than that painful surprise, the entire tent folds up in a couple of minutes. And unlike a lot of camping gear, it fits nicely into its bag.

Can the tent actually fit six people? Maybe in theory, but it just barely holds all five of my brood with the two queen mattresses, even with two of us being small. If you have well-disciplined sleepers who can remain perfectly still all night, it’ll work, but let’s be honest, this is a tent for families with kids, who tend to jump and roll around all night. I carry around an REI two-person tent as well that I can put one of the boys in, which frees up a lot of room.

Finally, the price might make your eyes water at $165. In the grand scheme of things, that’s pretty cheap for a tent, but it’s definitely on the higher end of Walmart’s offerings.

Conclusion

We keep this, the air mattresses, and some sleeping bags in the Visa XL cargo box on top of our van, so we can go camping whenever we feel like it.

If you’re looking for a big tent for car camping that’s easy to set up, this one is worth a close look. It can cram in a lot of people and/or stuff, sets up in a minute, and the built-in light makes camping a far better experience. It’s about as big and heavy as you would expect, so park close. But if you’re looking to take your family camping, pack this in a car along with a couple of queen-sized air mattresses and some provisions, and you’re off to the races.

Just watch your fingers.

Josh Centers

Josh Centers grows gardens, raises chickens and rabbits, is a licensed ham radio operator, and is a certified blacksmith. He lives on five acres in rural Tennessee.