Vango Aspen 500

The Vango Aspen 500 is a 5-man tent which is designed with stability and weather resistance in mind - an ideal tent for group use.

Site	Price	Postage	Total
	£318.99	£4.50	£323.49

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   User Reviews

General comments: We bought the Vango 500 in 2005 and had a week away in August - 2 adults, 1 toddler and a 4 month old baby. The three bedroom areas (2 singles, 1 double) were spacious and could be made into one large area if required, useful as we needed to see to our baby during the night. The living area with sewn in ground sheet was huge - plenty of room for table, chairs and all the clutter that you take with you when you have children! We had warm weather and the large amount of ventilation points around the tent ensured that when we came back to the tent in the evening it felt cool. At night we zipped them closed to keep the warm air in. We had practised putting the tent up at home and when we got to the site it took about 55 minutes to put up, including knocking in all the tent pegs. We spent a lot of time researching various makes of tents before purchasing the Vango 500 - this definitely offered us the best space and value for money. Would gladly recommend.

Pros: Smart, modern appearance. Poles are colour coded and go into colour coded sleeves on the tent - so no confusion about which pole goes where. Sewn in groundsheet. Plenty of ventilation. Large living area. The colour of the tent ensures plenty of light. No "extras" to buy - eg sun canopy is attached - some makes of tents charge extra

Cons: Unable to build by yourself. You need someone quite tall and strong to hold up the middle of the tent while someone else runs around standing up the poles. Not a tent you can build in 5 minutes.

General comments: Used this tent for the first time last week with a four day trip away and first impressions are extremely good. Ok, it is a bit harder to put up than our last tent ( a Lichfield) but once we struggled through the erection process and saw the final result we were more than impressed. We have the Vango Aspen 500 DLX version and I would say that the extra few pounds spent for the porch area extension is well worth it. We had one evening of rain and the porch was big enough to dry the dog in and remove our wet boots without having to track mud and wetness into the main area. Speaking of the main area, for the two of us it amounts to pure luxury with space for everything you would want to fit in. We have a camp kitchen (moved into the porch for cooking), one single folding table and one double folding table, a collapsible 3 storey shelf unit and an old ammo box that doubles as a battery storage box for when electric hook up is not available. We got all of this in the main area with plenty of room left over, so much room in fact that we are thinking of buying an inflatable sofa for the ultimate in comfort camping. Who says camping should be uncomfortable! The main bedroom area we opened up the room by rolling back the curtain that makes the second bed/wardrobe areas and used a kingsize inflatable bed and small hanging storage unit, and again there was loads of space available. The last bedroom we used for storage and keeping things out of the way, it takes two bikes easily. The sky lights allow a bright and airy feeling even at night which is unusual and the large roof window in the porch is great for star watching at night without getting bitten to death by the local midges. This is a great tent that is pure luxurious camping for two people and a large dog, but I can see it also being used when our nephew comes up in a few weeks to get him away from the TV and see what fun camping can be and there will still be plenty of space. One word on putting up the tent though, make sure you go to the Vango website and see the video on pitching it, makes life a lot easier, trust me.

Pros: Great tent with the best headroom around at a great price. Very light, airy feel and so spacious.

Cons: Not the easiest tent to put up first time but will get better with practice. Heavy tent pole bag!

General comments: First things first, this tent is MASSIVE! Even coming from a Mountain Hardwear Trango 4, nothing quite prepared me for the amount of space this tent provides! Its like a house. There are 4 seperate areas inside the tent, one very large living area, and 3 smaller bedrooms. The middle of these bedrooms is very large-easily big enough for a large double airbed and loads of room down the sides. You can also pin back the walls on one of the other rooms, leaving an even larger area to sleep in. I tent to store all the bits and pieces in one of the side rooms, then open the other up to have a large bedroom/wardrobe area (the tent comes with a wardrobe rail). The tent has a fully sewn in groundsheet which makes a massive difference to the overall warmth and comfort of the tent, and makes mooching about inside a pleasure rather than a drafty pain if the weather is bad. There are loads of doors and windows with plenty of options for how you want to ventilate the tent. There's also a decent porch area where you can dump wet boots etc.

Pros: Strong: The steel poles and copious amounts of guylines make this a very strong tent for its size. Ours stood up to very strong winds and rain for a week in wales with no bother at all. Size: This tent is massive-like a home from home Attention to detail: There are loads of thoughtful touches, electric hookup access zip, multi option venting and access, wardrobe rail, hang loops.

Cons: The only bad point I can think of is that it is very heavy indeed (44kgs) but thats not unusual for a tent of this type, and is worth it for the stability that the steel poles provide I think the newer version pitches outer first rather than inner, which is maybe more appropriate given the UK weather. Having said that we put ours up in the rain and whilst the inner did get wet, once the flysheet was on it dried out very quickly

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