Durston X-Dome 1+ Review after 50+ nights
hey guys in this video I'm going to be reviewing the durston x-dome 1+ backpacking tent which I've been using for the last two months as I've been bike packing down through the US and Mexico this is going to be very much a field review I'm currently cycling through northern Mexico I'm recording this on the edge of the Copper Canyon where I'm camping for this evening and I'm just going to talk about why I think this is the best tent that I've ever had out of 10 odd years of cycling around the world more than 10 different tents that I've used probably about 1,500 nights slept in tents over that time and this tent is by far and a way the best tent that I've ever had if you watch to the end of the video I will also be showing you a modification that I have made to the tent which has made a pretty big difference it's a very small very cheap mod but I will be showing you that small mod at the end of the video what I think I'm going to do is actually just put the tent up right now in real time so that you can see how it all goes up and as I'm doing that I'll talk you through some of the features of this tent and why I think it's so good there is going to be a test of my multitasking abilities so hopefully I can manage it but yeah essentially this is a single person double wool freestanding tent it weighs about 1 kg all said as far as the pack size I actually don't use the attached stuff sack I prefer to just stuff my tents so I've just got a separate stuff sack it falls down to about the size of let's say a small football and then I keep the poles and the stakes separately so as far as setting it up it is extremely easy or you have to do is start by throwing down the pole structure which is nice and easy it comes in a pretty small packet so you just get the pole structure all set up the pole set is carbon fiber and this was actually something that when I initially got the 10 I was a little bit concerned in terms of the durability because the poles do seem very thin but as I say I've got about 50 kns in this tent so far and it's held up extremely well I have had this tent through some pretty severe weather I've had a lot of very very windy conditions in the desert and it's been absolutely brilliant I've had no issues the poles are still good as new even after as I say about 2 months worth of nights slept in this tent it's all going totally fine so that is the pole set so that's all done all you then have to do is throw down the tent so I should say that this contains both the inner the outer and the ground sheet for the tent so it all packs down into a very small package so all I do is I find which corner I'm looking for which in my case is this one this tent is not symmetrical so you kind of need to know which direction you're throwing it but that's the way I'm going to be sleeping just like that you then get the pole set doesn't matter which way around this is and all you're doing is you're inserting it into the four corner grommets and the pole is going to go through both the outer and the inner tents so in my case I've got the outer and the inner already attached so they're already tied together which makes setup a little bit quicker you can actually set this tent up either with the outer first or the inner first or you can do them as I am now with the two already attached together which is going to be a little bit faster the nice thing about the fact that this tent does go up outer first ordinarily is that if you're putting this tent up in the rain you don't have to worry about the inner tent getting wet and as a kind of comparison point I am going to talk about a few of the other tents that I've used over the years I'm not trying to throw shade at any of these tents but is I think useful to have a point of comparison to just how much better I think the design of this tent is than pretty much every other tent currently on the market so the issue with a lot of tents so for example I use the MSR hubba hubba is a very common back packing tent that a lot of people really like um the Big Agnes Fly Creek I've used I mean these are all good tents but they do suffer from a few problems and as a result I think this is a huge step forward I really do think this tent is is a game Cher as far as backpacking tents so what I've just done there is I've set up the frame into the corners I've then put up the cross pole which is really easy and then all you've got to do to finish off putting up the tent is you've just got to clip on the top to the pole structure so very quick and easy nice and quick and this tent will then be good to go so I say with that pitch if it were raining right now the interior of the tent tent would be completely dry with something like a Big Agnes Fly Creek or hubba hubba or to be honest most backpacking tents because they pitch inner first and then you have to throw the outer Over the Top If you're having to make that pitch while it's raining hard your inner tent is going to be pretty wet by the time you actually get round to getting the alter on and protecting it so this pitch just makes a lot more sense in my opinion that is the tent now fully put up it is a fully freestanding tent so I like a tents where you have to still Peg out the vestibules to make it a full structure this tent is fully freestanding from the start there's nothing else that you have to Peg out you could actually use it perfectly well like that it's also pretty strong actually even just like that you can see that there is quite a lot of strength to it so I've used a lot of tents over the years I've used freestanding tents I've used trekking pole tents which need to be staked out my