Vango TBS Equinox 250 > Reviews > Camping it up

Author's product rating:   

Waterproofing
Durability
How easy is it to put it up?

Advantages:	Stable, value for money, excellent customer services
Disadvantages:	Too heavy for backpacking

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I received this tent for Christmas 2003 and it has done me proud. Although its name says 250 (which I assume means it fits 2 and a half poeple) it is comfy as a 2-man and I would not want to try it with an extra person. NOTE this review refers to the old and the current version of this tent.

The reasons I wanted this tent were:
You can pitch the flysheet first (in case of rain)
It can cope with all sorts of weather
Vango have a good reputation

A brief description
This is a long low tent. Half the length contains the sleeping compartment, which is very well esigned with a sewn in groundsheet (of which more later) and lots of pockets along the sides for all those things you don't want to lose. The door of the inner tent can be folded away. The other half of the tent is the porch area with lots of space to put all your stuff. This half comes with a ground sheet which clips in to the flysheet. There is easily enough room for a bike but not a lot else. The porch has 2 door flaps, on each side, which can be rolled up. We have bought 2 new aluminium poles which you can use to make an outside porch - it cost about £10 and means you can cook outside when it rains.
There are lots of straps inside this tent, these are there to keep it stable in windy conditions. When not in use (and I've only needed them twice) they have little pockets to sit in. Although I have to say they always fall out of the little pockets.
If you buy a couple of those low beach chairs you can comfortably sit two people plus baggage in the porch. It is not high enough to stand up in.

Pitching
The current version of this tent has made pitching a lot easier. The instructions are sewn into the tent bag so you cannot lose them! There are 3 flexible poles, which are colour coded to make it really easy to see where to put the poles. The poles are now on the outside of the tent, which means you don't have to pick the whole thing up and turn it over once you've threaded the poles in. You have the option of putting the poles in two different eyelets, and I have not yet worked out which is better. The pegs are very lightweight but they work. There are lots of guy ropes, these are very useful in bad weather but you probably don't need all of them in use when the weather is nice.

Weather
This tent comes into its own in the wind. The tension bands (TBS stands for tension band system) keep the shape of the tent, and the guy ropes keep the tent on the floor. I have been snug while listening to other people's tents blowing away...
In rain the tent keeps as dry as any other tent I've stayed in, and dryer than most. When it rains we have found that cooking on a small stove inside has not caused a problem. The two notable occasions when it didn't were (1) during a torrential downpour the rain came through the little holes of the flysheet, creating a mist effect. This only lasted 10 minutes but was not a problem because we were cooking, and all the mist evaporated. (2) on a recent trip to Wales we camped in what I would most accurately call a marsh, and the inner groundsheet let in water. There was not a rip or a hole, it just seemed to have lost its waterproofness. Temporarily we bought a new groundsheet and dried everything in the car with the heaters on full.

Customer service
As mentioned above we had a leaking groundsheet. We rang up vango (you are supposed to ring the shop you bought the tent from but this was not possible for us) and they were very surprised to hear of our problem, and asked us to send the inner tent and a letter explaining our problem. I sent this off (you have to pay for postage) and 5 days later I got a letter saying that they would like to replace the item, under its lifetime guarantee. Well of course I was delighted, and 3 days later a whole new tent arrived! Since I got the tent they had brought out a newer model, and the old flysheet would not have been compatible with a new inner. The new version has many improved features and we have so far used it once. I cannot fault the customer service - they were quick, polite and helpful.

The only bad thing about this tent is that it weighs about 5.8kg so you cannot really use it for backpacking, although it does pack down very compactly. If you do car-camping this is an excellent buy at around £220. If you want a tent that you can use for travelling light, then I would suggest you look elsewhere.