We've recently acquired ourselves a new "Summer Home" in the form of a Go Overland Canada Expedition XL tent. We've only got 6 nights in it so far, but I wanted to share a bit about our really positive experience with this tent.
Our Experience: We got our first RTT in 2011-ish; a Tepui Kukenam. That lasted us until 2017 when we wanted something a bit bigger to accommodate our growing family, but our budget was tight so we picked up a Smittybilt Overlander XL. That tent lasted us until this winter. Our typical use case is to do most weekends out in the tents, and typically we spend 4 to 6 weeks per year on a single longer trip. Additionally, when I've travelled for work I generally will skip the hotel and use the roof tent instead. All told, my napkin math suggests we've got at least 400 nights in roof tents, maybe as many as 600 - we've never properly kept track but looking back over our various trips and adventures and this seems to be about right. I bring this up only because we know what we like and don't like in a tent, and have a good bit of familiarity with them. It was finally time to upgrade and the tax return came in at the same time, and so after a lot of research we decided to go with the Go Overland Canada Expedition XL.
Go Overland Canada: We are not in any way affiliated with this brand and we paid full sticker price for our tent. This is a Canadian company, though like every other tent manufacturer the tents appear to be made overseas and shipped throughout Canada. You can see the model of tent we bought at this link: https://gooverland.ca/products/xpeditionxl
Why did we choose it?: There were a lot of factors that contributed to our choice but the highlights are:
Size. We are a family of 3, with a dog and a cat, and we want all of us up in the tent. That meant we could have gotten away with a 'queen sized' tent, but we wanted a bit of extra space for those rainy days and for comfort as our little one gets older. So, we wanted at least a "king sized" tent that would be a direct size replacement for the SmittybiltXL.
Hard Shell: We live in a very damp climate, and both zippers and velcros that hold soft shell covers in place have some level of water ingress, especially at highway speeds. For us, it starts raining in October and doesn't end until May, and we do not have a garage (we live in an RV full time) and so we didn't have a space to open the tent and dry it when it got accidentally wet; that was the death of our previous tent as it went moldy despite our moderate efforts to prevent it. We also have found that the soft covers are not super durable for our use case - we had to replace the Tepui one due to rips, and our Smittybilt cover was patched with tape.
Quick pitch: The soft cover clamshell tents are fine, but we wanted something that was just a bit more simple and quick to pitch and stow.
We wanted a tent that represented value more than cheapness; the stated weights of the fabric, the included accessories, and the design elements all played into this decision. For instance, a $3500 tent that you can purchase a winter insulation kit and awning for $500 a piece is not as good a deal as a $4300 tent that includes these things.
Ultimately we settled into three models: the iKamper, the 23Zero Armadillo, and the newcomer - the Expedition XL. What ultimately swayed us to the XL was the Canadian availability, the fabric quality, and the inclusion of a few extra accessories.
First Impressions: Ordering was simple and easy and also gave us a chance to test the customer service; I had my old address saved in my Shop account (the payment provider that Go Overland uses), and when I first entered my CC info with the correct address it got flagged as a fraud alert by my CC company. I quickly cleared that up and reprocessed the transaction but didn't reset my address, and so within a few moments I got my shipping confirmation that showed my tent was going to be dispatched to the wrong part of the country. This was 100% an attention to detail issue on my part, but GoOverland was very easy to get in touch with. I emailed them, and then noticed that they had a WhatsApp contact on their page so I used that too. They were super responsive and helpful, and got the address corrected.
When it arrived, it was extremely well packaged and the quality of the tent was clear as soon as we opened the box. As I mentioned above we live in an RV and so we actually had to get the tent delivered to a local UPS store - which is outside of what they'd typically take but they were willing to do us a favour - but since the only vehicle we have is our Overlanding vehicle, the only way to get this tent home was to install it. The tent went on fairly easily. The hardware is good quality and attachment bolts used knobs instead of nuts so no special tools were required. We did take a little rip out of the weather stripping when installing it because it scraped on a sharp bit of our cap, but that was our error and it was minor. Installation took about 15 minutes.
