Swiss Gear St. Alban Family Dome Tent Review

Swiss Gear St. Alban Fam­ily Dome Tent Review

 

 

St. Alban Tent Size

The Swiss Gear St. Alban  is a fam­ily sized tent that is large enough for most fam­i­lies. Mea­sur­ing four­teen feet by eleven feet the St. Alban tent is designed to accom­mo­date eight peo­ple com­fort­ably. With 176 square feet there is more than plenty of room to move about. The mid­dle height of the tent is 76 inches and if did my math cor­rectly that is about six feet and four inches, so it should be tall enough for the major­ity of us to stand erect while inside with­out bump­ing our heads. If your are camp­ing with less than eight peo­ple then you will have plenty of room for all your camp­ing acces­sories or what­ever else you might  need stor­age room for. With the rain fly on you even get a lit­tle out­door space that is shaded from the sun.

Swiss Gear St. Alban Set Up

The first time we set up the Swiss Gear St. Alban it took us about  twenty min­utes. we were able to shave some min­utes off our time after a few expe­ri­ences set­ting it up. we are now com­ing in under fif­teen min­utes, which is pretty quick. I am also now able to set it up solo, but the rain fly almost cer­tainly requires a help­ing hand. The pin and ring sys­tem, and the eave hubs speed up the assem­bly process. Tak­ing this Swiss Gear down is easy as well. I didn’t have a prob­lem fit­ting it back in the stor­age bag which is rare with tents lately.

                            St. Alban Weather Features

The St. Alban comes with a water resis­tant sonic-welded poly­eth­yl­ene floor that works won­ders at not let­ting water seep through the bot­tom of the tent dur­ing wet weather to ruin your trip. The fab­ric of both the tent and the rain fly are coated with water repel­lant to keep the con­tents of the tent dry. Also the seams are  designed to not allow leak­age. This isn’t the per­fect tent for high winds, there will be some mov­ing around, but we didn’t have a col­lapse and we didn’t blow away. The cor­ners are designed to help in high winds though. The win­dows are large and pro­vide plenty of air flow. If their is no chance of rain I rec­om­mend remov­ing the rain fly. The mesh roof will add more air and a night view. the d shaped door is a nice touch.  The built in floor mat is a nice fea­ture as well, allow­ing you to eas­ily clean your shoes and feet and keep­ing dirt out of the tent.

Addi­tional Features

There are shoe stor­age areas near the door that have both inside and out­side access. The attached floor may keeps the inside of the St. Alban clean. Ther is  port for power cords so you can power your elec­tronic devices with­out hav­ing to leave the door open. there are some handy stor­age areas. the mesh roof is a nice touch.

 

Cons

As usual with every tent I come across the stakes aren’t well designed, but I always have after­mar­ket tent stakes ready for any camp­ing trip. They are rel­a­tively cheap for good quality.

 Summary

At this writ­ing the Swiss Gear St. Alban was 33% off at Ama­zon. Click to check cur­rent pric­ing.    This a good deal for a qual­ity fam­ily tent.

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