AYAMAYA Family Camping
6 Person Tent
Instant Pop Up | 4 Season
A good tent is an essential part of everyone’s camping kit. The type of camping one does determine the type of tent one needs…lightweight and tiny for the thru-hike on the trail but something a little more substantial if the trip only involves a short hike to the campsite. My days of packing in a tent are over, so says my RV-loving wife, but now and again I venture out on my own for some car camping. Car camping allows one to focus on comfort and convenience and the size of the tent becomes a little less relevant.
Instant tents, a tent that, well, sets up in an instant, are becoming ever more popular and are seemingly designed for car camping and truly fit the description of convenience. An instant tent looks like a traditional tent when set up, with slick polyester material covering a network of poles that give it structure. The magic that sets the instant tent apart from a traditional tent is the manner in which it is set up. Just release it from its folded position and watch as it explodes into a full-size tent in seconds.
The Ayamaya instant tent accompanied us on a recent camping trip. So it is an instant tent and should be really easy to set up. I handed it to my RV-loving wife and asked her to pitch the tent. I initially got the “good grief” look from her and based on prior experience watching her pitch a tent, I knew exactly what the look meant. I assured her it was going to be easy. She removed the Ayamaya from his handy nylon, disc-shaped storage bag, removed the retaining strap from the test, and with no effort at all, the Ayamaya instant tent began setting itself up.
The tent popped into its fully open and set up position in much less than the six seconds as described on the storage bag. She guided the sides into their final position and it was truly set up in an instant. My RV-loving wife smiled.
The Ayamaya has a very spacious 12x8 foot floor and a center height of 53 inches and is listed as a four to six person tent. We all know how to translate that math to real life and I knew we would be very comfortable with space. The tent is set up with two rooms - the spacious main sleeping quarters and an outer vestibule to store your gear and muddy boots. The outer vestibule has its own fly to protect your gear from the outside elements and another fly separating it from the sleeping quarters. Very nice design.
The tent itself is substantial. It has an incorporated rain fly to help keep things nice and dry on the inside. The interior walls on the tent have nice, large openings to let in the fresh air and match the openings on the rain fly. The floor is of a thick material to help with durability when on rough ground and the walls right on par with any other medium-weight tent. The structure was further made waterproof with nice-looking heat-sealed seems. The overall construction of the Ayamaya was very nice.
To see if the less than advertised set-up time of the Ayamaya was a fluke - spoiler alert, it was not - I decided to pack the tent up and redeploy it. I like that word, “deploy,” and it seems to fit the setup of an instant tent because it is much more interesting than just “pitching” the tent. Putting away an instant tent, any instant tent, is when you realize the name should be changed to, “frustrating, argument starting, takes much more than an instant, tent.” But that’s ok, I knew this going into it. My RV-loving wife decided this would be a good time for her to make us some coffee and I did not dissuade her. Let me tackle this on my own. If I end up upside down on the ground under a half deployed tent, I’d rather that go unseen. The Ayamaya was a struggle like any instant tent but a quick review of the video on Ayamaya’s website on how to fold the tent and I was back on track. I deployed and folded the tent two times before I could do it without stopping to consult the video and that is pretty good for an instant tent.
The Ayamaya should be a strong contender in the stiff insta-tent market.
AYAMAYA Pop-up 6 Person Tent
$149.99
What I liked
- Ease of instant set up
- Spacious interior
- Exterior vestibule
- Durability
What I did not like
- Difficult to fold
