Apollo

 

Product Description

from MEC's website

Weight: 3kg

A super lightweight, surprisingly spacious shelter for three backpackers or cyclists. Even paddlers should find it sleeps them in the style to which they are accustomed.

The wedge-shaped design with upper crosspole provides generous headroom and supports double doors and twin vestibules. Windows at either end allow early morning sky surveillance to see if it's time to start or to sleep in.

Many ultralight shelters use very light fabrics throughout, including the floors. However, the waterproofness of these floors may abrade away long before the rest of the tent wears out. The Apollo floor is slightly heavier, but significantly more durably waterproofed. The fly is sexy, superlight, silicone-treated nylon. In sum, the fabrics are strong where strength belongs, and light where that's right.

Features

Sleeps three, or even four, if you're small.
Fly is 30-denier silicone-treated, polyurethane-coated nylon.
Canopy is 20-denier nylon mesh.
Floor is HT-Seal™, polyurethane-coated for long-lasting waterproofness to 10,000mm. Bathtub style for security on soggy ground.
Poles are Yunan aluminum, connected to a central hub for rapid assembly. Floating connectors make repairs simple: raw tube can just be cut to length.
Floor area is 4.5 sq. m.
Minimum weight is 2.8kg. Packaged weight is 3.0kg.
Made in Vietnam, fabrics from Taiwan frame from Korea.

Evaluation

Model introduced in Spring 2007. It's a relatively cheap and lightweight 3-season tent. I've used it about 45 nights over the past 6 months for car camping as well as backpacking. No problems whatsover. Construction is good. Watertight. Interior nice and bright. Fly gives good coverage nearly to the ground, so no problems with splashing through mesh even in dourpours, while the huge mesh panels mean no problems with condensation. Good tie outs made it stable enough even in moderate winds at Waterton NP, which is notorious for high winds. Huge interior for 2 adults, dog, and gear. Versatile, as light enough for 2 people backbacking.

The spring loaded poles are a bit of pain in the ass to fold away in a regualr pattern so that the ends are even and compact, but that's not unique to this tent.

An improvment would be to add compression straps to the bag.

My only reservation is with long-term durability of the zippers, which are light weight (yet no problems so far) and the plastic windows. We tend to be pretty easy on gear. Our winter tent still has no problems after 12 years and a couple hundred nights use.

I'd buy one again.