Robens Prospector - Retro Camping Style

Review Score

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

Price Guide

Robens Prospector - Retro Camping Style Videos

Robens Prospector - Retro Camping Style Photos

Our Review

I've always dreamt of having a cabin by a lake surrounded by mountains...... However, back in the real world....

When I first saw the Robens Prospector tent it ticked a lot of boxes: This could be that cabin, albeit a canvas one, that we could move from place to place in the search for that perfect camping spot.

The tent is much more of a traditional design.  Plus it has a flap to allow for a wood burning stove flue: so you could be kept nice and warm even when the weather isn't great. There is also an optional matching tarp that connects to the front of the tent, so you could have plenty of outdoor living without the elements ruining things.

So, does the image live up to expectations? Fortunately, Robens sent us one over to have a closer look....

Not one but two bags

The Robens Prospector tent arrived in two separate boxes.

Robens make some excellent lightweight backpacking tents but with the boxes 17.9kg and 26.5kg, this was no backpacking tent ;-)

As you might imagine, the tent comes in two bags. Both heavy duty canvas bags.

One contains the tent; the other contains the poles.

There were also some pretty heavy duty aluminium tent pegs... a sign of things to come with this tent.

Pitching the Robens Prospector

As any good camper would, we did a test pitch of the new tent in our back garden before taking it to the campsite.

Now pitching the Robens Prospector reminded us just how much easier air framed tents, such as our Outwell Montana 5SA, are to pitch. The Robens Prospector is a metal framed tent, and it wasn't going to be pitched in a matter of minutes.

Each of the tent poles is colour coded to make assembly easier.

First, you peg the tent out at the corners.

Now here came the awkward bit for us: putting in the poles!

You basically have to crawl inside the tent and push the material up, then build the frame from the inside. This proved to be quite challenging!

The frame is very simple to put together, and it is easy to Velcro the tent to the frame.

However, it was the height of this tent (2.3m) that we struggled with. Shell and I aren't the tallest of people, and this will definitely need a small step ladder to put up when we are at the campsite.

The tent has 3 A-Frames that slot together with ridge poles, so there's a lot of reaching to get them into place.

I'm sure we'll get better with practice ;-)

Once up, what's the Robens Prospector Like?

We'll, once up, the Robens Prospector is a big tent!

So here's what the tent looks like when pitched. Though, please note that we don't have enough room to peg out all the guy lines in our garden, so it's a little 'saggy'.

There's quite a lot of space inside. It's more like a canvas house!

As you can see, we had the tent 'open plan'. You can also see the Robens Kobuk stove in the far corner.

You can get an inner tent for the Prospector. This creates two three-person bedrooms.Unfortunately, we don't have the inner tent to show you, but you can see it on the Robens website and in the picture on the right.

With the inner tent, you still have space for a general living area at the front of the tent where the stove can be fitted.

You can also get a tarp that connects to the front of the tent. In fact, you can even use the tarp to connect two Propospector tents in a vis-a-vis fashion.

At both ends of the tent are quite large ventilation windows, as well as ventilation around the sides.

Adequate ventilation is essential if you are using a stove in your tent.

Outside the tent

Outside the tent you can see the flap that protects the flue - this tent is already for some 'hot tenting' without you having to adapt it to use with a stove. Inside, the tent has a section of the groundsheet that you can unzip so that the stove can sit on the ground and not melt the ground sheet underneath.

There are some other neat additions outside, such as the aluminium guy line tensioners and the aluminium rings for the tent pegs.

Verdict

At the time of writing, we've yet to get the Robens Prospector tent to the campsite.

It's a fantastic tent, but the effort involved in pitching means that we recommend this tent only for when you are camping a number of nights rather than just a quick weekend one-night camp.

Once we had the tent pitched in our back garden, we spent two nights in it - despite our house being literally on our doorstep!

With the Robens Kobuk Stove (detailed in another post soon) the tent was very cosy, and when fitted out, could easily be that home from home. I think this is really going to become a great tent as the weather gets cooler this Autumn.

Now, I just need to find that mountain lake...

Details