Big Agnes Tensleep Station 6 Review

Performance Comparison

The Big Agnes Tensleep Station 6.

Comfort

The Tensleep Station 6 advertises itself as a cozy tent for six. As you'll see on their website, two of those six sleepers are meant to bed down in the vestibule area. In dry weather, with a ground cloth, this option is a great one.

The interior of the Tensleep Station is meant for four. If you have a party of six, the other two can bed down in the vestibule.

In a downpour, it's a little riskier, but the vestibule does have protective weather strips along the bottom edge to help keep water out. The entire group would also lose the vestibule as a storage compartment. Families with smaller children could likely fit six inside without too much forced snuggling. Still, it takes a knock in its comfort scores as a result.

All that said, the Tensleep Station 6 offers some great features that make your outdoor living easy. The walls are noticeably steeper than your typical dome tent, meaning the interior is more spacious and there's more room for standing and walking around. At 6'3", the head height should be enough for anyone outside of the NBA. Full front and backdoors give you entrance and exit options.

The Tensleep sports a large, open mesh ceiling to vent, lighten or enjoy the night sky.

The living area is one large room with no specifically-designed divider, but there are a number of webbing loops around the ceiling of the tent that could easily be used to string up a divider. Of course, you could also use the loops to add a gear loft or two as well. The mesh ceiling is expansive, extending partially down the top sides as well, giving the Tensleep great ventilation and fly-less stargazing.

There are two, long gear pockets that run along the front sides of the tent and two smaller pockets higher up in the front corners. Oddly, there are no pockets or pouches at the back end of the tent, meaning depending on how you orientate yourself (we're fans of keeping our feet by the front door when sleeping) you might find yourself out of reach of any storage.

The double vertical zippers on the front of the Tensleep offer a ton of options to make the most of your vestibule area.

The vestibule is really one of our favorite parts of this tent. At 69" x 96" (tapering down a bit at the front), the size and space alone are impressive. What puts it over the top though is its plethora of setup options. So how do you vestibule? The Tensleep's vestibule can be rain protection, a wind breaking wall from either direction, a shaded front porch, or a privacy curtain. It's a true Swiss Army Knife of potential. It is worth noting though that the horizontal veranda option can be tricky to pull off as you'll need to supply your own trekking poles and use guy lines to support and secure them.

While the vestibule doesn't have an independent pole at the front to create a full room-like experience (like The North Face Wawona), it's still much larger than most other tents in this category.

Just want some shade while keeping the air moving? The Tensleep's front vestibule works as a sunshade too.

Weather Resistance

The Tensleep Station 6 holds up in the wind and has some nice features for both rain and wind protection. We found the rain fly to be a little noisy in moderate to strong wind, but the structural integrity of the tent never wavered. The fly does come equipped attached guy lines on all sides, which, if you have something to tightly tie or stake them to, would minimize the wind flapping noise (and pull the fly further away from the tent during a rainstorm). Overall, this tent is one of the more weather protective options we reviewed.

Speaking of rain, Big Agnes has added "storm flaps" to the bottom of the vestibule area, effectively sealing off that last inch or two of open space and hopefully keeping everything and everyone underneath the vestibule drier. They're actually effective when pulled out from the bottom of the fly and staked or when tucked under/inside. It's conceivable that in a serious downpour, water could burrow its way underneath the storm flaps, but for the majority of rainy situations, they should keep the water out.

Big Agnes added extended storm flaps to the bottom of all sides of the front vestibule. They can be pulled outward and staked, or tucked under/inside to keep all occupants and/or gear dry.

The vestibule also stayed stable in winds, likely a result of angling and staking to the ground. As noted above, the Tensleep Station 6 has a steeper pitch to its walls than the typical dome tent, which also gives rain less of a chance to pool up and soak through. All seams are taped, and the fly and floor are both covered in a 1500mm waterproof polyurethane coating. This is a tent that gives you options and integrated features to keep you dry when it gets dark and stormy.

With a simple design, the Tensleep Station 6 is easy and quick to put up, even under breezy conditions.

