Mountain Safety Research tends to arrive at an impressive iteration of a product and then stick with it. Most outdoor gear companies tend to ruin their best products with constant cost-cutting and penny-pinching, but they should take a page from the book.
It is a good idea to look at what your peers are doing when you refresh your products. The Hubba Hubba NX backpacking tent could have used a few more minor changes to keep it from feeling outclassed by its competitors.
Blowin in the wind.
One-, two-, and three-person versions of the Hubba Hubba NX are available. I took the two-person version out for a week of hiking in Texas, from chilly forested mountains to 95-degree desert hikes.
10 ounces is a significant amount of weight off the two-person, pre-2022 Hubba Hubba NX. The Sea to Summit Telos TR2 is 6.5 ounces lighter than it is. New poles make the walls stand more vertically, which makes it feel roomier inside. The Telos is almost the same size as the Copper Spur, at 28 square feet.
Non-freestanding or semi-freestanding tents do not need to be staked out to set up fully, and they are more resistant to high winds than freestanding tents. In the desert, the concrete-like desert floor wouldn't let me drive a titanium nail peg into the earth. I used to pull each guyline out and drop a heavy rock on it, but on calmer nights I just threw my gear in the tent and went to sleep.
The Hubba Hubba NX was battered by strong gusts in the open desert at night, as the cool breezes rolled down the Chisos Mountains at dusk, and sent a chill over the desert floor where I made camp most nights. I was not able to find out the wind speed, but the tent held up and there was no cell signal on the Dodson Trail.
A three-season tent is cheaper and lighter than a four-season tent, which is more suited for extreme cold, high winds, and snow. I had no complaints about my lowest night in the three-seasonMSR being in the low 40s Farenheit and using a 20-degree Marmot sleeping bag atop a closed-cell foam sleeping pad. It has a vent that can be closed or kept open. The fresh air in the tents of theMSR never felt stuffy, like cheaper tents sometimes do.
There are pocket-sized problems.
I can lie down in most tents with only a small amount of clearance between the tent walls and the ends of my sleeping bag. The Hubba Hubba NX is not the only tent that has a mesh pocket by the foot end, but it rubs me the wrong way. It was not the most comfortable place to put things when trying to sleep.
Ultralight tents have to make some compromises to get the weight down. 20-denier ripstop nylon is used for the tent floor and walls, while 10-denier nylon is used for the inner tent wall. The same fabrics will be used for the inner and outer walls of a double-wall tent, but they will be heavier and thicker, and have larger zippers.
It is important for the zipper to work with minimal effort and not to catch any fabric in its teeth while zipping and unzipping on any ultralight gear. The thin fabric makes it easier for a caught zip to tear it. At the very least, you will be looking at a tent repair on your expensive shelter, and maybe a few wet nights if it happens while you are on a trip.
I had to use more force with the two tiny zippers on the inner tent wall because they weren't as smooth as I wanted. Even with a light touch, the zippers were already more prone to catch than the ones on the competing tents. I had to use a lot of force to put the Easton tent poles together and take them apart, compared to other tents in this price range that use poles from DAC.
There are some final thoughts.
The Hubba Hubba NX is not a bad tent. Even though it is a good tent, it falls down on the details: the pockets, the poles, and the zippers. The $480 Hubba Hubba NX is more expensive than the Big Agnes Copper Spur UL2 and Sea to Summit Telos TR2 because it has more tent poles and zippers, but they don't cost much more.
If you are only looking for a tent to drive up to a campground and pitch on a reserved site, then go for a cheaper and more durable tent such as the REI Co-op Trail Hut 2. The Hubba Hubba NX is a good choice if you need a tent for your next adventure because the Copper Spur and Telos are usually sold out. It can be difficult to swallow a pill for nearly $500.
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