ust highlander 2-person backpacking tent with ultra light design and heavy duty, non-free standing waterproof construction for bikepacking, yakpacking, camping, and hiking

The media could not be loaded. 0/5 Stars.This tent failed on me on the first night it was used. I live in Puerto Rico and this garbage tent failed on me with just the load of the condensation built up on the inside of the rainfly and some dew collected on the outside. Under that insignificant load, the rear stakeout point just broke off. Upon further inspection, I noticed that almost all the other stakeout points in the rainfly are also about to break off. Further inspection revealed poor seam taping in the corners that is simply lifting off and poor stitching where the mesh is sown with the bottom tub.Does it have nice colors? YES... Does it look nice when you first pitch it? YES... Is it 100% useless? YES!I DO NOT recommend this tent to ANYONE, let alone at the current price range. It is DANGEROUS faulty tent that should be pulled out of the market.I wish I could return it, but sadly the return window closed. And I tried contacting UST, but they don't really offer a way for you to contact them if you live outside the states, like Puerto Rico.

I've held onto this until I could write a good review. Covid has limited our ability to camp until recently. First, I'm not sure of the title of this tent that it's for arm wrestling competitions- that is a pretty specific niche. (I hope you enjoy the chuckle I did on that).We do camping often and go backpacking. We thought this would be a nice gift for my daughter who is interested in backpacking more often.First the positives:I liked how compact it was. It packed down to a small space. I also like the space inside the tent. It is roomy and it has a nice layout. I checked out the stitching and it seems to be well made. The stitches are well set in the fabric. The materials the tent is made from is nice fabric. The zippers are well made and do not look as if they will easily break in a wind. The tent is fairly lightweight but if my daughter continues to backpack, we might look at something smaller for her. We liked the idea that she could use a hiking pole as one of the tent poles. By the time we set it up though we did not try this option although it says you can do it.The negatives:In my opinion, the negatives are very concerning. The directions that came with this tent were nonexistent- They were there but they were not good directions. Additionally, in part because of the poor directions, it took us some time to figure out how to set this tent up. Having set up many tents in the past 20 years, this should have been easy for us. After I mucked with it, I then called in help in the form of a husband and an Eagle Scout. Advice from us if you get this tent is to set it up prior to your camping trip to ensure you can do it.One thing to note:This tent requires ropes (guy lines) to set up and keep it up. It is not freestanding. This may or may not be a deal breaker for you. It isn't for us but it does add a bit of bother to setting up camp. After a day hiking (or driving if your a car camper), you may not want to be messing with guy lines in order to keep your tent up.

I own a number of good tents, including several by North Face, a Kelty, etc., so I speak from experience buying and using tents. This tent is a well-intentioned mess. In theory, it could run with the better tents I own. Materials are excellent. Size is great, both in the bag (where it's tiny) and set up. It includes a footprint. And the bag is a great design for repacking.But then there's the design of the tent itself which is just a mess. I never could get the tent set up because the poles have smaller and larger-diameter ends which fit into grommets on the tent which are also of differing sizes. I don't know why they used different sized pole ends and grommets--requiring insertion in one direction--but they did. Unfortunately, one set of grommets on the tent didn't have a large and small, but just two smalls and so its pole will only attach at one end. I can drill out the grommet to make it work, but it's kind of silly to have differing sizes when there is no reason to do so. It's not as if the poles have to be installed with one end up....Then there's the bigger issue (the grommet issue could be a one-off manufacturing mistake) of the tent not being self supporting. The last tent I bought that wasn't able to stand freely but required guy lines to stand erect was a Boy Scout pup tent I used in the backyard of my childhood home.There is no excuse for this tent requiring guy lines for the inner tent to stand upright. If you're selling an ultra-light, maybe, but this isn't that kind of tent. It comes with a footprint and rainfly.Finally, setup is a chore. Initially, the instructions are terrible. And even after finally figuring things out (a problem made worse in our case by the inability to insert one pole), the tent is hard to put up with just one person.I wish this had gone better. I like some of ust's other products. But this one, despite its real virtues, is best avoided.

I want to love the ust highlander 2-person backpacking tent…but I do not. There are a number of things to love about it. It is super lightweight. It is roomy and easily can fit 1 or 2 people in it. It includes a footprint. It is a bright color scheme that is just kind of fun. The storage bag is well designed with compression straps to keep it tight in your pack. The stitching along the seams appear sturdy and straight – well put together. The guy lines are synthetic rope. The stakes are metal and did not bent at all when I hammered them in. The poles snapped together easily. And yet… setting this up is a chore. This is not a standalone tent. You MUST have guy lines to keep it upright. Without them, the tent just falls over. The instructions are not well written. If you have not put up a tent before, you will struggle. I figured it out as much by intuition as anything else. I ignored the instructions and did what seemed right. I was able to set it up by myself, but in windy conditions that would have been really hard to do. Also, the poles are not interchangeable because they are all different sizes to go in specific places. They advertise that you could replace the pole with your hiking pole but the grommets that you must put the tent poles into would likely make that hard to do. Being light, this got me excited about using it on long hikes. But if I had to set this up at the end of a long day on the trail over and over again, I would end up sleeping under the stars. It would get old quick with the amount of time and complexity of attaching so many guy line to so many stakes. There is a lot to love about this tent and I really do want to love it. But the setup is just so much of a pain that this will be a weekend camping tent at most, not a backpacking tent.

This tent is super large, at 4' by 7' this can easily accommodate 2 adults but they'd have to sleep side by side (just in case your counting on going camping with a friend).It's insanely light for it's quality and size and it's very easy to assemble. Don't get me wrong, it's not a backpack tent but for it's size and quality and thickness of nylon, it is very light.Comes with a nice carry bag, a bag for the poles and a bag for the stakes and all the tools and equipment you need to set it up and it's very sturdy after installation. If you only use two poles, it does stand but it won't be able to handle wind, I recommend using 4 poles.The first few times it took us about 30 to 45 minutes to assemble and fix but after a few times we are not at 20 minutes with no hassle. If you learn how to fold it properly when you're done with it, the time you need next time to re-assemble shortens drastically. When you are pulling the poles from their sleeves you have to be careful not to tear the tent as it can get really tight and firm. The yellow and gold colors go together and the blue colors go together.Most of the walls are not vertical so all the space you have in the tent is not really useable and there's a little bit waste of space. It is not that tall at about 3.5' high. Neither me nor my husband can really walk or even move easily without crunching.The poles are not the thickest and heaviest but still very durable. I've seen thicker and stronger poles but We've used these for tens of times these past few months and had no issues whatsoever.The polyester quality is very very good, we haven't used it in rainy days but I can easily and confidently say that it can handle rain and even snow. Not very heavy snow since its not that thick and the structure can't handle the weight.The mesh pockets are pretty nice and they can help with keeping lots of stuff in them. They are at about mid height so if you are laying down on the ground you won't be able to reach them which can be a downside.overall, I strongly recommend this product as it is of a very high quality and very light weight. a bit overpriced but I can vouch for the quality and functionality of this. Has been a great addition to our camping gear during the past couple of months.