Ease of Setup

Our first attempt at setting up the Tensleep Station 6 took twelve minutes. However, that was completed in a decent wind while wholly disregarding the included instructions. The second and third times it went up in easily less than ten. One person can easily handle the setup. It's a pretty simple three pole (two criss-crossers and one that bows across the front) design which makes putting it up a breeze. It is one of the easiest (non-easy-up) tents to set up.

Every pole has a small sleeve across the top of the tent, with easy hook clips everywhere else. We found the hooks to be noticeably easier to deal with than the hooks on The North Face Wawona.

To help you make sure the rain fly goes on facing the right direction every time, the webbing for the pole grommets and the fly buckle connections are color coded.

Workmanship

In general, Big Agnes makes bomb-proof tents. Quality materials, well-made. The Tensleep Station 6 is no exception. We would expect this tent to give you many years of camping adventures.

All fabric, tent, and fly are all ripstop, and all seams are sealed. Zippers connect and pull open or closed easily. The lightweight aluminum poles, while somewhat thinner than some of the other large family tents (The North Face Wawona and the Marmot Limestone 6P for example), are still stout enough to hold up over time. Finally, Big Agnes stands behind all of their products 100%. They'll gladly fix any defect and repair any other issues you may have. (They even offer DIY gear repair guides on their website.)

The Tensleep's storage bag is one of the best on the market. Roughly the size of a couple pillows, it's easy in, easy out.

Packed Size

For a six-person tent, the Tensleep Station 6 packs down to a very manageable size. Roughly the size of a double-wide briefcase. The storage bag is also one of the better ones on the market.

Have you ever lost the little bag your tent's poles live in? Ever chased the stake bag across a windy campsite? Not with the Tensleep you haven't. In a one-piece design, Big Agnes keeps everything together and easy to access. The bag itself has two large pouches on either side, one for the tent, one for the rain fly. The sewn-in pole bag runs between the two, and the zippered stake bag hangs below that.

The pole bag has a permanent home, sewn into the middle of the storage bag. Super convenient, and one less small bag floating around your tent or car only to ultimately be lost.

If you're a strict tent folder, you'll have no trouble folding the Tensleep up and sliding it right into either pouch. People who are more stuffer than folder will also find plenty of room to get the tent and fly into the storage bag. You certainly don't need to be a master tent folder to get the job done. When you've got everything in the bag, it all folds together and cinches down with a couple of buckles. A handle with just enough length to make it a shoulder bag, if you'd like, finishes things off. The bag is soft and packable, no hard edges or corners, so you should be able to fit it wherever you have space in the car.

The Tensleep's storage bag splits into two sides, one for the tent, one for the fly. The attached pole bag runs down the middle and the zippered storage bag for the stakes is attached to the side.

Value

Ah, here's the rub. The Tensleep Station 6 is a good bump in price above both The North Face Wawona 6 and the REI Kingdom 6. It's a higher-end tent, so value may be somewhat in the eye of the beholder. If you're enamored with some of the unique features and quality design of the Tensleep, then it's probably worth the extra scratch in the long run. On the other hand, are there cheaper alternatives out there? Sure. Do any of them offer the same level of craftsmanship and well thought out features that the Tensleep does? Not many. You're going to spend a little more on this tent, but you're going to get a lot more for your money as well. You're also not going to be back looking for a new tent quite as soon either.

The Tensleep's abundant vestibule options make this tent a tester favorite.

Best Applications

This tent is ideal for the frequent, dare we say hardcore, family car camper. It will perform well under most conditions. The only time it might not be completely ideal is in uber-hot weather with little natural sun protection, though even then, the doors and mesh sides should keep the air moving, and until someone makes a tent with built-in air-conditioning, any tent is going to get warm as the mercury rises.

Conclusion

This tent has to be in the conversation for best family tent — your specific taste in features is what would push things one way or the other. It's comparable to The North Face Wawona in size, shape, and features. Most people would be very happy and comfortable in the Tensleep.