The Pros and Cons of Rooftop Tents for Camping Enthusiasts

Rooftop tents like the Smittybilt Gen 2 Overlander tent have become extremely popular, but what are the honest pros and cons of  rooftop tents? I’ve had this tent on my Jeep since last year, and I’ve taken several trips with it. I will give you a brutally honest review of the pros, cons, and downsides of putting a roof top tent on your vehicle.

The pros of a rooftop tent

1 The Psychological Comfort of Elevation:

• The first thing I want to talk about, and the most significant factor, especially for me, is the feeling of a psychological sense of safety and security from being elevated so far up the ground. You have the feeling that animals, whether it’s bears or nut lions or cougars or whatever you’re dealing with or also things that crawl on the ground like scorpions and spiders and ants, you’re just up. You just feel like you’re in this tree house. You just feel more secure. Whether it’s safer is another story because I don’t know what it actually is, but psychologically, you feel better. You sleep better just having that sense of being up high, out of the off-the-ground.

2 Treehouse Vibes: Views, Breeze, and Nostalgia:

• The second big pro to the rooftop tent is the feeling that you’re in a tree house. I mentioned that in the first pro, so being up in the air, you have this lovely view looking out the tent’s windows; you get more of a breeze up there. You’re off the ground, not dealing with uneven or wet ground. You just have the sense that it almost harkens back to, like, if you were a kid, if you got to play like in tree houses or things like I did, I was lucky. It just brings back that sense. There’s something great about it that you don’t get from a ground tent.

3 Rugged Durability: Sturdy Build for Elements:

• The third pro is that these tents are built of sturdier, heavier materials, so they use canvas-type materials for the tent’s body. Also, the frame of the tent on something like this is much more stout and much larger frame tubing than any typical ground tent that you might find, so not only is the canvas much heavier and more able to withstand wind and water and the elements but the tubing itself is solid so if you camp in a strong wind it’s still a canvas tent. It will still shake around and be loud and probably prevent you from sleeping unless you wear earplugs, but it does hold up better to the elements. Also, the construction, because it’s so sturdy, will hold up better over the long term than a traditional ground tent, although now that.

4 Convenient Storage: Bedding Stays Inside Tent:

• Another significant advantage to a rooftop tent is that you can leave your bedding inside the tent, which is nice because you can leave your sleeping bag, pillows, a sheet, and stuff like that in there. Of course, you’ve got the mattress pad already in there as well because they come with that, although they’re not the most comfortable. We’ll get to that. Leaving it all in there means when you pop the tent open and set it up, all that stuff’s in there, ready to go.

• Hence, it saves room in your car or your truck because you’re not carrying a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, pillows, or all that kind of stuff. It’s up inside, folded up in the tent. With a tent like the Smittybilt Gen 2 Overlander, you have to be careful how much stuff you put in there because it won’t fold up properly, and some rooftop tents are hard shell ones, depending on the design, you may not be able to leave anything in there at all because they can press down really low.

5 Off-Ground Comfort: Flat Base, No Debris:

• The other advantage is that, as I mentioned before, you’re not on the ground, because you’re up off the ground, you don’t have rocks, you don’t have grass, and don’t have ants, you know, dirt and sand, mud if it’s if you live in a wet area, so you’re up in the air. Hence, it’s a massive advantage if you have a flat floor because the tent’s frame or base is flat. That can be an enormous advantage if you’re camping in off-road areas or even a lot of campgrounds where the tent pads really aren’t that great, so that can be a significant advantage, but the fact that it’s on your vehicle. You can’t position it somewhere else, which is also a disadvantage we’ll discuss later.

6 Space Saver: More Room Inside Your Vehicle:

• The last significant advantage I’ll mention about a rooftop tent is that you save more room in your vehicle by putting the tent up on the top, so you don’t have some of the larger ground tents actually take up quite a bit of room you’ve probably noticed so you’d have that you’d have your sleeping pads your blow up mattresses the pumps that go with that sleeping bags and of course pillows and bedding so all that, in theory, is up in your rooftop tent that saves quite a bit of room in your vehicle if you have a smaller vehicle may be one of the Subarus or a sedan or something smaller, then that is a significant advantage being able to keep it all up in the tent itself.

The Cons of a rooftop tent

1 High Cost: Significant Investment in Rooftop Tents:

• There are many downsides to these tents, so you need to pay attention to this if you’re considering making a significant investment in roof top tents. The first downside, and it’s a big one, is the price, so it goes without saying if you’ve looked at these tents, they’re costly, you know, the materials, the construction or heavy-duty, I don’t know. Still, there’s probably a lot of profit in these things, too, for the companies that make them, but in any case, low-end ones like the Smittybilt.

