great bear tent

In the Good Old days, people went to camping stores and looked at tents...

Seriously, why not go to a proper camping shop and have a look? Not sure where you are, but near me there are two good ones and both are staffed by proper outdoors enthusiasts with lots of knowledge

I am in Perth W.A, we have BCF & Rays not too far away, i have bought tents from these places before and the staff dont really know how they perform under a bit of pressure, if we spent a few hundred dollars and bought a black wolf or simular we'd probably be safe but i dont want to spend that much, imo the best knowledge you can get is from listening to people who use the products, great bear is obviously a unknown, I will visit Anaconda, i havnt seen there tents yet.

We had a tent that set up similar to this one and it was truly terrible.

The poles that slotted into the pins were badly setup and almost took our fingers off every time we setup.

The inner sleeping sections are simple to setup but because of the way it attached was easy to overstretch and break.

The sleeping sections were very steep near the outer which meant that you couldnt even put a double air matress in without it pushing aginst the side and up aginst the fly (because of this the water leaked through the contact points all the time) - this was possibly the worst issue we had.

Because the centre area was not a bucket design, but part a seperate tarp like floor it was not even close to weather proof (if it rained water came in freely) we could not store anything in that section.

It was also very difficult to setup, of the four tents we have - that one was the worst.

Also, that is a rather heavy tent for what you get.

I recently bought a blackwolf 4V for our 11yr old daughter and she can set it up easily. We got it from Kangaroo Tent City. I know they have an online store and do post, though I wouldnt like to pay for postage from NSW to Perth!

Goodluck on the tent search, in my experience with that style of tent I would have to say keep looking this one has too many design flaws.

I am not familiar with the particular tent on eBay but I have found the cheap Coleman two bow tents to be ok. If your teenagers are anything like mine it is not worth spending much on the tent as they don't look after them anyway so I bank on just having to replace them often.
Which as a side note there is a set of tent poles left behind last season in the Simpson Desert about 15k east of Poeppels Corner care of my teenage son......sigh!
Luckily I anticipated such an incident and carried a third tent with us in anticipation.
When buying dome tents I look for ones with the thicker poles as they stand up to the wind better

That's an interesting design, at first I didn't realise the open part was a large vestibule, with the 2 sleeping areas off at tangents.

It looks like the angled wall would be restrictive for at least the outside person.

At the moment, I'm looking for a new tent to replace a good old 4 man dome, that has served us well and numerous trips, but want a little more room now.

Have thought tourers would be the best option, but they are so heavy, and take up a huge amount of space packed up.

When looking at a couple of apparently good ones, I did come across this 6 person dome . . . http://www.outdoorconnection.com.au/tents/1room-dome-tents/escape-6-dome-tent.html and http://www.kellyscamping.com.au/p/4470733/Outdoor-Connection-Escape-person-tent-with-vestible.html?utm_source=myshopping&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Camping+and+Outdoor&utm_term=Outdoor+Connection+Escape+6+person+tent+with+vestible is another just found at one of their online retailers.

A much more manageable 15kg package, 1.9m height, probably decent 1.8m or so usable inside, great ventilation, has poles to use veranda as awning, and looks like large vestibule with excellent weather protection . . . I am thinking of this, and add some velcroed triangle ripsptop nylon sections to each side of the poled out awning to provide more wind driven rain pro from the sides.

Cheers,
Les