This is the most convenient, quick to erect and roomy tent on the market and is excellent value for money. Now with an opening like that the review better prove it to you. But I am so convinced of my words that this is the first new product I have suggested to ciao and as such thought it only polite to be the first to review it.
The khyam rapidex ridgi dome system is revolutionary, gone are the days of feeding the poles through the canvas before you can put it up, or standing inside a tent holding it still while someone else does the boy scout thing and pulls the canvas over the top. Essentially the main body of the ridgi dome tent is permanantly attached to the canvas and it has quick release joints that just pop into place, once this is done the tent is practically up. The benefit of this is you can have a tent that is essentially the size of an old fashioned ridge tent, with plenty of room to stand up inside without hitting your head on the roof (unless you're 6.5 foot) that can be erected in 5 minutes flat. This accounts for the main living area then the bedrooms are attached on separately with more conventional tent poles, but even so there are only 5 per bedroom and they are very easy to put into place. The bedroom inner sections are then just simply hung up. Naturally the tent has a number of pegs and ropes to keep it in place.
We have electric hook up with our tent and there is a useful little hook in the middle of the tent to hang the light on and as we have electric we have an electric pump so the beds go up really quickly (I may camp but I don't slum it!!) All this together means on our last camping outing we had the tent unpacked and erected, the car unpacked, the beds made and the cooking area sorted out and we were sat outside the tent, with a glorious view of a little stream, the kids happily playing and us drinking a cold beer in 16 minutes (yes I am sad enough to time it) from arrival at the pitch. I remember the days well when some friends of ours had a proper frame tent and it took them an hour to work out which pole went where and they finally got the frame up, it took them a further hour to get the canvas on and unpack the car, by which time our little ridge tent was up and we got bored and went down the pub.
The tent also has extra poles with it to peg out the front door if you want to and the windows are the usual plastic, but if you roll them up they are mesh underneath which means when it is hot you can get the tent well aired.
Now the important logistics bit: the tent bag takes up 102 x 35 x 35 cm according to their website, measurements mean nothing to me so I'll translate that as about a quarter of the boot of our Nissan Tino Almera. Also according to the website the living space is 3mx3m I'd reckon that is about right but would translate it as loads.
Price is £315 but you do pay extra for a groundsheet to fit the living space. Availability, I have only seen them at specialist camping outlets, they are a bit big for the high street outdoor shops. This is the only way currently on the market that I am aware of that you can get this amount of height and living space, without the need for an old fashioned frame tent or a trailer tent. At which point the money goes up drastically.
From a durability point of view they have been available for about 3 years now and we bought one of the first ones, it has been very heavily used (2 weeks camping in Italy see Eurocamp op) and there is very little sign of wear on it. The camp shop near us do repairs if necessary and there is usually a 12 month guarantee (from memory) but you can replace the joints if needed.
I would recommend this tent to anyone who wants a family tent and who does't want to use it for backpacking. My only regret is that we didn't buy the slightly bigger one with 2 bedrooms so we wouldn't have to share with the kids. Still they'll soon be old enough for their own tent outside!!!
