This Skandika Drammen 4 tent is a tunnel-like designed tent that claims to be an affordable camping answer for families and groups of four. It retails for £164 within the UK and €179 within Europe.

Setup & Design

Pitching Drammen 4 was accomplished with just one person in around twenty minutes. The 150D polyester fly sheet has to be attached via knots pairing it to the inner tent, Skandika refer to as the sleeping cabin. This is a fiddly task to complete and is worth creating knots that have a firm hold but also allowing them to easily be undone, as undoing the knots is a longwinded process to go through when taking the tent down. An interesting and somewhat unusual design within the tent world today, the sleeping cabin made from breathable polyester is the main structure, held up with reasonably high quality fibreglass poles clipping onto the exterior and supporting the structure.

This design, coupled with the tallness of the Drammen 4, produces an interesting resistance to heavy winds that we'll get into shortly. Because this tent features a porch with PVC windows, flat ground is particularly preferable for pitching, otherwise the tent would sink into itself slightly. We think the Drammen 4 tent dishes up an attractive and welcoming exterior design that would look respectable in its own right at any campsite. It does come with its own tidy travel bag too, a great size for a car, but you wouldn't want to trek with this 9.6kg brick.

Versatility

Pitching the Skandika Drammen 4 tent in late March and for most of April we could sometimes have anticipated milder weather conditions, but this year we have been bombarded with a surprising variety of harsh weather. On its first pitched night, the Drammen 4 was met with particularly strong gusts of wind, ranging from 40-60mph and fast rain poured down upon its body too. We hadn't anticipated such severe weather earlier on in the previously still day and so we left the guy ropes for installation on another day and simply pegged (steel pegs, will gradually rust with use) the body of the tent down. This turned out to be a huge error of judgment and the tent was found in the middle of the night upside down in our grounds and blowing against thorny bushes.

Once all the guy ropes were frantically equipped, it didn't budge. And the body of the Skandika proved to be versatile against the sharp bushes and all the rain it was faced with over the course of roughly 30 days. The Drammen 4 has a rated 3000mm water column. Something like the Snugpak Bunker tent, we reviewed earlier this year, would have probably met such severe weather conditions without guy ropes as its design is aerodynamic. The Drammen 4 is tall against its overall body shape and so in some regards it's top heavy and can easily sway in the wind, but this is relieved when people are occupying it and weigh the tent down.

Features, Storage & Interior Space

The Drammen 4 is a great tent for the summer. Its front porch has two PVC windows and the porch and inner tent (mosquito mesh integrated) doors can be entirely folded back for leisurely ventilation. The porch has its own groundsheet, creating a nice area to sit down in and it's helpful for keeping belongings stored dry too; in fact a slurry of useful storage pockets are situated next to the inner tent's door entrance. Inside the sleeping cabin, which has a sewn-in groundsheet, there is a large open space. We could stand up (peak height of 205cm) in here and this makes general manoeuvrability with multiple people entering and exiting the tent easier to manage. Four adults, as claimed, can sleep here and eat/drink, etc, but space would be made tight if you also chose to store camping gear.

Sleeping Experience

The sleeping experience with heavy winds and rain was made more unpleasant due to the mild sway and noise caused by the tunnel-like design of the Drammen 4, but on still nights it was perfectly pleasant; and if the temperature within the breathable polyester sleeping cabin does become too warm and stuffy, its door can be quickly opened onto the mosquito net and a rear vent can be opened for improved ventilation too.

Overall

The Skandika Drammen 4 tent is nice and generous in height for families and groups of four, with ample storage capacity within the porch and a decent overall build quality for its price. It will likely drop considerably below the retail price this summer, as Skandika tents have a habit of being well-discounted on Amazon.