Wenger Dome Tent

Innovative design with a basic flaw in an otherwise good tent.

This is the most elaborate tent I have used. It is easy to set up and compact for the size though too big for easy backpacking. It has side windows that pop out with the support of two poles. There is no reason why these windows need to pop out as far as I can determine.

The fibreglass poles add to the weight and both splintered as was also the case with another reviewer at a different website. As the reviewer got splinters in his hand from the splintered fibreglass I was careful to tape it up and avoided injury. A normal tent window would have been fine and the pop out feature adds no extra useable space or function that I can determine.

The major design flaw is so fundamental that I can't understand why it was included. The four poles create a square depression in the rain cover that collects rainwater which eventually drips into the centre of the tent. It created a considerable amount of water that was quite heavy to push out from below and landed on the ground with such a splash that it woke my wife who asked what had happened. If the volume of the water reaches such a critical weight the nylon tent is bound to leak.

I was able to rectify the design flaw by cutting two wires about the thickness of a coat hanger, tying them at right angles with a deflated party balloon and attaching the four ends by bending the wire around the existing roof poles. This worked perfectly but leaves the wires sticking out of the pole bag when packed.

I have not noticed this design flaw in other tents, which suggest the designers were trying to over innovate and failed to test their design in real world conditions. The company website currently does not carry this tent which now has tents that do not appear to have this flaw.

Otherwise the tent includes features which while not unique are nevertheless useful, and not always present in other tents. There are two pockets in the overhead mesh for small items, two closable wall holes for taking in items from outside, and four roof hanger points. The roof hanger points can be used to hold up a waterproof sheet to catch the rainwater from the leaking roof. This water can be collected for drinking and other uses but is not likely to be enough to meet the camp water needs except in exceptional rainy conditions as the roof depression is only about a foot and a half by a foot and a half.

This is a difficult product to review as it has a design flaw that would make it often unusable, but is otherwise worth a 5 star rating. 

The photo is not quite the same as the tent reviewed as the roof depression created in the tent roof from 4 intersecting poles does not appear in the photo. This suggests the company has corrected the problem. The tent in the photo does not have pop out windows so that problematic feature also seems to have been eliminated.