I fell in love with Roof Top Tents while in Africa in 2015, once I came back to the US I undertook changing my truck around to enable myself to have a more, over-landing style vehicle.
So I needed a tent, great!
What brand to buy quickly became a driving question in my mind. The brand I used in Africa was an Eezi-Awn and not easily found in the US. I also quickly found that brands such as EeziAwn, Howling Moon and a few select others were considered vastly superior to many of the offerings in the US market.
After some more investigation it because clear that often American brand tents seem to originate from the same source in China, this leads to many tents looking nearly the same and being copies of "the original". Ok then, copies can still be a good product! Let me keep looking.
There are clearly better quality tents and cheap tents, after a great deal of reading reviews, reading how some tents/brands did this or that to increase or decrease quality/cost I wound up opting for a CVT brand tent.
https://cascadiatents.com/
Why? Their quality and customer service seemed to be above average compared to many other companies, along with the nice part that their headquarters is within driving distance on where I live.
So anyways, I have a CVT Mt Shasta now on my truck!
I have used it around 30 times so far and here are my views.
1) If I were to go back in time and need to buy an RTT (Roof Top Tent) again, I wouldn't hesitate to buy a CVT.
2) The mattress is very firm, it took a few sleeps to get used to it, since then I find that I sleep on it like a baby.
3) The tent came with a Annex that hangs down to the ground. I find it useless and it generally lives in my storage unit. It adds to much time to set up/take down and takes up too much storage area to be practical for my uses.
4) The cover for the tent is a zip on. I HATE this aspect, I would be happier with a cover that wraps under the frame of the tent and is not prone to getting its zipper caught on tent material, however I don't think there is a tent from an American company that has the cover style I would like.
5) Set up and take down is simple and, if you do it a few times can be done in just a couple minutes.
6) Depending on weather temps you can have windows open providing great ventilation, or closed to keep the tent nice and cozy.
7) I am told that some people leave all their bedding/sleeping bags in the tent when they close it up. I have done so and, I don't like it. I feel it adds to much stress to the hinge points along with causing the cover to not ride as low as it should to help protect from weather.
8) Camping in Snow, Mud, Sand and so on is a breeze!!! There is no fighting to set up a ground tent in the muck!
9) the material of the tent and the tents construction all seem to be of good quality. I would recommend always paying attention to seam sealing, it can never hurt to apply some yourself no matter what brand tent it is. (no I didn't have an issue with the CVT, its just habit of mine)
Finally, I will admit that when camping long term (3+) nights in the same place it can prove useful to have a ground tent. For instance, in my situation I'm out of the camp driving at dawn most days and wont be back till dusk. Admittedly set up/tear down of the RTT is simple, but if you don't need to do it, then the time and hassle of setting up the ground tent can be worthwhile. However, I'm on the move a lot and tend to not be in the same campground for days on end, I love my RTT.