What was in the box: The tent (surprise!), a winter insulation kit including window inserts, the awning poles, a ladder cover, two roof bars (you can put a roof load on the Expedition XL, like a kayak) and shoe bags. It also came with awning tie-outs and a tent-peg hammer. Basically everything you'd need to mount it and go camping was included. It also included an extra support pole that will "peak" the roof a bit if you are out in the snow to prevent too much weight but is otherwise unnecessary - a really neat idea.
Good Tent Details: The tent fabric is good and as advertised, so let's talk a bit about the features of the design:
It's got a great big skylight with a clear plastic window on it. Our prior tent had skylights but you'd have to remove the rainfly to see the sky; with this tent you can take in the stars and not have to worry about the weather turning in the middle of the night.
It's got a heater port - you can very easily connect up a diesel heater and run a tube into the tent, making this a true 4-season tent. We used our Tepui down to -32 Celcius and it wasn't exactly pleasant, so this is a really nice option to have.
The roof (near where your head goes) includes an accessory bag with a bunch of pockets for the phones, car keys, e-readers, etc. in addition to the usual pockets on the sides.
It gets good and dark in there - with the windows closed, the fabric is thick enough that a fella could sleep in way past sunrise without trouble if that's your desire.
The ladder is of exceptionally good quality - far better than what I got with my Tepui or the Smittybilt. We'll see how it holds up to long-term use but it already appears to be clearly more robust. There's also a cover for the ladder to prevent it from touching the skylight plastic; this could be a bit heavier but so far it seems to do the job.
There are two shoe bags; each fits a pair of size 12 blundstones and birkenstocks at the same time. This is really nice for those quick runs out of the tent to grab a cup of coffee or to relieve oneself as you can keep a slip on camp shoe and a decent boot and pick what you need.
The mattress is thin and light, but it's incredible comfortable. At no point did my hips or shoulders feel the hard aluminum base of the tent and it's one of the better roof tent mattresses I've experienced. It also comes with a condensation mat.
The sections lock together really well. On any hinged tent, there's a mating surface that sort of locks together when the tent is deployed. In both our previous tents, it seemed that the ladder was essential to the overall stability of the floor of the tent because this mating surface didn't lock in super well or robustly; there was always a lot of flex on the "fold open" part of the tent. Not so with this one - the lock is extremely tight and the ladder doesn't seem to be doing much of the support at all, which is good because it allows for more ladder angles to account for terrain variance, vehicle height, and a safe climbing angle entry.
It's got lots of room inside; easy for 3 adults. Cozy for 4, but easy for 2 adults and 2 kids I think.
The hard shell has a really good weatherstripping all around it that positively connects with the aluminum base, meaning it should be very water tight (and thus far it has been) when closed.
Pitching the tent is effortless - two latches, fold out the ladder, and insert 6 awning posts and you're ready to sleep. Unlike our previous tents, the awning posts go in quite a long way making them more durable. The holes also have a nice little metal panel over them; the other tents made it look like the holes were sort of drilled willy-nilly with a hand drill but these look properly fitted and finished and because the posts go in so far they are very sturdy and robust.
It's very easy to dry; the design of the tent means there isn't a single part of the fly or fabric that you cannot get at with a towel if need be, so for those mornings where you've had rain overnight but need to pack up before the sun bakes the tent dry, it's easy to avoid the worst of the moisture with a simple camp towel.
I also greatly appreciate that it's very low profile, and you don't notice the weight or wind hitting it up top.
The Not Good Tent Details: There are incredibly few but I'll share them here:
I love that it comes with an LED internal light - and a good quality LED light too, not just a stick-on strip. It's very easy to hook up a rechargable battery pack and have light in the tent. The only "not good" part is that while it is dimmable and can go from white to yellow light, I wish it had a red light mode. Red lights at night are good for preservation of night vision (that's why your headlamp has it) and it would be handy for the light bar to have that feature.
Packing up is very easy, but it requires some manual tucking -- a LOT less than my previous tent, but a little. An elastic drawcord that could be flipped up to bunch the fabric in a way that is similar to the Alucab wedge camper design might make this easier, and I may try to add one to test that out.
Overall this is an exceptionally good tent, with really good value for money. I have no regrets at all and I would expect this tent to last at least another 500 to 600 nights based on the current quality I see in it. I'll keep this thread updated as sort of a running review so you folks can see the long-term viability of this tent but I am at this stage really optimistic that its going to last a while.
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