Best 2-Person Tents of 2025, Tested and Reviewed

With hundreds of 2-person tents on the market, built for everything from car camping to roof tops, mountaineering to ultralight hunting, it can be hard to know where to start. However, over the last several months the Outdoor Life gear team has been testing tents built for a number of different categories. To ease your search, we narrowed down the field to following best 2-person tents available today: 

Best Overall: REI Half Dome 2 Plus
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Best All-Purpose: Sea to Summit Ikos
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Best for Families: Hilleberg Allak
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Best Backpacking: MSR Freelite
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Best for Sufferfests: Slingfin Portal
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Best for Dogs: Mountain Hardwear Bridger 6
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Best Budget: Coleman Skydome
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How I Chose the Best 2-Person Tents

I’ve tried, and watched others try, numerous tents over hundreds of nights in nine different states, pitching them on everything from alpine meadows to old-growth forests while long-distance backpacking to casual car camping. I’ve had my fair share of mishaps in tents, from getting flooded in Southern California to being blown off a sand dune outside of Death Valley, to bringing the wrong poles for my winter tent during a snowshoeing overnight in Olympic National Park.

In addition to my own testing of different models of camping tents suitable for camping, backpacking, and river rafting, The Outdoor Life team has tested the best backpacking tents and best ultralight tents as part of our annual backpacking gear tests on America’s long trails.

Best 2-Person Tents: Reviews & Recommendations

Best Overall: REI Half Dome 2 Plus

If you only have one two-person tent in your arsenal, it should be the REI Half Dome 2 Plus. It’s spacious enough for a comfortable car camp for two people; it’s lightweight enough that it’s not completely insane to take it backpacking. It’s made of high-quality 75-denier polyester and aluminum poles. And it’s surprisingly affordable, especially compared to high-end backpacking tents. But what really sold me on this tent was how easy and foolproof it was to set up. 

While this is a similar double-wall design to other camping tents, REI really dialed in the details on this one and they absolutely nailed it. It starts with the groundsheet. While selling groundsheets separately (complete with their own separate packaging) has become the norm for most tent manufacturers, REI not only includes the ground sheet with the Half Dome 2 Plus, they package the tent with the groundsheet already connected. That means you can just set up and go without having to either worry about sharp objects underneath or your tent or dealing with the hassle of connecting the ground sheet.

The pole — just one pole in an H shape here — can be used in opposite directions, but still utilizes color-coding so that you know which pieces connect to the four corners of the floor, and which connect to the roof. The fly is similarly reversible, and has snap buckles where the poles connect to the tent floor. While I find that grommets work fine, it is undeniably true that it is both easier and more intuitive to have a separate buckle attachment here.

And at the end, I had a perfect setup. Taut and secure on the first try. As a gear reviewer, I set up a lot of tents, and most of them take quite a bit of work to get them looking the way they are meant to. But with the REI Half Dome 2 Plus, it was surprisingly effortless. 

The interior is very spacious, with plenty of space for two people — a couple with a young child would also find this workable. Because of the cross design of the pole, everyone in the tent can enjoy the 42-inch head height. There are six pockets: two at the base, two midway up the tent, and two near the apex. This is a very liveable 36 square feet. 

The only possible quibble you could have with this tent is its weight. While car campers won’t care, or even notice, if you are specifically looking for a backpacking tent, check out the best backpacking and best ultralight picks on this list. 

Best All-Purpose: Sea to Summit Ikos TR2

The truth is that quality 2-person tents, something that will last you for years and see you through all manner of conditions, are expensive. That goes double for tents that are light enough to take backpacking: poles and tent fabrics that are light enough to keep your base weight under 20 pounds while still having what it takes to withstand heavy winds and rains come at a premium.

The Sea to Summit Ikos TR2 does a great job of balancing these considerations. It’s on the pricey side, but its versatility makes it a great choice for someone who wants to experiment with a variety of outdoor activities. It’s roomy enough for car camping. It’s got a small enough packed size for bikepacking. It’s still light enough for traditional-style backpacking. And the 68D floor coupled with a limited lifetime warranty means you can expect to get many years of use out of this tent. The first evening I tested it along the Colorado River some serious winds kicked up. Even tents where the stakes were held down by larger rocks saw movement, and some started to cartwheel away before being rescued by their owners.

The tri-beam stakes (the design of all of the best tent stakes) held where I was able to pound them into the hard packed sand. The nylon webbing survived where I had piled rocks on top of it without visible abrasion. The poles stood firm without issue, and the tent floor looked no worse for wear where it had scraped across the ground. It was an impressive performance.

