Are Vango Tents Any Good?
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Vango tents are one of the leading tent manufacturers and set the standards high when it comes to quality and price. They have made tents in variety of sizes, shapes and for a number of requirements, but they key question is, are they any good?
Vango tents are well worth buying as they are waterproof, breathable and come in a range of sizes suitable for any requirements. They also have created special technologies to give the tent materials the best coverage and even extended warranties for the products.
In this article we are going to be talking about who Vango are, what they do and whether we think their tents are owrth buying.
Who Are Vango?
Vango is a Scottish company with a lot of heritage in the outdoor equipment world. They’re particularly popular and influential in the UK – they have long worked alongside the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, where they provide students with outdoor equipment to allow them to complete their qualifications.
Vango is known, principally, for its tents. For an awfully long time, they’re been at the forefront of tent manufacturing, making innovations that other companies simply haven’t matched. For example, the Vango Force Ten classic tent was the first tent on the market to use an integrated flysheet and A pole as part of the tent itself.
These tents were so impressive to mountaineers at the time that they were used for approach marches and at camps one and two during a 1972 and 1975 Everest expedition – if a tent can do well on Everest, it can do well anywhere.
These innovations continued for many years, from the TBS (tension band system) in Vango’s tents, to the AirBeam system which allows for the exceptionally rapid inflation of tents and awnings without the use of poles.
What Are Vango Tents Like?
As we said in the first part of this article, Vango is known for its innovation. They aren’t letting down on that front even to this day, with recent ranges of tents being among the world’s lightest air tents.
Vango sells a large number of different family tents large enough to accommodate a whole family very comfortably on a camping trip. Among their larger tents, you can get poled family tents or simply larger AirBeam tents that inflate, rather than requiring assembly.
As well as the larger tents that would be suitable for a family, there are also a number of smaller tents ideal for one- or two-person camping trips. While some of the larger family tents have a skeleton made with the AirBeam technology, the adventure tents (designed for fewer people) are typically poled, requiring a traditional setup.
All of the Vango tents make use of their Sentinel Signature fabric, which is designed to combine the leading properties of both cotton and polyester. The rich polycotton fabric is very water-resistant and perfectly breathable for great climate control. The fabric is also particularly soft and very lightweight – ideal for carrying and setting up.
Finally, the fabric also boasts UPF50 UV protection, as well as ColourLok technology, which aids in color retention. This all adds up to mean that when you’re buying a tent from Vango, you’re buying a tent that you’re going to have for a long time – the fabric that it’s made of is dependable, durable, and extremely unlikely to fade in any way.
Finally, we come to the quality of Vango tents. Vango tents are, as you might expect, a high-quality brand with a huge pedigree. To impress upon you how strong and durable these tents are, bear in mind that Vango offers a two-year warranty on any of its equipment (aside from footwear). That’s a great warranty!
Beyond that, if you register your product with Vango themselves, they’ll add another year onto that warranty – that’s how confident they are in their products, they’re sure that you’re going to love them for a long time.
How Much Are Vango Tents?
Vango makes a huge variety of different tents, from small to large, and budget to premium. This means that there are tents at a number of different price points.
The cheapest tent that Vango offers is the Soul 100, a one-person tent that costs £55. This tent is certainly a budget option, but coming from as high-end a brand as Vango, that means very little – the tent will likely still be perfectly good for almost any use case.
The most expensive tent that Vango offers is their Anantara III Air TC 650XL, which has won several different camping awards, impressively. This six-person tent is a great example of their AirBeam system, a unique example of their single point inflation valve, which allows the tent to be quickly and easily inflated at a single point.
The AirBeam technology is their most impressive tent innovation, and they’re exceptionally proud of it – for good reason! They’ve made a lot of strives in this area, and it’s impressive to see.
Are Vango Tents Any Good?
There are a number of different metrics by which tents are generally considered to be good, bad, or somewhere in the middle. In this last part of the article, we’re going to go through them one by one.
Firstly, a good tent must be waterproof. Really, if a tent isn’t waterproof or, at least, water-resistant, then it isn’t worth the money that you’re spending on it. As we mentioned above, all of Vango’s tents are made from their Sentinel Signature fabric, which is both waterproof and breathable.
This is the mark of a truly excellent tent, as it allows you to rest and sleep easy, knowing that you aren’t going to have a surprising deluge in the middle of the night.
Another important metric by which tents are judged is their longevity. If you’re going to be paying a premium price for a tent, then you want to make sure that tent lasts for a good, long while.
Aside from their range of footwear, every single product that Vango sells comes with a two-year warranty. On top of that, you can register your product with them for another year’s free warranty.
It goes without saying that this is an impressive feature, and it also shows how much faith Vango have in their tents. If your tent is at all damaged or destroyed within the warranty, then they will be happy to help you out.
Vango offers two different types of tent in their vast range. One type is poled, and the other is their unique AirBeam system. The poled variety tents are just as dependable, impressive, and easy to put up as you might expect from a high-end brand – Vango make good products, and this is no exception.
The AirBeam tents are even easier to put up.
In the skeleton of the tent, there is a single valve that can be used to inflate the whole tent, ensuring that you erect your tent in no time at all. This method is also significantly easier than the traditional method, which sometimes involves wrestling with a pile of poles and an instruction manual.
Finally, the last thing to consider when thinking about buying a tent from a company is the range of tents that they offer. If they offer just one or two tents, then they may not be too high quality – you’re relying on one or two designs to give you a good sense of the whole company.
This most certainly isn’t the case for Vango – they sell a huge variety of tents, from one-person tents to enormous, family-sized affairs. Vango makes truly superb tents, and they make a lot of them – it’s really impressive.