Ozark Trail vs Coleman Tent – Ultimate Showdown

In this article, I’ll dive deep into how the Ozark Trail tent compare with the Coleman tent.

I’ll delve into every single similarity and differences that a person can observe from both types of tents.

Ozark Trail Company Background

When I mention Ozark Trail, I don’t mean the Ozark Hiking Trail at Missouri Ozarks in the United States.

The Ozark Trail brand is a private-label brand which is owned by Walmart. Through this brand, Walmart sells its own outdoor products. The home office for the Ozark Trail is located in the Ozark.

Walmart owns many other major brands which you can read about here.

The next important question would be: Who makes Ozark Trail tents?

Ozark Trail being a privately owned proprietary name by Walmart is manufactured by various manufacturers that are engaged by Walmart.

Coleman Company Background

Coleman is a company that specializes in selling outdoor gears, especially things you’ll need for camping.

Coleman has a very rich history, where the company is founded since the 1900s. Coleman is one of the most well-known company selling various camping equipment.

Although Coleman started from humble origins, where it was founded by William Coffin Coleman in the 19002, it was later acquired by companies.

Now, the parent organization owning Coleman is Newell Brands. Newell Brands is a listed company in the United States.

What Ozark Specialize in

The Ozark Trail specializes in manufacturing affordable camping essentials including:

1. Sleeping Bags

2. Camping Tents

3. Canopies

4. Coolers

5. Camping furniture

6. Camp kitchen utensils

7. Backpacks

8. Camping accessories

Ozark Trail has a wide variety of options for its buyers to choose from. On one hand, you’ll be able to purchase decent-quality and lower-priced products. On the other hand, you can spend a bit more to get higher quality and fairly priced tents.

Although there isn’t a wide range of products offered by Ozark Trail compared to Coleman, in my opinion, you should still be able to find what you want from Ozark Trail.

To-date, there are seventy over options of Ozark Trail tent for you to choose from ranging from 1-person tents to even a 16-person tube tents.

What Coleman Specialize in

Coleman, being one of the oldest outdoors company sells a wide selections of tents.

The types of tents available are plenty, you can shop for Coleman tents by sizes, by styles or by collections. Check out the navigation of Coleman’s website below:

However, in terms of selections, Coleman has more options than what Ozark Trail offers.

Coleman specialize in selling high-quality tents to its users. The tents sold by Coleman are well-known for its good quality.

Compared to industry standards, Coleman tents are affordable.

Vital Aspects for Comparison

1. Comfort

Winner: Coleman

In determining the comfort levels of tents, some of the important factors include:

a. How much space person did the tent account for one person

b. How waterproof are the tents

c. How good is the ventilation for the tent

Space – After comparing both Coleman and Ozark Trail tents, both tents actually have very similar sizes.

To me, both brands make tents which have decent amount of space. Both meets market standards.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, I’ll compare 2 types of tents from each brand.

Product	Ozark Trail 10-Person Dark Rest Instant Cabin Tent	Skydome™ XL 10-Person Camping Tent with Dark Room™ Technology
Price	$199.00	$389.99
Technology	Innovative Dark Rest technology	Dark Room™ Technology which blocks 90% of sunlight so you can sleep in
Ventilation	8 large windows	Awning, mesh roof, and 2 ground vents add extra airflow inside tent
Set-up Time	2 minutes	5 minutes
Areas	14 feet x 10 feet	16 feet x 9 feet
Center height	6.5 feet or 78 inches	6.5 feet

By comparing both types of tents, you can see that both tents actually have very little difference in size for both similar tents.

In fact, they are meeting market standards by providing tents which have decent space for each individual.

Tents from both brands provide you ample space for you to move around.

Therefore, the conclusion is that both brands are doing equally well

Ventilation – Both brands have features which helps improve ventilation. You can look at the comparison table I made to compare the:

a. Ozark Trail 10-Person Dark Rest Instant Cabin Tent vs Skydome™ XL 10-Person Camping Tent with Dark Room™ Technology; and

b. Ozark Trail 4-Person Instant Cabin Tent with LED Lighted Hub vs Skydome™ 4-Person Camping Tent with LED Lighting.

By comparing products from both brands, you can see that the ventilation between

For Ozark Trail, the tents are often equipped with features that allows good ventilation. For example, tents are often equipped with many large mesh windows and vents to offer good ventilation.

While Coleman tents are equipped with various high-end features including mesh roof, ground vents and wide doors.  

To me, Ozark Trail has better ventilation. The features that come with the tents made by Ozark Trail are more effective in providing ventilation. Although Coleman has features that promotes ventilation, those features are not as effective as having actual mesh windows equipped on the tent.

