This may look like a fairly standard family tent, but there is durability, quality and considered details in every corner of this five-berth set-up. The lounge does have nice large windows which would give plenty of daylight with curtains that can be toggled at the halfway or fully closed position. These are of a substantial size with a smaller window facing the open area of the porch. Inside the lounge there are two groups of “TBS II” Tension band system straps. These run across the tent from side to side one set adjavent to the sleeping inner and one at the midpoint of the lounge and anchor at the ceiling midpoint and are intended to help stabilise the tent in high winds. They also come in handy to hang lightweight items off to dry but with them up they are a definite hazard. We lost count of the amount of times one of us walked into them. Still better than having a tent collapse . Like the rest of the tent it has two large full sized windows for light and these would work well – we had them closed most of the time as it was so hot. The bedrooms were great even allowing for them not being as dark as I had hoped – we had the rooms split 70/30 which gave us plenty of bedroom space for camp beds and getting dressed without a squeeze plus a junk/storage room for our hiking gear and storage of equipment boxes and with the addition of the useful front room as a galley it left the lounge area free for lounging, dining, laying out maps etc.

Even after first pitch the tent was pretty much ok – all the doors opened without problems and there was nothing much wrong that a little bit of adjusting later on wouldn’t sort out.

The living space is tall enough to stand in and it also features three (yep, three!) doors – two side doors and a huge front door which can be fully opened – so there are plenty of configuration options available and it also feels very spacious and airy. As you’d expect for such a huge tent, the Outwell offers plenty of headroom and awesome panorama windows to give you that living-in-nature feeling as well as lots of incredible functionality such as power access points, crafty ventilation and speedy-to-put-up air beams. What size family tent do I need? We found the tent roomy enough and would easily accommodate 4-6 adults if need be. Personally I always think tent manufacturers, much like boat builders and airlines over egg the claims on capacity. You could get probably 30 in the Casa at least if you didn’t mind a crush. Vango state 7 which would be believable and would work but it would seem crowded. We like our space so its just for the two of us and its great. With so much space on offer it meant we weren’t elbowing each other all the time and gave us space to stretch out and read a book, make a cup of tea and toast, fiddle with equipment and generally mess about without getting in each others way all the time. The Vango Casa is a billed as a family sized 7 person tent. It has a unique porch area which is half covered and half open and features super large bedrooms with darkened interiors, sewn in bathtub style groundsheet, ‘Powerflex’ fibre poles, 4000mm hydrostatic head and Vangos ‘TBS II’ Tension Band System. The tents total footprint including porch areas comes in at 725 x 450 cm. The open half of the porch is much larger than you might suppose from pictures with enough space for two adults in sizeable camping chairs to get together under it. Given the extreme conditions we were camping in with phenomenal sunshine and heat we found it did not offer enough protection. The side window in our view should not be there and it should just be blanked off which we will do as an afterthought. We found the sun just streamed through it and made the porch a sun trap rather than a shade – it was so hot it felt as if we were in an oven in the porch. Lesson learnt and we have now bought a tarp to mask off the window and create a larger shaded area. A more normal British summer (ie cloudy and raining or at least merely temperate) would not have caused a problem.

The tent comprises 5 fibreglass ‘Powerflex ‘poles, flysheet with sewn in groundsheet and a separate groundsheet for the covered element of the porch which is attached using toggles. Pitching was fairly straightforward and took two of us around 60 minutes to set up on both attempts to date. The first was something of a learning experience with a tent of this size and the second attempt we were working with a gusty wind which made pitching a bit awkward. After first pitch we left the bedroom inner installed so we can pitch it in one go. It follows a fairly straightforward, peg, pole and clip system to put it up, but details such as reinforced peg points and lightweight alloy poles should mean it will last through many years of summer camping weekends.The tent has a front door with separate flyscreen and a side door with no flyscreen plus a zippered door into the front part of the enclosed porch. The front door zips around on two sides only and the foot of the door is not zipped – this area is covered by the separate flyscreen door. I would have thought it would have made more sense for the flyscreen to be part of the main door which would give one zip to open rather than two to get in and out of the tent. You also need to think about weather conditions, if you’re camping in the summer look for tents with good ventilation and mesh panels to keep out bugs. Early spring and autumn campers will need to prioritise waterproofing and warmth; accessories such as tent carpets can keep things toasty.