experience is that freestanding tents make a huge difference especially for bike packing when you're hiking it helps but it's not quite as important but when you're bike packing it happens a lot more often than you think that you need to set up the tent on ground where there is no option to stake it out you know say a concrete slab that you're putting on or sand where staks won't take hold it does happen quite a lot and although you can improvise using rocks and other anchors it is a real faf so having a tent that is freestanding from the start does make an absolutely huge difference so I think this is a major plus so here we have the tent fully set up it does also have vents on each end which is nice to give a little bit of air flow to the tent which can help with condensation if you're in humid places not that I am right now but that is the basic setup of the tent all that you then have to do to finish it off is to stake it out in terms of time to set the tent up it's very quick I mean I think this is about 4 minutes something like that to go from the bag to being fully pitched which is not the absolute fastest to turn it around but that's pretty good to be honest 4 minutes is probably about half what you'd expect to take with a nor normal double wall tent this does go up very very quickly and just to show you I mean this is now fully set up that is pretty stable I mean I'm applying quite a lot of force there and it's going absolutely nowhere that's without any of the guys attached just the basic structure of the tent is very very strong so it's really really stormw worthy if we open it up so you can see inside so it has waterproof zippers which means you don't have to worry about any kind of zipper gutters or anything like that it's very quick and easy to open it's one-handed super easy the zippers are really really nice and the other thing that this tent has which once you've had a tent with this feature you will never ever want to go back to a tent that doesn't which is magnetic toggles which just makes things incredibly quick and easy as far as opening the tent up so this is the configuration that I usually use the tent because it has a decent sized Awning in there and it keeps you fully protected but you can also if you want to something I'll do right now just so that you can see a little bit more clearly you can also tie back this side as as well and there's again magnetic toggles on that side just there too and then you have a really clear view you can open things up and it's really really clear before I open up the tent and get into it I just want to show you how big the actual vestibule is so just to give you a sense of how large it is I'm actually able to get into it myself so right now I'm sitting up in the vestibule I would be fully protected from the rain right here and yeah it's a really really big space it's very usable very very convenient to have as far as is the interior space so it is a huge bottom zipper right across the middle there and then it's got a central connector here so let's open things up so you can see nice and easily so if we open up the main door here again same as with the outer you've got magnetic um toggles here which is a huge bonus it makes things incredibly straightforward I'm also actually going to tie back this door as well it's the only tent I've ever really seen that has this feature where you can actually open up the other side as well which essentially means that the entire side of the tent ends up being fully open so right there you can see that the whole door is fully open so if I were to sit in the tent right now which I'll do I have an enormous amount of space here so I've got full access to the vestibule on the side and getting in and out of this tent is incredibly straightforward Because the actual top here although it does fully protect it so this is a fully protected interior as far as entry and exit during storms you can actually leave the door open and you're going to be fully protected but getting in and out super easy some T you do need to sort of stoop to get in and out this one is extremely easy so again just to show you like it's super quick and easy I'm not having to duck awkwardly the entry and exit is really really nice and something that I do really value is that again because this tent does have an overhang if it were raining just vertically so not too much wind I could actually leave all of this fully open even as much as this and I could be sitting inside that tent enjoying The View getting some air flow but staying completely dry which is amazing so as far as living space there is a ton of space inside this tent this is a standard length pad inside the tent so this is uh 20 in wide 72 in long and as you can see there is plenty of space if I have it all the way to the front there is still a good near foot at the other end and that's having it in this orientation this is generally how I use it I will sleep on that side and then I have all of this space here huge amount of space which I will use for storing extra gear and just to have extra space to move around in the tent if you were a tall person you could actually sleep it on the diagonal and then you would have even more space so it is it is a super big tent for one person honestly I think this is literally the perfect size for one person so I think having used one person tents and two person tents quite a lot um as a you know Solo Traveler I definitely think that in general two person tents are a little bit too big and one person tents are a little bit too small so I'm going to sit in the tent right now this is just to give you an idea I don't know how well it's going to come out but this