By Chris Townsend

September 20 2011

TGO Rating 4 stars

The inner tent is asymmetric, with one end wider than the other. The widest end and the largest end hoop go together, which makes sense. However the widest part of the porch is opposite the narrower, closed end of the inner, which isn’t so good. It’s not a big problem though, it just means that when cooking in the porch with the fl ysheet door closed you need to be sitting up rather than lying down, which is okay as there is good headroom.

Also unusually, the Eden 1 doesn’t just pitch as a unit – it is a unit, with the mesh inner sewn into the flysheet so the two can’t be separated. Pitching is very fast, with just two pegs needed, one for each end. However there are plenty of guylines and pegging points for stability in winds and 14 hefty pegs for them. Ventilation is excellent, with raised ends
on the flysheet so air can flow straight into the inner and a stiffened hood over the top of the flysheet door zip so this can be left open to let moist air out.

At times this ventilation is rather too much. On a windy day on the Cairngorm Plateau I could feel cold air blowing right through the tent. Some way of lowering the ends of the flysheet or solid panels to zip over the mesh ends of the inner would overcome this. As it is, this is not a tent for cold, windy weather. Which is a shame as it is stable and suitable for such weather from that point of view.

You might expect GoLite to be competing at the ultralight end of the single hoop tent market, but the Eden 1 is actually towards the heavy end. The roominess, the stability and the price are good but the weight and performance in cold winds aren’t. I’d like to recommend it but a few improvements are needed before I could do so.