Regatta Malawi 2 Pop-up Tent

Regatta sent us over their Regatta Malawi 2 pop-up tent to have a quick look at.

Regatta Malawi 2 details

Now, these sort of tents are very popular with young adults going to summer festivals as they are very simple to pitch, and no need to mess around with tent poles.

But what about for family use?

Well, these pop-up tents are ideal if

• your kids want some garden camping in the summer,
• if you are going summer camping and you have older kids who want to bring some friends,
• or you have a large family tent with a large living space and you want to create a temporary extra bedroom.

Pitching

This is where pop-up tents like the Malawi 2 really shine: pitching is extremely straightforward.

Regatta says it pitches in 2 seconds. I would agree that it unfolds into a tent within 2 seconds, but you should then peg out the tent, which takes a bit longer. Even if you don’t peg out the guylines, we found that the bottom of the tent was still curved, and so a few tent pegs at the front and rear of the tent should help keep it flat.

Of course, with nothing in the tent, if it isn’t pegged down, it will blow away if the wind picks up. 😉

The Regatta Malawi 2 pop-up tent

Inside the Tent

Compared to a similar tent we had reviewed in the past, the Regatta Malawi 2 was slightly larger inside. Two young adults could easily share, so there is plenty of room for a couple of kids to share.

Looking inside the tent

A nice touch is that there are little storage pockets on both sides of the tent so that if you are sharing, there’s a place for both people to have things off the ground like phones, etc.

Both sides of the tent have a small storage pocket

At the rear of the tent is a vent, which has bug mesh, as well as two other bug-mesh protected vents at the front. There’s also bug mesh over the front door, and with the groundsheet sewn in, you could keep this tent bug free.

Of course, being a simple pop-up tent, there is no separate inner tent lining. Depending on the weather, condensation could build up on the inside of the tent, so it’s best to keep sleeping bags from touching the sides, as they could get damp from condensation. But if you keep this tent for good weather summer camping, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Putting the tent away

This is where most people struggle, and unfortunately, why many of these tents are thrown away after one weekend’s use at a festival.

Instructions are provided inside the tent bag for how to twist the tent to get it to go away. FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS.  If you twist it the wrong way, it won’t go down to the original size, or you could snap the poles.

Tent pegs, repair patch, and instructions are in the smaller bag.

It took me a couple of tents to get it neatly down.

Of course, when it is packed, the pack is quite flat, but isn’t small.

Regatta Malawi 2 in its bag

Verdict

Well, if we did our usual family tent assessment on this, it wouldn’t do well – but then it isn’t a family tent 😉

Our recommendation is to use it as an additional summertime good weather tent, or something to get the kids camping in the back garden.

It has an RRP of £100, however, shop around and you can pick this up at a bargain price and then your kids can spend the summer school holidays camped out in the garden 🙂