is me sitting up on the mat so again you can see there is still plenty of space above my head there I have loads of space to move around whether I have the mat off to my side I still have plenty of room and you could actually squeeze a second pad in here it would overlap down at the base so it's not ideal but it would be possible so yeah it is it is technically possible to sleep two in here without it being an absolute nightmare but as a onep person tent this gives me all the space I could possibly want without having extra space because as a Solo Traveler I've often found that a two person tent is just a bit too big it kind of just feels a bit stupid you're carrying this extra weight and you're not using most of the tent whereas this it just gives you this extra space up the headend which is amazing and I just think yeah perfect size I couldn't couldn't ask for better in terms of storage you've got these little pockets on the side and then you've got this slightly larger pocket on the front here which is great that's really nice to have I don't feel like I really want any more organization than that and from this angle again you can get a better idea of just how big that vestibule is so if I just put my shoes in there to give you an idea like this is a huge huge interior space with the vestibule so I'm just going to show you as well what the the Interior Space looks like with the outer door closed so if I just uncp that and close the outer door there nice straight forward um this is the kind of space that we're talking about with the interior so this is a huge huge vestibule here so that whole diagonal space is usable space this is very steep walls so in terms of cooking I'd feel super happy cooking here without worrying about setting fire to the alter tent it is also a really nice feature is that it's a very easy reach so if I want to get from you know here i' to access the outer door some tents you're reaching really far to reach the tent zipper whereas here with this tent it's not a Long Reach at all I can super easily get to the zipper and then it's just a one-handed pull really easily and then again with that D with that magnetic toggle on there it's just it's incredibly quick and easy to get the doors open and shut inner door as well again I mean it's all just onehanded this zipper I've got the other side zipped up right now but again super super easy all of it is onehanded it's all really straightforward and right now I say I'm inside the tent um loads and loads of space and yeah it's just a super comfortable tent I never in this tent feel remotely claustrophobic it's genuinely really really spacious so yeah super happy with the inside of the tent I think it's kind of perfect one really nice feature of this tent which I massively appreciate as far as stormw worthiness and using it in bad conditions is that it's very very easy for you to take down this T from the inside with the outer door closed and then pack it up from the inside to keep it dry so one of the hardest types of conditions that you can deal with when you're living in a tent day after day is when you get multiple days of heavy rain and you don't get a chance to dry the tent out so if it rains in the night and then it's still raining in the morning you have to pack up the tent in the rain with most backpacking tents because you have to take off the outer layer and then the inner layer goes down second you're very likely going to be packing away a wet in a tent as well it's quite hard to actually get it down without it getting wet and then if you don't get the chance to dry it out during the day you then have to put up a soaking wet tent in the evening you're getting into a wet tent I've done it so many times it's absolutely miserable this tent on the other hand makes life so incredibly easy so all you have to do to take down the inner tent is you just disconnect it and all of this can be done while inside the tent with the outer door closed so you're fully protected from the rain or you have to do is just disconnect it I can then uncp it from the Four Corners also from within the actual tent I can then pack away this completely dry very easily while keeping myself protected and then I can get out and I can take down the rest of the tent keep them separate and then when I put the tent back up again in the evening I put up the outer tent first I can then crawl inside and then I can put up the inner tent it will stay completely dry so this is a genius tent for really bad conditions which ultimately is when you really want to tent having a tent that I know I can rely on that it will handle the really nasty conditions well makes a huge difference so this tent as far as livability as far as its practicality in bad conditions is absolutely brilliant so I really love it for that despite the fact that it feels like there is so much space inside it actually has a really small footprint which means that if you want to put this tent up in tight spaces which also does happen more often than you'd think the small footprint is a really big Advantage there so yeah it's a really nice size it's it's perfect so the living space is amazing and it's an incredibly stormw worthy tent it is I'd say the most stormw worthy tent that I've ever used I've had this tent in some very very strong wind and it's just felt incredibly stable I felt very comfortable with it and I also have had it in some pretty bad rain and as I say it's it's such a strong tent and it can also be further reinforced so you do actually have attachment points here on the front top and at the back as well so if you are carrying trekking poles or if you just want to use a stick that you found