Tenting In The Vango Skye Air II 400 AirBeam Tent

🕒 3-4 minute learn

The Vango Skye Air II does away with conventional poles offering a compact little tent ultimate for quite a lot of campers on the lookout for one thing that’s smaller, but nonetheless spacious and fast to place up.

What’s it?

Vango Skye Air II 400 AirBeam Tent RRP: £370

Stockists

Options

• Vango AirBeam® – Fast to pitch and creates a robust and inflexible construction
• All flysheet seams are manufacturing unit taped, which supplies a watertight seal
• Lantern Hanging Factors – Conveniently positioned to connect your gentle(s)
• Sq. form supplies further area to have higher freedom of motion when sleeping
• TBS®II pressure band system ensures the tent performs in antagonistic situations, particularly in sturdy, changeable winds
• AirSpeed® Valve – inflate and deflate your tent effortlessly in minutes with the distinctive and conveniently positioned valve
• Vango AirBeam® is fast to pitch and creates a robust and inflexible construction
• Bed room pockets are conveniently positioned pockets for storing your necessities
• Queen sized bedrooms present a 60cm sleeping space per individual, which means you may have loads of room to sleep and retailer necessities

We’re well-known for our elaborate tenting setups and while we love tenting in absolute consolation, arrange can typically take a ridiculously very long time for us to realize and on a brief tenting journey, that’s excessive even by our requirements.

I’ve a small tent that I really like and use for solo tenting journeys, however for the 2 of us, who like no less than a little bit of area and to not be on prime of one another together with area for our trusty camp lavatory, we wanted one thing that offered us with a contented medium, that wasn’t too tiny however equally not too massive!

We’ve been utilizing AirBeam tents since 2016 and completely love them and would select them each time over a conventional pole tent. Sure, they’re a bit dearer and is usually a bit bulkier, however ease of pitching greater than makes up for this.

Pitching the tent

The Skye Air II goes up identical to every other AirBeam tent, I are likely to roll the tent out, roughly peg it out on the corners, inflate the AirBeams, then end the method of pegging out and guying.

Climate situations have been good for my first pitch, so I didn’t use each man rope, and it took me about 5 minutes to pitch solo. Should you’re guying it out absolutely and also you’re doing it alone, you’ll nonetheless be absolutely pitched in below 10 minutes.

The primary time of pitching was slightly complicated, largely right down to the actual fact the Skye Air II doesn’t have absolutely sewn-in groundsheets, so discovering the bottom form of the tent left me momentarily bamboozled, however fortunately, as quickly as you pump up the beams (which takes about 30 seconds per beam) the tent just about pops into form making it apparent and much simpler to proceed pegging down.

Tent options

The bed room compartment is already clipped in, as is the clip in groundsheet that covers the entrance part of the tent, nevertheless this will simply be eliminated, if for some cause you didn’t need to use it.

There’s only one door on the tent on the left aspect, and we did observe a definite lack of bug mesh, which meant that in use, we needed to maintain the door closed more often than not, and have been grateful we had our Insect-o-cutor bug zapper with us.

On the entrance of the tent there’s a good air flow panel and once more, on the rear of the tent, in case you man it out, it opens up some further bed room air flow.

There’s the standard Vango storm tensioning straps contained in the tent, a number of lantern hanging factors in addition to storage pockets contained in the bed room space and the bed room door stows neatly away when not in use.

Practicality

I’ve been on three tenting journeys to this point on this tent and every time I’ve had a barely totally different configuration. The photographs under present the sleeping compartment with a single commonplace SIM inside sideways and lengthways to present you an concept of dimension/area.

On a solo tenting journey to Snowdonia the place I knew I used to be going to be out all day mountaineering and wished consolation above anything, I even managed to get my huge folding camp mattress contained in the tent!

Spectacular although that feat was, it’s actually designed for use with an air mattress or SIMs, and can comfortably sleep 2-3 adults. 4 can be attainable, however it will be a really tight squeeze certainly.

On one journey it poured closely all evening, and after a very good 9 hours of continuous rain, I awoke to discover a small pool of water contained in the tent, simply to the left of the door, on the base of the center AirBeam, proven under.

This revealed one of many downsides of the tent in that the highest and the aspect of the door zip shut, however the backside of the door solely closes through velcro which leaves gaps.

Which means In heavy rain and excessive wind, water can discover its manner inside. That mentioned, the quantity of water I needed to deal with was very small and was simply mopped up.

Remaining Verdict

This can be a nice little tent and fills a spot between a compact backpacking tent and a weekend or small household tent. The Skye Air II is right once we desire a fast evening away collectively, or once I’m solo tenting for just a few days and desire a wee bit extra space with out taking a a lot bigger tent leading to a tenting setup that’s too further.

It’s fast to place up and really steady due to it’s AirBeam building, which isn’t generally one thing you discover on a tent of this dimension. As with all AirBeam tents, it’s pretty cumbersome, however on the flip aspect, it’s fairly gentle to hold which makes this a very versatile little tent, although the shortage of sewn-in groundsheet, restricted home windows and no bug mesh door could possibly be a compromise too far for some.

We really feel the compromises are value it nevertheless for this good high quality, succesful and versatile inflatable tent that is available in at such an reasonably priced worth level and makes the perfect alternative for fast getaways.

DISCLOSURE | The featured product was gifted to us by Vango.co.uk. All views are our personal and we weren’t paid to put in writing this evaluation.

The place to subsequent?