• However, it’s a good quality. One start around this one was around twelve hundred dollars; I’ve seen rooftop tents. You’re getting some of the hard shell tents, the ones with power opening and different things, three thousand four thousand dollars to me. Much money is needed for metal frames and canvas material, but that’s just me. To each his own, but yeah, it’s a significant investment, and you really have to weigh that against, you know, how much other cool camping gear you could buy.

2 Heavy and Bulky: Difficult Mounting Process:

• The second downside is the initial mounting of the tent to your vehicle is going to take two or three people because whether you’re putting it up on a rack over your truck bed like I have, or put it on your SUV crossover or wagon roof. They’re cumbersome. They start around 120 pounds and go up from there, so you can imagine how heavy and bulky these things are to try to get up on your vehicle so not only the initial mounting of it and bolting it up but if you want to take it on and off for reasons

• I’m about to discuss on some of the other cons and how it affects your vehicle if you’re going to take it off and on a lot then you really have a problem because it takes you to have to get like your whole family out of the house to help you maneuver this darn thing off and on some people have even rigged up like hoists in their garage to get them off and on so that’s a huge downside for me personally.

3 Setup Challenge: Time-Consuming and Inconvenient Process

• The third downside is that many people think rooftop tents are easier and faster to set up than ground tents. I actually disagree with that. Based on my experience setting up a roof top tent, it takes me 15-20 minutes, if not more, from the start of, you know, getting the cover off to getting everything set up and all of the poles set up and getting the inside set up because the tent is high up in the air and depending on your vehicle, it could be higher or lower, but because it’s high up,

• It’s actually hard to reach a lot of the rain flies and the attachment for the poles and getting the windows out and doing some of that can actually take a lot longer than you think because you have to crawl up or climb up on your vehicle you may need a little step ladder so it’s actually a little bit more involved than you might think now there are hard shell tents that pop up they may not have as much room as a fold-out like Smittybilt Gen 2 Overlander tent , but there are ones that if that convenience is a priority for you, that is going to be a lot faster to set up.

4 Mobility Limitation: Can’t Drive Away Once Set:

•  The next big downside, and this is a major one you really need to think about for your situation, is that once you get this thing set up, once you get to where you want to camp and set it up, you can’t drive away, so this is the same problem that people with motor homes have and that’s why a lot of people like I prefer like a travel trailer because with a travel trailer or with, a ground tent in the same way you can set it up at camp and then you still have your vehicle to go for a hike or go run to town for groceries or go get firewood or whatever it might be, but you need to be committed once you fold this tent up and get the ladder down and get all this crap set up you’re not moving until the following day so that could be a massive issue for some people.

• depending on how you travel and how you camp the other thing that goes along with that depending on where you camp I’ve been in a lot of campgrounds where like where you park your car is a long ways from where they have the campsite for you because they’re assuming you have a ground tent so you can’t drive your vehicle off the road and down to their little tent area so in some situations you may be setting up on the road of the campground with traffic going by you and it’s kind of silly whereas if you had a ground tent you could set it up down below like in a tent area so i think you know what I’m talking about there if you don’t use campgrounds if you camp just remotely in the forest and stuff like that then that’s not a consideration for you.

5 Ladder Challenges: Safety and Night-time Access Issues:

• The next downside has to do with the latter. Simply the fact that you are up in the air, so as much as being up in the air is an upside, it’s also a downside because think about getting tiny kids, infants, toddlers, up and down this thing safely without falling and having some sort of injury dogs cats whatever you bring camping with you I don’t know, getting it up and down can be quite an issue. The other thing about the ladder is that if you have to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night like I always do.

• I have a weird bladder or drink too much water. Still, you know you’re groggy at 3 am, it’s dark, it’s cold, and you have to climb down this ladder to go to the bathroom. Now, you’re a very enterprising and creative person. In that case, you may be able to go to the bathroom of the tent, not that I am suggesting, not that I’m admitting to having done that. There may be a workaround for that, but be careful.

6 Size Limitations: Space and Standing Room Issues:

• There are a couple downsides relating to the size of the tent. The rooftop tents come in different sizes, but. In contrast, you can get a ground tent, like a big family tent with various rooms, and set up multiple beds in a rooftop tent. You’re gonna have one bed, right. They make larger and smaller ones, but if you’re trying to put your whole family in it, it may only work if you have a small family or small kids. The other thing about its size is that you must stay upright and change clothes in a rooftop tent. They need to be taller. I have a ground tent that’s like one of those instant tents. It’s convenient because it’s six feet tall in the center, so I can stand up, change clothes, and do whatever I want, whereas I can’t do that in the rooftop tent.

Conclusion!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments! Do you own a rooftop tent, or are you thinking about getting one? While rooftop tents are great for overland travelers dealing with tough terrain and bad weather, I think they’re a bit overrated for everyday use. They can affect your vehicle’s fuel efficiency, handling, and even limit garage access. Before jumping on the trend, consider whether the pros outweigh the cons for your specific situation. Is it really worth the investment for how often you’ll use it?