Sierra Designs Meteor 2

Main Story: The Best Budget Two-Person Tents

Livability

4.5/5: Spend a little more to get a lot more with the Meteor 2. It’s the priciest tent in the test, but it’s also spacious, livable, and protective—all for a reasonably low weight. To boot, it boasts double doors and two 9-square-foot vestibules. Our 6’6” and 6’2” testers found those features, plus the 30-square-foot floor and 41-inch peak height, more than adequate. “I often feel cramped in lightweight tents,” says the taller of the duo. “But I could fully stretch out with the 84-inch length.”

Weatherproofing

4.6/5: “We had 40-mph gusts and frog-drowning rain all night, but the only interior moisture I saw came from bullet-like drops that bounced off the ground and underneath the fly,” said one tester after a storm in Mississippi’s Buccaneer State Park. With all six guylines deployed, the Meteor maintained a stable pitch. Ding: The single roof vent can’t be adjusted from inside.

Features

3.7/5: Four corner mesh pockets offer easy organization, but one California tester’s favorite feature was the roll-back fly (the only one in the test). “Staring at the Milky Way while safe in my sleeping bag—without worrying about scrambling to pitch the fly if a storm rolled in—was a highlight of the trip,” she says.

Durability

3.8/5: The 68-denier poly-taffeta floor and fly held up over 22 nights, four testers, and plenty of pitches on rocks and gravel. There were some kinks, though: The zippers snagged often, and the Meteor’s cheap aluminum stakes bent easily.