you can also reinforce the top which will help keep it even more stable and if you do that if you do reinforce it with poles on both sides this tent actually becomes a Four Season tent and that is a pretty incredible thing that it's snow load capable a Four Season tent despite weighing 1 kg which is absolutely crazy so when I first got this tent the one thing that had me a little bit worried was the pole set so the pole set is very very thin and it is made of carbon fiber and I was a little bit worried initially that it wasn't going to be strong enough to survive for many many nights so I live in my tent I expect to get many hundreds of knights out of a good tent and I was a little bit concerned about the pole set I have to say though after I say more than 50 nights that I've slept in it since getting this tent the poll set is still good as new it hasn't shown any signs whatsoever of decaying or having any issues whatsoever it seems really strong Dan durston really knows his stuff so if he says the pul set is strong enough I would tend to believe him as far as materials this tent is made out of Sil poly and that is different than the majority of backpacking tents you're going to find on the market in that most of them are made of Sil nylon which most of the tents I've used in the past have been and although it works fine the main drawback to Sil nylon is that it tends to absorb quite a bit of water and when it does get very wet it will sag quite significantly and this definitely has happened I've seen it happen a lot when I've had it in rainy conditions and in practice what that means is that if you're camping in the rain with a Sil nylon tent you will need to get up out of the tent at some point and retension the line retention the tent because it will start to droop and it will be very noticeable how much it droops so poly which this tent is made of doesn't really absorb much water at all far far less than Sil nylon so it doesn't droop so once you put it up it's up you don't have to worry about it sagging which is really nice to have you don't want to have to get up out of your tent in the rain just to retension your tent seems a bit stupid the tent is fully modular so if you want to set it up just the inner tent if you're say in the tropics somewhere very hot and you just want to be able to stargaze you can easily take the outer and the inner apart and you can just put up the inner tent it's very easy to do that you can also just set it up with only the outer if you don't need the inner if you're not worried about bugs you can just use the outer tent save some weight and use it basically like a toar very easy or you can do what I usually do or at least at the moment I'm usually doing Where I Leave the two clipped together when I pack it up which means that when I put it up again again it's already fully attached makes things very very quick and I know that this is how I'm going to be using it most of the time right now because Knights are dropping below freezing most of the time here in northern Mexico and so I want the Alon to give me a little bit of extra heat insulation so here on this tent I also do have the ground sheet attached and the really nice thing about dur tents which I haven't seen on any other types of tents is that the ground sheet is actually able to be clipped straight onto the inner part of the tent which means that I don't have to worry about packing them up or assembling them separately everything is fully tied together so I can literally just throw the tent out as you saw me do at the very start that's the ground sheet underneath that's the inner and the outer so it makes set up and take down super super fast whether you need a ground sheet depends what you're going to do with it I always use a ground sheet when I'm touring because I'm not just putting you know 10 or 20 Knights onto my 10 I'm putting like two or 300 Knights onto my tent hopefully and in my experience the first thing that always goes is the ground sheet if you don't have an extra ground cloth underneath eventually it'll start soaking up water so an extra 100 gr is all the ground sheet weighs for this tent it's well worth it to prolong your life of your tent especially if like me you're doing a lot of camping on Rocky ground in the desert where there thorns a ground sheet for that kind of stuff is a no-brainer and with this 10 as say it's all just clipped together and it really makes things nice and easy one other thing I should mention is that the pul set now comes in two lengths so when this tank came out which is when I first got it it only came in standard length of pole set which is what I have here but dur have since released a shorter pole set which is designed mainly for bike Packers to make it easier to pack into your bike packing setups so you do have the option of going with a longer or a shorter pole set in my case it doesn't matter at all because the way that I pack poles onto my bike is I just strap them to my down tube so in my case I don't need it to be any shorter it's totally fine as it is but if you are looking at getting this tent for bike packing then it might be worth looking at the shorter pole set you do also have the option of going with a solid inner or a mesh inner so this is the mesh inner that I have here just because when the tank came out that was the only option available personally I would probably go for the solid set myself just because I tend to prefer a slightly warmer tent and I don't tend to overheat too much so if I were buying now I'd probably buy the solid but it depends what you're going to do with it if you're going to be mainly camping in very hot conditions then the mesh