Gazelle Tents T4 Hub Tent Overland Edition

I bought this tent based on borrowing my buddies gazelle last winter, and I couldn’t be happier with the purchase, the height, the ease at which it goes up. Easily makes us the best tent I’ve ever earned.

We love this tent.. fits my wife and our son like a castle. It’s as easy to put up and down as the videos make it look. This tent has found its home in our roof box so, that we are ready to party for the whole night wherever we go.

I am an experienced long time car camper who has purchased instant tents before as well as other types of tents including cotton canvas, car top tents, tent trailers, pup tents, etc. This is second easiest tent I set up. The easiest is the 9'X10' Coleman Instant tent which is too small for my needs now. This Gazelle is actually much heavier than I anticipated. I can see why now because it has a lot more supportive poles in order to make it so instant. I did a backyard trial pitch of the tent. We all were delighted how fast the body of the tent went up. There are lots of convenient pockets inside. I love the door between rooms. We have a dog and she can be an escape artist. It will help contain her at night if we need to step outside. I love the screen room also. And it feels roomier inside than anticipated. I like the tub floor but need to be mindful that the velcro needs to be secured to avoid unwanted critters to enter. As with all tents there are pros and cons. The cons of this tent: #1- I have read online that the hub system on the roof can collapse in even moderate wind gusts. This has been noted by a number of campers. It is said the weakness is between the rooms where the roof hubs are free floating with no vertical pole support. When conditions are specific like wind gusts, not level ground or tight tension on middle guy outs that the roof hubs collapse. And can do so suddenly with force. One camper said his 12 yo son was walking around in the tent during a storm and it suddenly collapsed. He said if his son was standing directly under that hub he could have potentially been severely injured. Another commenter on the thread mentioned she had that happen also and bought two awning poles (the kind with rubber cap on both ends). She put the poles flush against the center wall, one each surrounding the center inside door. That has been successful to support the weak area in the center where the roof hubs float. If I were Gazelle I would find reviews in different areas of the internet taking this issue to heart the various contributors to this issue. Then do design modification...ASAP. I have camped in very heavy storm winds. So I will buy the poles and consider other mods I can do myself. #2- I personally found the door poles not easy at all to place around main door. The tent body was incredibly fast to pitch. But the door poling? My daughter and I struggled for about 45 minutes researching, attempting all sorts of ways to get the poles in. The horizontal pole does not have a metal piece on one of the inner ends unlike the vertical door poles. We had to unseat that part and then work to connect them as we eased the pole in place. Because there was no metal piece protecting that one side inner end, the end piece immediate rubbed against the other metal end and the raw fiberglass end started fraying. This inner piece should have a metal cap also...just like the vertical poles. I have read gear reviews where people skip putting in this pole. It took 5 minutes to pitch the tent body first time. And 45 minutes dealing with the door poling system. This tent too 50 minutes first time pitching. For perspective my Kodiak Canvas tent takes about 20-30 minutes and is about same weight without poles which I carry in bag separately. Hopefully I can get the Gazelle down to a 15 min set up with poles and rain fly. If I can figure out a faster way to pole front door my set up time will greatly reduced. This is a long review. But I felt the information iwould be helpful to those considering purchasing this tent as well as helpful to design team. Overall, after first try I like the tent. Will see about self tweaking and mods to make spectacular.

Ease of set up and finally being able to stand up in a tent! Also the two entry exit points make it great for not having to crawl over somebody to get out!