Vango Orava 600XL Tent Reviews and Details

Tent Reviews: Vango Orava 600XL

Tent and Awning Reviews Index > Vango > Orava 600XL Reviews

Current Model?
Berths:
Weight:
RRP on date added:
Bedroom inners:
Living area groundsheet:
Pitching Style:

Yes
6 (more 6 berth tents)
30.80 KG
Ł550.00
2
Fully Sewn-in
Fly first

Average User Rating:

8/10 from 10 reviews

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10 Reviews of the Orava 600XL

By: JOCUKCamp Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2017 Rating: 8 from 10

I don't know if mine was made in 2018 or 2019 - I purchased it in 2019, but there isn't an option to select that in the dates.

As noted for the 2018 model written about previously mine appears to have fewer fly nets and handy pockets for things. I bought it as a replacement for a sadly missed Khyham XXL. I wish I had visited a show room and seen it up prior to buying - it is seriously huge, not just big enough for an adult family and dog, but seriously HUGE. I bought the awning as well, but so far it is that big we haven't needed it. Could I put it up single handedly? Possibly, but it's far easier with 2+ people, I used to put the old tent by myself, but this one is HUGE! The sleeping compartments have been discussed in other reviews - note that if you have Vango Laze XL beds (which are excellent beds) it is seriously tight to get them into the sleeping compartments despite the on-paper sizes indicating that they should fit length wise. Given that this is such a HUGE tent another few cm on the sleeping compartments would have made this easier. You need a v.V.Large flat area of grass to get this HUGE tent up properly - I don't know how clever it would be on a slope. It looks good when up, I think it will be robust enough, but it doesn't have the thick steel poles of my old tent (which I would still have back like a shot in comparison if it didn't leak), there is plenty of space for living and a 6'2' person can easily stand up in it. It's a great tent, and I am looking forward to more time in it, but I might wish it was a bit smaller - though that's my error for not seeing it up first. Did I mention it's HUGE?

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By: Zoelou1 Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2017 Rating: 9 from 10

The Vango Orava 600XL is a fabulous tent. Exactly what we needed for a family of 5 2 adults and 3 children plus 2 dogs. You can fit 3 double air beds in each room. The pods consist of one pod for 2 people 1double bed and a bigger pod for 4 people 2 double beds. Head height is brilliant. Our neighbour was over 6 foot and had ample head room. The size of the living room is brilliant we managed 2 sofas an XL dog cage a small dog cage and a small cupboard with plenty room left to spare. The porch area was of also a great size giving room for table and 4 seats plus cooking area with plenty of space to pass in and out of the tent without getting in each other’s way.

The 2018 model hasn’t got any organisers in the outside of the bedrooms like previous models. These would have been handy to store the things that get lost easily like toilet fob key, car keys etc. It is also missing fly nets in the side doors. Whilst this didn’t affect us this time whilst away I know on a hotter day I would like to open the doors but still have the protecting of the nets for bugs etc. There is a fly net on the main living room door. On this model you do get the porch curtains which I know on earlier models are missing. Yes the other niggles would’ve been nice to have but having the porch curtains outweigh the others.

Now the tent pegs are a different matter. The anchor pegs were great couldn’t fault them. The others were just useless! We will indeed be replacing them which I would recommend anyone who buys any tent to be honest to replace the pegs as this is something I’ve found with most brands they just don’t supply decent pegs.

Apart from this I found the tent to be of good quality. No toggles came loose, nothing split came apart it all held up marvellously.

All in all a fabulous tent that hold 6 people like it says. I would recommend to everyone that listens

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By: Shellygogs Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2015 Rating: 10 from 10

I can’t fault this tent it’s a Fab tent, lots of room great to have a good sized porch that you can have the doors open or closed. The storm straps work brilliant when needed, we have been away in this tent lots over the last 3 years n have had all types of weather , we have the orava with the pelmet over the bedrooms which personally I like better. We also bought the side extension so when we go with all our family we have more then enough space as it’s huge as kitchen space. Now a days thou it’s just me and the husband and we have plenty of space, we open up the bedroom , we have a queens size bed and porta potty in it n in the other bedroom is our wardrobe.☺️

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By: ChrisH1973 Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2017 Rating: 7 from 10

This tent was purchased as a replacement for my old Samara 600 and so far I'm happy with it. Pitching was actually easier than the old tent and once one of the middle sections poles were up the others followed pretty quickly and without too much difficulty. I would probably be able to pitch this tent on my own in good conditions.

The bedrooms are a 2,4 configuration with the 4 person bedroom having a rather flimsy curtain which can be put in to make it 2x 2 person but there would be little privacy.

The living area is the same size as our old tent which was handy because the old carpet fits perfectly. The one that is supplied as part of the package was nowhere near big enough to fit right to the corners so if you buy this tent try to get a Samara 600 carpet from eBay of somewhere. I have another Vango carpet I put in on top to give it the extra layer underfoot.

The porch area gives you the extra space to put your kitchen or give you somewhere sheltered to sit if the weather is a bit iffy. No sewn in ground sheet but the one supplied is sturdy enough if you choose to use it. Having the kitchen out here really freed up space in the main living area for us.

Now the gripes, not really show stoppers for me but I think Vango are heading in a slightly wrong direction. 1st, no pelmet where the living area and bedroom area meets, those pockets really were useful on older models and hid the toggles connecting the bedroom to the flysheet. 2nd, mesh doors, only one on this model on the front door. This meant for us the tent became uncomfortably hot as we didn't want to open the other doors and have a tent full of flies and bugs. Lastly zip up curtains are gone, replaced by toggles, whilst they are a nice to have and not essential these were again featured on older models of Vango family tents and seem to have disappeared from the poled tents.