is probably the way to go take down of the tent is also incredibly fast I'll throw together a time lapse of packing it up in the morning at some point but yeah very straightforward I personally prefer to just stuff the tent rather than roll it up into the stuff sack that it comes with just cuz that fits better with how I pack my bike and it is also quite a bit faster in terms of both setup and Tak down so yeah you just take the poles off and then you stuff it all together and that's that's it really quick and easy and it does pack down into a remarkably small package considering as a say that this is a double wall tent with the ground sheet attached it really goes really tiny so I think that is really amazing I have used both single wool and double wool tents over the years and both of them can work but that said single wool tents really really suffer if you're using them in humid wet conditions I've done that quite a bit and it's really not fun you wake up with condensation dripping down into your sleeping bag you then have a soaking wet tent which you need to find time to dry out if it's really humid or really wet for days on end a single wall tent becomes pretty miserable pretty quickly so for me a double wall tent is always going to be more versatile a single wall tent with comparable materials is only going to be 1 or 200 g less and the extra versatility that you get from the double wall tent is pretty enormous I guess the final thing to say about why I think this tent is amazing is value for money is fantastic so all of the dur and Tents are super well priced so a couple of tents that might be a decent comparison point for this tent would say be the MSR hubba hubba oneperson tent or the Big Agnes copper spur one person tent I've used both of those tents pretty extensively this works out quite a bit cheaper it's significantly more stormw worthy it has quite a lot more interior space the livability is much better the setup makes much more sense because it's more versatile you can do outer pitch first the set up and taked down is also much quicker the material on this is better with so pooly and the other thing which I think is really worth mentioning is that Duron as a company are famous for having incredible customer service I've actually never even heard of anyone having a bad experience with dur Dan really does care and he really does take care of people so if people have a problem with their tent or if anything goes wrong he does stand behind his products and it is also it's one guy that you have to deal with rather than a big company so if you send him a message and say I've had this issue he will sort you out if you go online the internet's full of stories of people who have been taken care of by Dan he listens to feedback he's an amazing guy and he makes amazing tents so the fact that this is a Durst tent I think is also a major bonus the last thing I'm going to show you is the small modification that I've made very cheap to do but it does make quite a significant difference now as I mentioned I tend to pack this tent up with the inner and outer attached because that's just the easiest way to do it and what I was Finding when I first got this tent is that when I was taking it out of its stuff sack and getting it out to to pitch it I was having to hunt around a little bit more in the sort of mess of material and different attachment points to find the two corners that I needed to attach to the one corner pole and it wasn't a big deal it was just taking me a bit more time so the small mod that I've done which I do think is really worthwhile is I've just bought four tiny little multicolored mini carabinas and I've just actually used that to attach the inner and outer Corner strings on each of the four corners so what that means is that they stay together which means when I roll it out I don't have to hunt they're both already tied together so I know straight away where they are Mak setup a lot quicker and because they're multicolored too I instantly know which corner it is that I've got so again when I took the tent out I was just looking for the green carabina so green I know is this kind of top right door side corner which is the most important one when I put the tent up because I'm going to start and Pitch it this way around every time so I'm looking for the green corner I can then throw it down and I know exactly which way round the tent is because it's not symmetrical as I said before you do need just to make sure you know which way around you're pitching it so yeah I think that is just about everything I've got to say it's getting a little bit late so I need to go and cook my dinner I absolutely love this tent so I think a lot of you would benefit as well I genuinely think it is the perfect tent for bike packing and for back packing the value on it is incredible it's a super strong super durable tent if you check the description there'll be a link to D's website where you can purchase these and have a look at all the other D and products it's all amazing full disclosure that link is an affiliate link so if you do buy anything on duron's website I do get a tiny commission the price to you is exactly the same it's just a good way to help support me if you like what I'm doing but as I say that isn't why I'm making this video I absolutely just love this tent I think it is genuinely the best tent that I've ever heard of or ever seen so I just thought it would be worth sharing that with you if you enjoyed this video please do the YouTube thing like the video drop a comment subscribe by the T-shirt yeah hope you found this video useful and I hope you have a great rest of the day
2025-03-07 15:32
