Gear Review: Napier Outdoors SUV Tent

Napier Outdoors Sports SUV Tent Review

As new homeowners, it’s time to start putting our storage space to use and stepping up our car camping gear. Quality gear can enhance your car camping experience, but the real key to luxury car camping is the tent. We wanted to try a tent attachment for our SUV and received the Napier Outdoors Sports SUV Tent with Screen Room (Model 84000). We were excited for our first camping trip with the tent attachment – Here is our experience: 

Set Up and First Reactions of Tent Attachment for SUV

The Napier Outdoors Sports SUV Tent arrives in one large bag and includes everything you need. The size of the tent bag was initially intimidating. Our comfort zone is a two-person backpacking tent which can be set up in less than 10 minutes. I was also skeptical if we would be able to fit everything back into the bag when it was time to pack up (more on this later). 

Napier Outdoors predicted my worries as I was pleasantly surprised to find thoughtful features, such as instructions that are sewn into the bag and a zipper extender, allowing the bag to expand about 2 inches (similar to my suitcase after vacation). 

The step by step directions were easy to follow. The best part was since they were sewn into the bag, we can’t lose them. Attaching the tent to the back of our SUV was also easier than expected and the fit was secure.

The last steps included setting up the screen room, which arguably is my favorite feature of the tent, and the awning, which I’ll admit we struggled with. We ended up not using the awning as it there was plenty of shade at our campsite. Admittedly, we were exhausted from hiking a New Hampshire 4,000 footer in 90 degree heat. A little dehydration and fatigue led us to skip this step, but, we will practice guy lines and use the awning on our next trip! 

All in all, the tent quality was impressive and set up was easy. Even though set up took us more than an hour, hiking exhaustion and heat added time to the process. We can update this post with the set up time after our next camping trip! 

Experience

Utilizing a tent with so much space felt like glamping to me! I love how the tent connected to the back of the car making all of our gear easily accessible. This made camping chores, like setting up for bed, super easy. We were camping in New Hampshire’s summer which means we were dealing with plenty of mosquitos and evening thunderstorms. I am happy to report back the tent securely connected to the car and we didn’t deal with bugs or water in the tent. 

My favorite feature of the tent was the screen room. If you are considering purchasing this tent, I highly recommend adding the screen room. Having a space to relax in the evening away from the bugs was quite ideal. We fit two camp chairs and a folding table in the screen room, and we could fit 4 chairs side by side when camping with friends. 

When it was time for bed, we used the Sportz Air Mattress from Napier Outdoors, a quality air mattress that doesn’t require electricity to inflate. The mattress inflates with a foot pump and it only took a few minutes to fully inflate. The mattress remained inflated all night. After a good night’s rest, it quickly deflated when it was time to pack up. I love that we now have an air mattress that doesn’t require an electric pump.

Packing up

When our camping trip came to an end, it was amazing how the Napier Outdoors Sports SUV Tent facilitated an easy clean up. From inside the tent I was able to pack up the air mattress, sleeping bag, and our clothes and organize them in the back of the car. Having direct access to the car made packing up just as easy as the set up. 

I was genuinely surprised at how quickly the process went when taking down the tent. In under 20 minutes, we removed the tent stakes, poles, rainfly, and folded the tent to fit everything back in the original bag. The extra zipper space on the bag came in clutch! The only downside is once everything is packed together, the tent bag is not light. I recommend having two people for a seamless set up and tear down process, but it would be doable with one person. 

Summer camping is my favorite and having a car camping tent attachment for an SUV will elevate our future adventures. You won’t regret adding a Napier Outdoors Sports SUV Tent to your camping gear collection.