User Review: Big Agnes Seedhouse SL1

Big Agnes Seedhouse SL1
Above: The current Seedhouse SL1, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed July 27, 2007 by Sh64

Rating:
Design: freestanding
Sleeps: 1
Ease of Setup: annoying to stake out, too may stakes
Weight: 3 lbs +/-
Price Paid: $249

Read all the reviews and decided this sounded the best, so I got one and took it up into the Sierras for 8 days in June. It's a decent tent, but it didn't live up to the hype. First off, the front entry door is fairly low and difficult to get into. If you're over 6' you'll have problems with this. I was hiking with a friend who had the Marmot Eos-1 with the side entry, and he was laughing the whole trip at the way I had to duck and wiggle in. Another annoying door issue was the way the door was canted out, exposing it to rain when the rainfly flap was open. If you tried to enter this tent in a downpour, you'd end up with quite a puddle inside the tent.

Second, the vestibule is small, forget about putting your whole pack there. The tent interior is big, but not big enough for a person and a pack, so my pack ended up outside every night. I would rather have a smaller tent interior and a larger vestibule for my pack and dirty gear. The most annoying thing about this tent was the way it staked out. Too many stakes, and the way the two side stakes at the narrow end are designed make it impossible to get the rainfly completely tight. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but I had one night camping in a persistent wind, and the rainfly around this area buzzed and flapped loudly all night long. I finally had to get up at 3am and tie it off with some extra cord because it was so loud.

Also had some condensation problems, but no more than you'd usually expect. I have yet to see a tent with zero condensation.