User Review: The North Face Heron 23

The North Face Heron 23
Above: The current Heron 23, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed May 29, 2006 by John LeDareche

Rating:
Design: three season free standing
Sleeps: 2
Ease of Setup: Quick and simple
Weight: around 4 pounds
Price Paid: $289

Having been disappointed in some of the North Face's tent designs in recent times, I have nothing but good to say about this tent. To me they went away from trying to make a fancy looking tent to one that performs. Instead of wowing your eyes this tent will wow you on performance.

The North Face now tapes their perimeter floor seams, so throw away that seam sealer for good because it will never be needed anywhere on this tent. I used it for four nights in the White Mountains of New Hampshire recently where on one night it rained, hailed, and had huge wind gusts with branches flying off trees and not a drop inside the tent even though I had water pooling under the tent to the point where the floor started to feel like a water bed instead, but nothing even came close to breaching the tent at any of its seams and the ventilation is improved over older designs so no condensation problems to report either.

All in all you can't go wrong with this tent. Congratulations to The North Face for getting back to performance rather than wild geometrical designs. I would have given this tent 5 stars but it suffers the same thing all two-man tents suffer and that is size, which is on par with any two-man tent from the manufacturer of your choice.