Outwell Hayward Lake 5ATC: A Canvas-Style Luxury Air Framed Family Tent

Review Score

The Outwell Hayward Lake 5ATC is a top-end luxurious family tent, perfect for family camping holidays. You can also get 4-person and 6-person versions. Being a high-end tent, it is expensive, as you would expect. But at the time of writing, you can shop around and get it cheaper than the RRP.

Our Score: 8.8/10

We've given the Outwell Hayward Lake 5ATC the Thumbs Up award.

Value for MoneyFeaturesFamily FriendlyQualityPracticality

The good

• Very luxurious feel to the tent. The Outwell Airtech poly-cotton is excellent.
• Easy to pitch
• Plenty of space, with large living area, and extra long bedrooms.
• Generous size and practical porch area.
• Bug mesh on all the windows.
• Tinted privacy windows.
• Side doors both sides for extra ventilation.
• Darkened bedrooms but with 'windows' for light when you need it

The not so good

• Expensive (as you would expect), but shop around.
• Heavy. It is recommended two people to lift the tent.

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

Price Guide

Outwell Hayward Lake 5ATC has a recommended retail price of £2329.99.

The best price we've found so far is £1784.99. That's £545.00 off the RRP of £2329.99.View at Taunton Leisure

Taunton Leisure

£1784.9902/12/2023

Outwell Hayward Lake 5ATC Videos

Outwell Hayward Lake 5ATC Photos

Our Review

Tents come in all shapes and sizes. From small ultra-lightweight backpacking tents to large heavier family tents.

The Outwell Hayward Lake 5ATC is the latter, providing your family with a holiday home under canvas wherever you pitch it.

The Tent Layout

As you might have guessed from the 5ATC, this tent sleeps a maximum of 5 people.

There are two bedrooms: a three-person and a double.

The Bedrooms

This tent's layout is ideal for a family of 3 or 4. I expect the parents to take the three-bed and the kids in the double.

I should also mention that these bedrooms are longer than standard, coming in at 2.3 m deep.

We fitted two camping beds in the larger bedroom and a single bed in the double bedroom.

Camp beds take up more space than sleeping mats. If you use camp beds, this is a three-person tent to keep things comfortable.

The darkened bedrooms work well.

You have a toggle curtain at the back. This is for the ample ventilation at the back of the tent.

You have zip curtains on the tent door, allowing you to let in light when needed. These bedroom windows are only on the top third of the door to give you privacy. They also have bug mesh, so you can leave it unzipped for ventilation while keeping your bedroom bug free.

The larger bedroom has the excellent Outwell Quick & Quite magnetic door.

The Main Living Area

The living area is a generous size. A must-have accessory for this is the wall-to-wall tent carpet.

On either side of the tent are doors, each with bug mesh.

We didn't use these doors for going in and out of the tent, but when it was hot, having them open (but with the bug mesh screen) created a nice breeze.

The rest of the walls on the tent have large privacy windows with zip-up blinds.

Zip-up blinds are great. They are quick to close or open, and you can set the height exactly where you want it. If you need some privacy, just put them part of the way up.

The windows are large and tinted. They work very well as privacy windows, as anyone looking into your tent will find it difficult to see much.

The Main Door

The main tent door separates the living area from the generous porch.

This can be unzipped entirely, half-zipped, or zipped but with the Quick and Quiet door.

It has privacy windows, which can be rolled back to reveal bug mesh, helping you keep the tent cool.

We tended to have the doors configured so that one was just on bug-mesh with the Quick & Quiet doors.

The Quick & Quiet door makes it so easy to come and go from the tent, and the weighted magnets close the bug mesh behind you.

The Porch

I love this layout of a family tent with a large open porch at the front. It's so practical.

The porch is easily big enough to put a camp kitchen unit and some chairs so you can sit out of the breeze.

It also creates a tremendous wet-dry zone if it does rain - a perfect place to leave wet shoes rather than bringing muck inside your luxury tent.

The Tent Fabric

Wow!

The TC in the 5ATC stands for technical cotton.

This is Outwell's Airtech fabric, a blend of cotton and polyester with lots of high-tech design.

It feels like a luxury cotton tent but with all the advantages of modern material technology.

It provides much more insulation than polyester tents.

Warmer when cold. Cooler when warm.

Inside your tent on hot days, the fabric helps keep your tent cool. Not furnace-like, as you may find with some polyester tents.

And when the cooler weather does come, it will also provide more insulation than polyester.

Pitching

This is a heavy tent at almost 45kg, and it's recommended that at least two people lift and get it into position.

However, despite the large size, inflation was straightforward, and the tent went up with no problems.

As usual, Outwell's colour-coded pegging system makes pegging easy.

There is one tent pole, and that's to provide a strong edge to the porch.

The pole simply slots together and zips into place. However, it can be a reach (unless you are tall) to zip up at the apex of the porch.

New Guyline Additions

The guylines have Outwell's new tensioner. This makes it very easy to adjust the tension in the lines.

They have also replaced the Velcro guyline storage with a cord and toggle system.

Jump ahead in the video to see these in action.

Tent Dimensions

You'll need to pitch at a campsite that has large enough pitches.

Details