A great weekend tent for a family with one or two kids

Review Score

Price Guide

Coleman Castle Pines 4 BlackOut Tent has a recommended retail price of £429.99.

The best price we've found so far is £387.11. That's £42.88 off the RRP of £429.99.View at Leisure Depot

Amazon

£403.2611/12/2023

Leisure Depot

£387.1110/12/2023

Outdoor Action

£449.9510/12/2023

Coleman Castle Pines 4 BlackOut Tent Videos

Coleman Castle Pines 4 BlackOut Tent Photos

Our Review

This tent comes packed with features without being a massive tent to store, transport, or set up.

Let's take a closer look.

Tent Layout

The Coleman Castle Pines 4 uses an excellent tent layout for family camping, with two bedrooms at the back, a living space, and a large sheltered front entrance. There's no need to crawl in and out of this tent ;-)

Tent Bedrooms

Let's start with the tent's bedrooms.

These use Coleman's BlackOut feature, which not only makes them darker for a better night's sleep, but Coleman also says that the design helps keep the bedrooms warmer at night and cooler during the day.

The divider between the bedroom can be unzipped, making it easy to get to your kids if they wake up at night. The divider also zips all the way around, so young kids can't crawl underneath the divider and wake you at 5 am! :-)

Either way, the BlackOut bedrooms should help keep them sleeping when the sun rises early in the summer.

The bedrooms also have useful storage pockets for bits and pieces.

Living Areas

Being a weekend tent, it doesn't have a huge living space, but it's large enough for bags and getting kids sorted.

You have a choice of a large front entrance or a side door.  Typically, we would only use the side door on warm and dry summer days.

All doors have a bug-free mesh, so the side door can be left open, but with the mesh in place.  This gives extra light and helps cool down the tent in summer but helps keep the flies out.

All the windows have blinds, which zip up.  Many tents use toggles for blinds, but zips are less hassle. The zips also enable you to have the blinds half up. This is ideal if you are changing young kids in the living space as it gives you privacy but still plenty of light coming in.

The groundsheet at the big front door lays flat. This is an excellent feature to look for.

Without it, young kids typically trip over the tent entrance at some point (and adults, too!), so it's great to see the lay-flat entrance on this tent.

The small shelter outside the tent helps get in and out of the tent if there's a rain shower.

Pitching

This is a light tent to get in and out of your car at just over 16 kg and with a relatively small pack size, making it ideal for last-minute decisions to go camping when a sunny weekend comes.

Pitching is with flexible poles that slot together. These are colour-coded and slot into sleeves on the tent that match the colour of the pole.

If you know what you are doing, one person can pitch this type of tent. Two adults aren't always free to pitch the tent when looking after young kids. However, you would find it easier with two people, but the second person only needs to provide an occasional hand.

Accessories

You can get a carpet and a tent footprint.

Both are useful accessories, but I recommend getting the carpet over the footprint if your budget is tight. However, some retailers are doing tent bundles that include the carpet and footprint cheaper than buying them individually.

Alternatives

If you are looking for a similar spec tent but inflatable, look at the Coleman Weathermaster 4 Air.

If you like this tent but want a slightly large one, look at the Coleman Castle Pines 4L.

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