Hyperlite Mountain Gear UltaMid 4: Tent Review for 4 Person, 4 Season Camping and Backpacking
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Tents are a big investment. They make up some of the costliest gear any of us will buy. And with crazy price ranges, from a couple hundred bucks to a couple thousand, how can you be sure you are getting your money’s worth?
As we talked about in the video reviewing the Hyperlite Mountain Gear UltaMid 4 tent, we mentioned that we were looking for that magical unicorn of a tent that was big enough for four people, strong enough to withstand four season use, and light enough for me to carry my entire family’s shelter without wilting under the load. And our conclusion was that this tent met those needs.
Before I get too deep into that topic, I wanted to cover an update: Hyperlite now provides their own carbon fiber poles to go with this tent and which are .75 inches in diameter.
But you can also still find those third-party poles that come in two widths, like I discussed, and here are the links:
And, the inserts, are again:
So, back to the topic of this “magic unicorn of a tent” that meets multiple needs. While, like I said, the Hyperlite Mountain Gear UltaMid 4 does check a lot of boxes for us. But, that doesn’t mean that the tent is the best at each of those boxes. Rather, it does all of these things well enough to be worth it, at least for us. Like all things gear related, there is always a performance improvement to be had when an item is designed to do one specific thing and do it very well. You wouldn’t race the Indy 500 in a Chevy Malibu, would you? But an Indy car isn’t exactly the best for car seats or grocery storage.
Take, as an example, the desire for a family tent that is big enough for four people… are you car camping? If so, you can find much less expensive and luxurious options. For example, the REI Kingdom 4 is the four person version of a line of tents that are highly rated by the trusted testers at Outdoor Gear Lab. But, at almost nineteen pounds, would you want to backpack with it?
And on the other end of that spectrum, your ultralight backpackers would scoff at the nearly pound-and-a-half weight of the Hyperlite Mountain Gear UltaMid 4, especially when you add in the need for a second trekking pole - which weighs another half-a-pound. Why carry two pounds when a Zpacks Plexamid weighs 15.3 ounces? But, the Plexamid fits one person; family friendly, it is not.
And what about the robustness to stand up to brutal winter weather? The Mountain Hardwear Trango 2, and its fellow four-pole/cross-pole/free-standing designs, are still the standard when it comes to extended expeditions in harsh places (think Mount Everest and the like). But it weighs over nine-and-a-half pounds; there’s a reason commercial expeditions pay porters to move gear up some of the big mountains for you. Oh, and it is only large enough for two people.
So, I guess my point is this: no one tent does it all when you are looking to maximize performance of “it all.” But you can find a tent that does all of it well… meaning even better than average.
But you need to understand your tent’s (or any gear’s) limitations and the best ways to help compensate for those limitations.
Pyramid style tents, like the Hyperlite Mountain Gear UltaMid 4, are often derided for lack of stability, particularly in the wind. That can be mitigated. You would want to set up a back corner to the wind (‘back’ because it is better to open up your tent door with the wind being blocked by the tent; and ‘corner’ because the wind will divide around the corner rather than slam into one of the faces of the tent). You also would want to use all the guylines and keep them tight. My tent has held up to fifty-plus mile-per-hour winds using these simple techniques that add no additional gear or extra steps to the set up. Knowledge truly is weightless.
Single wall tents are often slammed for being bad for condensation management in the cold. But with the addition of the mesh insert, like I describe in the video, condensation runs down and away from you rather than down and onto you.
But doesn’t that mesh add another twenty-seven ounces (if you do the full mesh with the full floor)? Yeah, but now I have a double-wall, four person tent that weighs about three pounds. Find me another one of those… go on, I dare you ;)
You can have specialist tents. I have some, for very specific purposes where the consequences of having the wrong equipment can be really high. But having a tent that can handle many different situations, and handles the ones my family experiences the most frequently, makes this tent worth it.