Its excellent structural design is also notable for having the most headspace of any tent I’ve used. Whereas the center pole of most 2-person tents bend downwards, the Ikos TR2 is designed to bend upward. This maximizes the headspace across the center of the tent, making it that much more comfortable for two people to share.

Best for Families: Hilleberg Allak 2

For the uninitiated, Hilleberg has a fairly unusual reputation in the outdoor industry: Their tents (they only make tents) are as close to bombproof as you can get. And they put the same love and care — all their tents are handmade in Estonia — into their polar expedition-ready tents as they do to their models that are intended for young families out camping. 

I tested the three-person version of the Hilleberg Allak with my daughter on a two-week long backpacking and camping road trip. Each night we were staying somewhere new, so the tent was exposed to a variety of conditions and environments, from exposed heat and sun to nonstop rain to high humidity and coastal fog. 

Read Next: Hilleberg Allak 3, A Backpacking Tent That I Trust with My Family

The Hilleberg Allak is similar to other European tents in that it is pitched fly first, with the tent body hanging beneath it. This is a terrible design if you typically use your tent as mosquito or bug protection while you sleep under the stars. But if you are dealing with questionable weather, there are a couple major advantages. The first is that a fly first pitch means that the interior of your tent stays dry the entire time — no chance of rain wetting down the interior while you grab the fly to throw over the top. The next is that threading the poles through the rainfly massively increases the structural integrity of the tent, since that is your first defense against blasts of wind. Most people, most of the time, will not even bother staking this tent in, let alone use the guylines. In my experience, the velcro tabs that American-style tents use to connect the rain fly simply aren’t strong or secure enough to provide that same level of protection. Another benefit of the fly-first pitch is that it helps protect the integrity of the tent from a different force of nature: a young child on the first night of a camping trip. 

But what really impressed me is that this tent is essentially condensation proof. Even when camping on the coast with the tent completely zipped up, there was never even a drop of moisture on the inside of the tent body. 

If you have the budget for this piece of craftsmanship, it should rocket to the top of your list for an easy pitch and total protection from the elements.

Best Backpacking: MSR Freelite

The MSR Freelite is an excellent backpacking tent — easy enough for entry-level backpackers to be successful with, but sophisticated enough to take you on just about any hike, into any terrain, that you would want to travel in.

Read Next: The Best Backpacking Tents

Outdoor Life originally tested the one-person version of this tent on our backpacking gear test along the Oregon Coast Trail. Testers noted that they were impressed with how easy the Freelite was to use, and how favorably it compared to similar tents: the Big Agnes Tiger Wall and the Nemo Dagger. Our tallest tester noted that she was particularly impressed by how easy it was to get in and out of this tent compared to the competition. 

Like all lightweight and ultralight gear, the MSR Freelite is pretty pricey. One benefit with MSR is that they have an in-house repair team that can do a lot (at a very low price) to get your tent back up and running from all manner of mishap: stuck zippers, torn fabric, broken poles, and more. No lightweight tent will truly buy-it-for-life, but this one is getting pretty close. 

Best for Sufferfests: Slingfin Portal

If you’re a new backpacker looking for a lightweight tent you can trust as you build your skillset, the Slingfin Portal is an excellent choice. If you’re an experienced backpacker looking for a tent that you can adapt to a variety of terrains and conditions, the Slingfin Portal is also an excellent choice. This is a tent that will reward you the more you learn about how to best utilize it. 

If you’ve ever spied a backpacking tent, the basic cross-pole design of the Slingfin Portal will be instantly familiar. Like other high-end backpacking tents, it has a third pole running crossways which helps to increase usable headroom and enhance the stability of the overall design. You then stake it out at the four corners and the two doors. That’s the basic setup that you’ll use most of the time.

But when your trip goes sideways, there are a number of other ways to elevate the stability of this tent in both snow and wind. My favorite — and the first one you’ll likely become familiar with — was tensioners located inside the tent you can use to cut back on the slack in the tent fabric. I also appreciated that the guylines on the rainfly are located at the same spot as the velcro for the poles, strengthening the structure of the tent and reducing unnecessary wear on the fabric. Another innovation here is the pouch at the tent door, which you can use to secure a vertical trekking pole, providing another support pillar to your tent without needing to carry unnecessary weight. Finally, if you’re really staring down some dicey conditions, Slingfin sells more robust poles.

Best for Dogs: Mountain Hardwear Bridger 6

Outdoor Life loves dogs. They’re so ubiquitous among staff that you could just about replace everyone’s headshot with their pup and not miss a beat. But finding a tent that could handle the energy and space needs of hunting dogs can be a tall order.