Waterproofing – Some Ozark Trail tents are equipped with water resistant coating, while some tents are only suitable to be used for perfect outdoor conditions.  

While Coleman tents are equipped with WeatherTec™ system which helps ensure the tent is waterproof. Various features are included in the Coleman tent including the fact that the floor of the tent is welded so you don’t have to worry about puddle water coming into the tent.

Clearly, Coleman tents have better waterproofing than Ozark Trail tents.

To me, Coleman tents are more comfortable than Ozark trail tents. The tipping point is because of Coleman has better waterproofing for its tents compared to Ozark Trail tents.

2. Price

Winner: Ozark Trail

To get an accurate comparison of the price, I’ll be taking two similar tents from Ozark Trail and Coleman to compare both of its prices.

The two most similar tents I can find to compare is the Ozark Trail 4-Person Instant Cabin Tent with LED Lighted Hub and the Skydome™ 4-Person Camping Tent with LED Lighting.

Here’s a comparison of both tents:

Name	Ozark Trail 4-Person Instant Cabin Tent with LED Lighted Hub	Skydome™ 4-Person Camping Tent with LED Lighting
Set-up	Pre-attached poles for easy 60 second setup	Sets up in 5 minutes using preattached poles
LED Lighting	Built-in LED lighted hub with low, medium, and high-power settings	Shines warm diffused overhead light throughout tent
Ventilation	three mesh windows, one adjustable AC vent,	Wide Door Makes it easier to move airbeds, sleeping bags, and other gear in and out of the ten
Waterproof	1,200 mm PU water resistant coating Includes a removable rainfly	WeatherTec™ system’s tub-like floor, welded corners, inverted seams and taped seams on rainfly and tent body help keep water from getting in
Dimension	8’ x 7’	8 feet x 7 feet
Height	54”	4 feet  8 inches
Price	$99.00	$139.99

Just by looking at the comparison I have made between Ozark Trail tents and Coleman tents, Ozark Trail tents are clearly cheaper compared to Coleman tents. The clear winner for this aspect of comparison is Ozark Trail

3. Convenience

Winner: Ozark Trail

When we talk about convenience, we are basically comparing how both brands produce tents that has functionalities that promotes convenience. I will talk about the several considerations below including:

i. Can it be separated into rooms; and

ii.  How easy is it to set-up.

Tents which are easy to set-up and easy to carry around are usually more convenient. In this section, I attempt to differentiate between comfort and convenience.

Can separate into rooms – Dividers are important for families who wants to separate their tents into rooms.

After looking through what both brands offer, there are extremely few tents that comes with a room divider. Therefore, we can’t really compare both brands based on this aspect.  

Set-up – The tents sold by both brands are designed for quick set-up. Most of the tents sold are instant tents, while there are a few tents which are not designed for quick set-up which requires some time for assembly.

Although they are not instant set-up, they are made to be easy set-up, which should only take you just few minutes for set-up.

Most of the tents produced by Ozark Trail are made for either instant set-up or easy set-up.

Ozark Trail tents which are made for easy set-up usually can be easily set-up by one person. For example, the Ozark Trail 10-Person cabin tent comes with 3 fiber glass poles to make up the roof of your tent, and 6 thick steel pole for the walls of your tent, and guy lines which are pre-attached and 14 steel stakes.

You will need to learn how to set-up the tent and take time to set it up, you can take a look at how it’s set up here:

Most tents for Coleman are similarly made for instant set-up.

As for Coleman tents which aren’t made for instant set-up, they are also made for easy and quick set-up. Usually, these tents are designed with internal pole system with attached poles which allows a quick and easy set-up. All you have to do is unfold the tent, spread out, extend poles and lock them into place. After some practice this can be done under 5 minutes.

Here’s a video showing the set-up for the Coleman WeatherMaster 10-person tent:

Concerning easy set-up, I’d like to vote Ozark Trail as the winner. It’s because the tents which aren’t made for instant set-up by Coleman requires more time and effort to set-up compared to Ozark Trail tents which aren’t made for instant set-up.

Therefore, Ozark Trail tents win the showdown if the comparison concerns the aspect of convenience.

Conclusion

Therefore, after comparing a few vital aspects, Ozark Trail won by a slim margin. Ozark Trail tents are slightly better in terms of pricing and convenience compared to Coleman Tents. If you have the budget and prioritize comfort, you may want to opt for Coleman tents.

I hope this head-to-head comparison of tents from both brands will help you decide which tent to purchase.