Easy Camp Match Air 500 Review

Review Score

Our Score: 8.7/10

We've given the Easy Camp Match Air 500 Review the Thumbs Up award.

QualityValue for MoneyFeaturesFamily FriendlyPracticalityEase of Pitching

The good

• Darkened Bedrooms.
• Large Living Space.
• Inflatable for faster pitching.
• Built-in porch with a great amount of space.
• Extra features like guy line storage and lay-flat groundsheet at doors.
• The pump attaches to tent valves, which makes inflating easier.

The not so good

• Bedrooms are smaller than 5 people in practice. Better for two adults and two children.
• Velcro at bottom of tent doors may not be to everyone's liking.
• No bug mesh on the doors.

This was a hands-on product review. The product was supplied to us to test and conduct the review.

Price Guide

Easy Camp Match Air 500 Review Videos

Easy Camp Match Air 500 Review Photos

Our Review

The Easy Camp Match Air 500 is just the right size tent for a family of three or four, and a strikes a good balance between being small and manageable enough for a last-minute weekend camping trip, yet provides plenty of living space for those longer camping holidays - especially if you have younger children.

I really like the fact that this tent has a built-in front porch. These are so useful to help get in and out of your tent in the rain, and also store wet and muddy boots so the kids don't bring it all into the tent.

On warm dry days in the summer, you might also use the side door, creating a nice cooling breeze in your tent.

Inside the tent, there is a good amount of living space. If you do get bad weather, it's somewhere to entertain the kids. But also provides plenty of space for storage for all the clothes, toys, and food.

The bedrooms are arranged as a two-person and a three-person. Yes, you could sleep five, but we think this is more comfortable for a family of three or four, with Mum and Dad using the larger bedroom for a bit extra storage.

As you can see, the bedrooms are darkened. This should help everyone sleep for longer when the sun rises early during the summer camping season.

Of course, this is an Air tent, and so you pitch it by inflating tubes on the tent. This can reduce pitching time as you don't need to mess around with a lot of tent poles, though there is still one tent pole to support the front porch. A pump is included with the tent.

Hands-on Review of the Match Air 500

Fortunately for us, Easy Camp agreed to send us over a Match Air 500 to get a closer look.

The Tent Bag

The bag is deceptively heavy for its size and weight of just over 20kg, but it's a good size to easily fit into most people's car boot.

The bag contains the tent (of course!), pump, pegs, and a pole for the front porch.

Inflating the Tent

With the pump screwed onto the valve, inflating the tent was really easy.

Pitching the Porch

The only tent pole in the Easy Camp Match Air 500 is for the porch.

This is a metal pole that slots together and slides into a sleeve along the top of the porch material. Pole then fits into some pole spikes at the bottom of the tent, and the legs velcro into place.

The Tent Carpet

We were lucky enough to be sent the tent carpet for the Match Air 500 :-)

The carpet comes rolled up with some velcro straps to keep it together.

Putting the carpet down really makes a difference to the feel of the tent, and well worth getting as an extra item IMHO.

Some additional little features

I spotted a few little features that are worth pointing out.

First, is that this tent comes with guyline storage. This is something I typically only see on Outwell tents, and it really helps keep those guylines tidy so that they are not all tangled up the next time you get your tent out.

The other feature is the lay-flat groundsheet on both the front and side doors.

You soon notice the lack of this feature on tents that don't have it when they trip you up.

You can have the groundsheet at the doors toggled up, which is ideal if it's raining.

Otherwise, they un-toggle and lay flat so you don't trip going in and out of the tent.

Our first test pitch in the garden

Getting a hands-on review really helped. We ould add furniture and really get a feel for how this tent works in practice.

The porch is a hugely practical space.

Verdict

After getting my hands on this tent to test it, it still measures up to my expectations.

Things I really liked:

• Pitching was straightforward and easy.
• The porch is large enough and very practical.
• Good airflow with both doors open.
• Plenty of living space inside the tent, which is great for storage space needed for longer family camping trips.
• Great features like guy storage and lay-flat groundsheet at both doors.

Things there were not so great:

• As we expected, fitting 5 people in the bedrooms would be difficult, though not impossible if you had smaller sleeping mats. We recommend this for a family of two adults and two children.
• There's no zip at the bottom of the door, only velcro. The velcro soon got filled with grass, and I didn't like the way it pulls on the tent fabric when you try to open the door. Unless the weather is bad, we wouldn't velcro the bottom of the door anyway.

Another thing to note, it doesn't have all the features of more expensive tents, such as a bug screen on the doors. However, despite the little niggles, this is still an excellent tent, and we'd happily give it the Thumbs Up Award.

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