REI Kingdom 8 Review

1.The Kingdom 8 wins our Editors' Choice award because it's the most comfortable tent we tested and comes loaded with great bonus features. It features best-in-class head room, convenient dividers, and a huge vestibule for organizing your groups gear. It's easy to set up and packs down into an awesome backpack style carrying bag. It's also a solid value.

2.Comfort

With its huge ceilings and spacious cubic design, this tent is the king of comfort. The 6'5 tall ceiling throughout the tent allows multiple people to be standing at once, and creates space in an otherwise crowded environment. This tent is also fitted with mesh walls and ceilings, allowing the tent to breathe and keep the air moving on those hot days when you just want to read in a bug-free shaded zone. The rain fly is very versatile as well. With several attachment points around the tent you are able to roll up the rain fly on the sides in the middle of the day to cool off, and easily roll them back down at night to keep the heat inside.

The Kingdom 8 also has an internal divider in case you want a little bit of privacy every now and then. It can also be fun for kids to feel like they have their own room in the tent with their very own door, or you can use one half for all your gear and the other half as a clutter free sleeping space.

This tent has several different accessories you can buy to make it even more comfortable. REI sells an extended vestibule that you can attach to either side called the connect tech garage. This gives you a nice awning in front of the tent, which can be nice if its raining and you want to dry off before you enter the tent, or in case you want to store extra gear.

3.Storm Resistance

The Kingdom's barn house style frame is not ideal in high winds. If you don't take the time to properly stake out the tent and attach all guy lines, the wind will turn the tent into a dancing caterpillar. In all camping situations you should look for a wind-protected site and orient the tent so the widest part is not perpendicular to the prevailing wind. With the Kingdom 8, this is particularly important. In our testing in Joshua Tree (famous for high winds), we found that as long as it was staked down and had all the guy-lines out, then it was fine unless the winds were exceptionally strong.

As for rain, this tent's rain fly covers the entire tent and will keep you dry in a storm. Although it only has one vestibule, REI sells an additional one that you can buy for about $40 to cover both doors completely. Without this extra vestibule, you want to be sure the vestibule side is oriented into the prevailing wind.

If you are looking for a more bombproof tent that is a little less comfortable but will be able to withstand more powerful storms, then check out the Big Agnes Flying Diamond 8