"I was looking for a 1+ person tent to use on solo adventures. The Lightning was praised by Backpacker magazine and REI sells them out as soon as stock arrives. Sounds like a good, lightweight, 1+ person tent.
My first, and only, night in the tent was one of the most uncomfortable nights I have ever spent. But more about that in the cons section.
The tent is light and quick to set up, even in a moderate wind. The small footprint let me have a wide range of spots in the area. When a strong windstorm passed during the night, the tent sides compressed some, but the structural integrity was great.
The reason I am returning it is that the tent has almost 0 insulatiing ability, something that is critical in the backcountry of the Rocky Mountains. I am a hot sleeper and usually have no problem keeping warm in any condition (snow storms, extreme elevation). Unfortunately, the large amount of mesh used in the tent does not allow the heat to be retained. I ended up buried in my sleeping bag and huddled up against the side away from the door. When I awoke in the morning (before sunrise), the temperature inside the tent was 6 degrees cooler than outside the tent!
For a moderate or warm climate, this tent would be great. For the cooler environments, I find that the mesh allows too much heat to escape."
"We used this tent for a 6 week backpacking tent in the high Sierras last summer. We were extremely happy with the size to weight ratio. For two people, it was great and much more spacious than other tents in its weight range. It also sets up very quickly. It help up well in storms and winds with the fly on and all points guyed, better than we'd expected for that shape tent (we were originally concerned because the fly material seems so thin). The tent itself is mostly mesh, so you can't expect much insulation but I personally prefer to use a warm sleeping bag. In that sense, the ventillation was good with the fly off, of course, and with the fly on and the vesibule open. However, we did have a ventillation complaint for when the fly is on and closed up completely, which is the majority of the time - the vestibule only has one zipper opening from the bottom up, so there was no way of opening a small vent at the top of the vestibule to allow humidity to excape, so in certain conditions the inside of the fly would get a bit damp. The other downfall is having the door on one side so you have to climb over your partner to get out and in during the night. Overall, it is an amazing tent for its size and weight and we love it."
"Good product, light, sturdy, etc. . . I am keeping my tent and I like it a lot but I think if you buy one you should consider the following.
I have two complaints.
1. On the sides of the tent there are no holes or fabric hooks to guy out. So when it rains your tent sags in on the sides. There are guy points on the fly under the poles. But no guy points in the middle.
2. The zipper on the actual tent opens in an oval fashion but the fly doesn't do the same thing. It has one zipper (to the right of the main door) that opens vertically. This makes it inconvenient to get in and out of the tent when the rain fly is on.
Other then that the tent is good, rain fly seams a little thin but I haven't been able to try it out in a bad storm yet."
"Although the weight and space of the tent seems top notch, we gound that the primary weaknesses outweighed the bonuses. The main issue we found is that the rainfly wets out in heavy rain, specifically at the door, which is not a good thing, and that the floor is almost completely permeable to water. With or without weight on the floor, it soaks through in a matter of minutes. While this is prevented by the use of the footprint, this both adds weight, and we still found that the side facing wet grass, as is necessitated to keep the rain from dripping from the fly onto the groundsheet, ends up soaking through even though there is no weight on it whatsoever. As a result, one sleeping bag got wet every trip. The pitch is very taught and strong in the wind, however the lack of adequate waterproofing (and interior pockets, which is a bummer), dramatically outweighed the benefits of this tent. I am sad to say that I am in the process of returning mine. I don't think this tent is worthy of a Backpacker Magazine Editor's Choice Award."
"This is a great freestanding, very lightweight 2-person tent. It was super easy to put up. However, the one night it was used it started raining so we put on the fly. The next morning I realized that the outside of the fly was completely dry (it didn't rain much) but the inside was completely soaked. Even with the fly guyed-out the ventilation is absolutely deplorable. I am returning this product today."
