The REI Flash 3 is a freestanding, double-wall 3-person tent that’s light-weight and compact sufficient for backpacking however spacious sufficient for automobile tenting. Whereas REI charges it for 3 individuals, I feel it’s on the small dimension for 3 full-grown adults except your third companion is a canine or a small little one. The place it actually shines is as a 2-personal palace with an unlimited quantity of ceiling mesh for air flow and stargazing, with loads of additional room to unfold out. Along with its beneficiant size, good for tall individuals, the close to vertical aspect and finish partitions on the Flash 3 present higher livability for occupants than the sloped partitions of many dome-shaped tents.
Specs at a Look
- Finest Use: Backpacking and Tenting
- Kind: Double Wall
- Construction: Freestanding Tent
- Doorways: 2
- Variety of Poles: 3
- Inner pockets: 4
- Claimed Minimal Path Weight: 3 lbs 7.6 oz
- Precise Minimal Path Weight: 3 lbs 11.8 oz (Interior Tent and Rainfly: 41.5 oz) (Poles (3): 18.3 oz)
- Most pole phase size: 18″
- Precise Interior Tent Dimensions: 85 x 68/61 (L x W head/foot) inches
- Peak Peak: 42″
- Precise Packed dimensions (in stuff sack supplied): 19″ x 7″
- Seam-taped: Sure
- Footprint: Not included.
- Minimal variety of stakes to pitch: 6; Advisable: 8-9
- Cloth: 20D Ripstop nylon
The REI Flash 3 is a light-weight, freestanding double-wall tent with two doorways and two vestibules. It has an enormous expanse of mesh making it good for stargazing whereas offering wonderful air flow when used with or with out its rain fly. Totally seam-taped, the partial aspect and end-walls present additional privateness, wind, and dirt safety whereas the big doorways allow easy accessibility and exit.
Nonetheless, the Flash 3’s head and foot finish widths of 68″/61″ inches, make it decidedly slender for 3 full-grown adults. Whilst you might match three x twenty-inch extensive sleeping pads aspect by aspect within the interior tent, it truly is a decent squeeze. You’d most likely be much more snug utilizing the Flash 3 as an opulent two-person tent with a canine or small little one as a 3rd companion.
The Flash 3 comes with three poles which slot into color-coordinated man out factors. With a view to save weight and make the tent extra packable, the REI selected to not join all of the poles along with a number of hubs, which is usually the case with different tent producers. The draw back of that is that it makes the tent just a little extra sophisticated to arrange and might result in a misplaced pole except you’re cautious to maintain monitor of all of them when breaking down the tent.
Whereas not troublesome to pitch, it takes a follow session or two to determine how one can arrange the Flash 3 and is finest carried out in your yard a number of occasions earlier than you try to determine it out with a associate within the discipline, notably when you’re making an attempt to impress them together with your outside abilities. There are instructions included within the tent’s stuff sack, though you possibly can determine it out with sufficient endurance. 🙂
Whereas the interior tent is technically freestanding, it’s giant sufficient and underneath sufficient structural pressure that it’s important to stake out the corners whenever you set it up. The rainfly snaps into the corners of the interior tent, so that you simply want one stake in every nook for each. Nonetheless, I’d encourage you so as to add a number of additional guylines alongside the fly perimeter for stability in wind and to maximise the interior quantity.
Not like a dome tent, there’s a distinct directionality to the Flash 3, with a head finish and a foot finish. Whereas the tent has an unlimited quantity of inside quantity, it doesn’t have numerous pockets inside, or the place you’d anticipate finding them. For instance, there are not any pockets on the within of the doorways and no gear loft pockets within the ceiling. There are 4 mesh pockets on the again wall of the tent on the junction between the stable material and the mesh wall, however they’re a bit excessive as much as comfortably attain when you’re mendacity in your sleeping bag.
There’s sufficient inside quantity, nevertheless, to retailer numerous gear contained in the tent, however the Flash 3 is decidedly gentle in relation to the frills discovered on different tents of this quantity just like the Large Agnes Copper Spur HV UL3 or the NEMO DragonFly OSMO 3P. The Flash 3 is cheaper for that purpose, so that you’ll must resolve whether or not the added options in these tents are definitely worth the value distinction.
Whereas the rainfly covers the interior tent mesh, it doesn’t present full protection over the ends of the interior tent however is scooped to allow higher airflow inside. The uncovered partitions of the interior tent are as waterproof because the fly, so there’s no internet loss in performance. NEMO was actually the primary tent producer to include this scoop design extensively throughout their product line and its been adopted by different producers since. It additionally helps scale back the burden of the rainfly as a result of there’s much less material required.
As talked about, the Flash 3 is a two-door tent with two vestibules which is a must have for consolation when tenting with two or extra individuals. The Flash’s vestibules are giant with loads of room to stow a backpack. The doorways have bi-directional zippers so you possibly can partially unzip one from the highest down or backside up, even in dangerous climate, to extend air flow by the tent with a purpose to offset any condensation formation.
Comparable 3-Particular person Tents
Suggestion
Whereas the REI Flash 3 is bought as a three-person tent, it’s most likely finest thought-about a excessive quantity 2+ particular person tent with house sufficient for 2 adults and a younger little one or canine. One in every of its most important advantages is a comparatively small pack dimension because of the truth that its poles will not be packaged collectively in a single big multi-hubbed array, however damaged aside so that they take up much less quantity. Whereas it doesn’t have numerous inside pockets and options discovered on dearer tents, its size, vertical aspect partitions, and huge mesh ceiling provide occupants a extra spacious feeling of inside quantity and star-gazing potential than most comparable dome-shaped three-person tents.
Disclosure: The creator owns this tent.
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