Mountain Designs Geo 2P Tent: Tested
The two-person, three-season tent is ubiquitous in the hiking world, and with good reason. These tents are the Swiss Army knife of outdoor shelters and have one of the most important jobs of all outdoor gear: to keep you safe and dry when in the wilderness. There are many options out there, at a wide range of price points, but it’s still worth opting for a shelter from highly regarded manufacturers for the assurance of shelter and durability. Enter the Mountain Designs Geo 2P (2-Person) tent.
Design
The Mountain Designs Geo 2P is a no-nonsense lightweight three-season hiking tent that does what it says it will do, and then some. The 45cm x 16.5cm packed size is right on the money for a compact two-person tent and if you’re the half-a-toothbrush and dehydrated food kind of camper, the 2.6kg bundle can be stripped back to a 2.41kg fighting weight (with six pegs). A steep-walled, three-pole geodesic design, coupled with a 112cm roof height, makes for plenty of room to sit up and move around. Add in a spacious 2.79m2, 215cm L x 130cm internal floor that fits two full-length sleeping pads with ease, and you’ve got a comfortable outdoor home away from home.
The two-doored design offers occupants easy access and matching dual vestibules deliver a total 1.61m2 of covered external space for backpacks and boots if the weather turns nasty. Two full-length 8.5mm aluminium poles offer a double-crossover design, and when combined with a tensioned half-length 8.5mm roof pole, this delivers solid three-season performance.
The inner’s fully taped, bathtub design, 75-denier (D) PU-coated polyester floor delivers a hefty 5000mm (hydrostatic-head – HH) of waterproofing and the right balance of durability and weight. The 40D nylon walls with mosquito-proof mesh deliver a good compromise of weather protection versus ventilation for balmy summer nights while a quick release silicon-coated full-coverage 40D ripstop nylon flysheet (with a 3000mm HH rating) is easily fitted for inclement conditions. Packed away, the tent is contained in a tidy reinforced top-loading compressible stuff sack delivering a highly compact and stowable package.
In the field
It’s hard to find anything glaringly wrong with the Mountain Designs Geo 2P, and that’s a good thing. The reasonably compact design and resilient materials lend themselves to a harsh Australian environment whilst the solid waterproofness and robust design deliver more than adequate weatherproofness for a three-season tent. The steep walls are a nice bonus and coupled with ample floor space, the Geo happily fits my 90kg, 188cm frame. I’m always a fan of double-doored tents and the Geo goes one better by delivering dual-zipped, bottom opening doors with a stash pocket to avoid the door ever falling to the mud.
As with many tents of similar design, the vestibule space can feel quite small but larger vestibules mean more material, and thus more weight. The age-old dual-walled geodesic, pole and sleeve design works exactly as it should and doesn’t over-complicate things.
A mid-2kg two-person tent might be considered a little ‘weighty’ in this category, and for the weight-weenies there are far lighter (and more expensive) options in the market. It would be nice to see some colour coding on the flysheet to aid speedy setup and the roof-pole tabs are a bit fiddly, but these are minor annoyances in an otherwise positive package.
The final word on the Mountain Designs Geo 2P
Mountain Designs has been on a roll with its hiking tent range lately (read our review of its Redline 1P hiking tent here). With the Mountain Designs Geo 2P it has done it again, producing a great mid-priced all-round hiking tent for two. With its fast setup, sound design and robust materials, it is difficult to fault the tent in any particular area. With a $350 price-tag (see below re Alliance Club pricing) you’d be hard pushed to find a better value-for-money shelter in the three-season, two-person hiking tent market segment.
RRP $570 ($350 for Mountain Designs Alliance Club members. Membership is free.)
