The Coleman Aravis 2 is an entry-level tent for wild campers

Price: £149.99
Country of manufacture: China
Weight: 2.42kg
Poles: aluminium
Fly and groundsheet: polyester

Coleman’s new two-person trekking tent comes in firmly towards the budget end of lightweight tents.

Its flysheet offers waterproofing to 4,000mm of water, with the sewn-in groundsheet a slightly more resistant 5,000mm. This should cope with most of what the British weather can throw at the camper, unless you’re in a mountain storm.

Construction is polyurethane-coated ripstop polyester with fire-resistant treatment which Coleman says will self-extinguish if the heat source is removed. We didn’t test this element of its attributes!

Poles are in 7001-T6 aluminium. There is one long pole and one short, and the tent is essentially a wedge-shaped setup with twin doors either side.

The poles slide though mesh sleeves

The Aravis 2 pitches in one, and it’s fairly easy to put up. The long pole slides through a mesh sleeve in the centre of the front loop, then into two eyelets either side. There are then plastic clips by which the tent is suspended from the pole.

The much shorter rear pole again slides through a mesh sleeve and clips into eyelets at the bottom of the tent.

The rear central guyline and two central guylines at the front of the tent are then used to secure it in its upright position before pegging out the rest of the points and two more front guys. Once these are in place the outer is quite stable, though the inner tent had a tendency to flap a bit in the wind, producing noise overnight.

There are also four loops if you want to supply your own extra guys and provide some further stability.

The inner is just big enough to accommodate two people on sleep mats. As with all ‘two person’ tents, there isn’t much spare sleeping capacity. The design of the Aravis 2 means the best headroom is at one end of the inner, so you will probably both want to sleep facing the same way, rather than ‘top and tail’.

It's just possible to sit up in the Aravis 2

It was just possible to sit up in the highest point of the tent. Six-footers might feel a little less comfortable sitting up.

Even with two people snugly slotted into the inner tent, there was enough room either side to accommodate a rucksack each.

The tent has two doors, both in the inner and outer. Each main zip also has a storm flap covering it, which is secured at various points by Velcro.

The inner tent doors can be secured in the open position using the four twin toggles. There is also a mesh upper section in each door of the inner, which enables good ventilation, helped by an extra mesh panel at the lower, foot end of the inner tent. In fact, we encountered no condensation problems in the Aravis 2.

There is also a hook in the inner, from which to hang a lantern or your headtorch. There are twin net storage pockets.

The Coleman Aravis 2 is a good choice for a backpacker on a tight budget, or someone who wants to try lightweight camping without forking out a fortune on some of the very specialist ultra-lightweight tents.

The packed tent does take up a fair bit of room in the rucksack, and at almost 2.5kg is certainly not the lightest, though for a two-person tent it’s no heavyweight.

Guylines have reflective elements

Quality and design was good, with well-thought-out touches such as the reflective guy lines, which caught our headtorch beams well in the night.

The Coleman Aravis 2 is ideal for someone looking for a two-person backpacking tent who doesn’t need the lightest, most compact tent. It won’t stand up to the worst mountain storms, but it does provide shelter at a very reasonable price and has some nice features which indicate thought has gone into the design.

Pros:
Price
Design

Cons:
Packed size
Stability in very strong winds

Performance 20/30
Features 20/30
Design 12/15
Quality 11/15
Value for money 7/10
Total score: 70/100

More details are on the Coleman website.