OL’s audience development manager, Derek Horner, checked out the Mountain Hardwear Bridger 4 to see if it could handle two 70-pound dogs: labrador Barley and Gunner, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever

They needed a protected area for wet shoes and dog food bins that was separate from the main sleeping area. He and his partner typically sleep with the dogs (no crates), so a tent with a secure zip and a durable floor was a must.

Not only was the Bridger 6 plenty big for Horner’s needs —- he noted that he could easily fit a queen-size camping mattress and two dog beds or crates inside — but it offered the versatility of a two-room tent without all the hassle of the setup. What makes the Bridger unique in this respect is its larger (much larger) than average vestibule. This turned out to be enough for all the extra gear and mud and wet that comes with having dogs on a camping trip, and the many pockets along the side of the vestibule were perfect for storage. 

Horner reported that he and his partner could get this tent set up in about five minutes, and that a summer rainstorm showed that it was plenty waterproof. The dogs slept through the night without escape and everyone stayed dry. That’s a win in our books.

Best Budget: Coleman Skydome

You’ll inevitably spend a little more time in your tent car camping than backpacking. Lazy early mornings, an outfit change after your afternoon hike, pre-dinner nap — so you want a tent that you, and your camping partner, can stretch out comfortably in. Besides having a very generous square footage, one thing that sets the Coleman Skydome Tent apart is its height: an impressive 4 feet. While many 2-person tents only have space for one person, the 60 inches of width means you can easily fit yourself and your adventure partner (snuggling optional; the tent is wide enough to accommodate a queen-size sleeping pad). The other factor that sets the Coleman Skydome apart is its price: under $100.

Read Next: The Best Camping Tents

There are, unsurprisingly, some issues with this tent. The biggest of these is that the poles are pre-attached to the body of the tent. That means that if the pole breaks, you’ll need to replace the entire tent. Worse, the poles are attached via the same plastic connector that broke in my test of the best 10-person tents. 

You’d think that this would mean that the tent was easier to set up and take down than a typical tent. You would be wrong. It’s a similar cross-pole design to basically every other tent on this list, but the plastic hooks that attach to the poles are a little fussy to use and space out correctly. And there is a third pole (unattached) that takes a little bit of detective work to get into place as its sleeve blends into the fabric of the awning.

Despite being a 2-person tent, the Coleman Skydome only has one door, which is less than ideal if you are on the wrong side of the tent when nature calls in the middle of the night. Worse, the door is pretty small, limiting the view outside the tent on a buggy day.

Things to Consider Before Buying a 2-Person Tent

Purpose of the Best 2 Person Tents

Campers can expect to face a variety of conditions depending on the time of year and the part of the country they are exploring, so knowing the extremes of likely conditions is essential for choosing a tent. The tents in this selection are three-season tents, which are appropriate for summer and shoulder-season conditions.

Set-Up of the Best 2 Person Tents

The majority of 2-person tents on the market are freestanding, which means that once you snap poles into their grommets, you’ll have a reasonable approximation of what the final structure will look like. Although, in many cases, staking out the tent will noticeably increase your usable floor space. Freestanding tents are a great choice for first-time tent purchasers, as there tends to be less guesswork during the initial set up. Many of the tents in this roundup also use color coding to signal to first-time users how to correctly align the poles, the tent body, and the rainfly.

Weight of the Best 2 Person Tents

Car camping tents, including pop-up tents and the best rooftop tents, are bulky. Even the lightest models weigh upwards of five pounds per person. The best backpacking tents are much lighter and typically weigh less than three pounds per person, with some ultralight (UL) models approaching one pound or less. There is usually a tradeoff with weight savings for durability and price with backpacking tents. Backpackers focused on short trips may prefer a heavier option while those that plan on high-mileage days would do better with a lightweight model. 

Read Next: The Best Ultralight Tents

Size of the Best 2 Person Tents

A major reason individuals look for a 2-person tent is that a one-person tent is typically a tight squeeze for anyone over 5-foot 10 inches—forget about squeezing in your pack and the rest of your gear. It’s not uncommon to see larger individuals opt for 2-person, or even three-person, tents to get enough leg room. But there can also be substantial differences in headroom height between different tents. 

Read Next: The Best One-Person Tents

FAQs

Final Thoughts on the Best 2-Person Tents

There are a wide range of options on the market today for 2-person tents. We recommend choosing the best quality tent that your budget allows, as the weight-savings and reliability will pay dividends over the years.