When I bought the tent I visited a store that had a large number of tents on display. I noticed that many of the features (the three above included) appear on Vango's Airbeam range but have gone from their poled tents. Vango seem to be pushing people towards the Airbeam by dumbing down the poled tents! Personally, after having seem one Airbeam blown flat in poor weather and another burst in hot weather, I won't buy one. Hence the 7/10.

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By: SlaterFJ Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2015 Rating: 1 from 10

Very disappointing. This tent is very poor quality, very poor indeed.

Where to begin. We are experienced campers who go on 3 to 6, 4 to 10 day camping trips a year. Our previous tent was an Outwell. We had had it 9 years and it would have gone on longer, if it hadn't have been blown flat in a severe storm. The tent is always carefully packed away clean and dry and indoors. Because of the age of our old tent we looked for a new one rather than repairing it. Vango seemed to have a very good reputation and the price of Outwell tents had escalated so much that we thought we would give it a go.

I fell in love with the size and the layout of the tent: a spacious porch with lovely big windows, a good-sized living area and three pods of even width across the back of the tent and where there are curtains on the windows these zip beautifully and have a neat 'tucking-in area' at the bottom. This is the 1 star rating I have given this tent. Everything else about it is dire.

We saw the Tiaga (the inflatable version) in a showroom and it seemed good quality but bought this poled version 'blind' online. The fibre-glass poles are very bendy (as might be expected) but they arrived in continuous sections of a leg, the roof parts and the leg on the other side. This meant that a whole leg had to be fed through the roof channel before the roof pole could be. Incredibly time-consuming and frustrating as they constantly snagged. In the end we cut the elastic and now have separate legs and roof section which is moderately easier to manage. However, as you are erecting the tent the frame just twists and flexes and is generally infuriating. – Particularly if it is a bit windy.

The fabrics of the tent body and floor are very thin and after 18 months of camping – 7 actual weeks of camping -- I think this tent is 'past it'.

We spread the new footprint on the back garden to check it and the dogs (pug and a labrador) ran across it and it punctured right across. After the first camping trip I spread it on the driveway in the sun to wash and dry it and in the pathetic sunshine of the Northwest of England it started shrivelling up.

The carpet does not fit the tent so ends up rucked up around the bedroom areas where the pods attach to the groundsheet.

I had to go right round all the guy ropes and reinforce the sewing on the velcro straps for keeping the guy ropes tidy as they were only hanging on by a thread.

The first time we put the tent up, the fabric tore at one of the tent-peg anchor points. The second time we put it up we found that the central anchor point for one of the wind-stabilising (tension band) straps had torn off; there was an unexplainable tear in the fabric at the back of the bedroom part of the tent and there was a hole in the sewn-in groundsheet. When it rained, we found that the flysheet above the central anchor-points of the wind-stabilising straps leaked.

Each subsequent camping trip resulted in further holes in the flysheet and groundsheet and with us camping in England this invariably means that we have a wet floor. Our last trip in Scotland resulted in a water-bed effect with the carpet floating on the top of 3 inches of water. We concluded – along with another couple in a Vango tent who had the same effect -- that the rain had come in through the doors. The pole sheaths on the roof have worn through in places and the whole fabric now feels very papery.

The doors have enough infuriating design faults without this. The zip covers catch in the zips. The zips on the outside doors do not go all the way around – there is a gap right along the bottom enabling the dog to escape unless you shut the inner mesh door as well. When you shut the door, it just blocks out the light and view – no option to roll up a curtain which our old Outwell tent had. The outside doors have a two-way zip, enabling you to open the top section and leave the bottom closed which can be handy but somehow the ventilation in this tent just doesn't work – probably not helped by the strip of solid fabric across the bottom of the net doors which, if it was put on to prevent holes being made in the netting by dogs and clumsy people, does not prevent this at all.

The walls on the sleeping pods are black – supposedly to help reduce the glare of the morning sun but it means that they are transparent and so there is no privacy for anyone when the person in the next pod can see everything.

We find the porch great for the English weather but our original idea of putting the kitchen in the porch area had to be abandoned. We now use it purely as a seating area and somewhere to hang wetsuits and store scooters and barbecues, etc. The groundsheet is not sewn in here and the one supplied is not a bucket groundsheet. We don't use the groundsheet and we peg the straps which go across the floor and doorway down to prevent tripping. We stay on campsites where birds and hedgehogs (and I expect rats) confidently enter the tents and the porch walls do not go all the way to the ground and so allows the ingress of animals and water. It is also a horrendous insect trap. We get the impression that insects just love the colour of the tent and find it irresistible. They get in the porch area and then just can't escape and we ended up buying a dust-buster to suck them up twice a day and release them. This is bad enough but if, in the meantime a wasp becomes exhausted and drops to the floor, standing on a half-dead wasp is pretty traumatic for all parties.

Other annoying things:

Only the exact number of tent pegs needed were supplied when a couple of spares would have been useful. There are different pegs supplied for different parts of the tent.

When inserting the poles you have to be really careful which side of the guy-rope you place the pole as it is easy for the guy rope to end up on the wrong side of the pole.

The guy ropes were also strung differently on different parts of our tent very confusing!

The front roof-pole is colour-coded red but the legs (probably because of them originally being attached to the roof pole) are not and so we added our own red insulation tape.

There are clips to attach the corners of the sleeping pods to the groundsheet to hold them neatly in place. These clips are a nightmare and after 3 trips I managed to work out a 'knack' for un-clipping them using a knife, brute force and a lot of cursing.

The flysheet fabric is 70 denier, 4,000 hydrostatic head (except where the holes have appeared, of course.)

The sewn-in groundsheet is supposedly 10,000 hydrostatic head (ditto the holes.)

The poles are fibre-glass.

There is a zipped cable entry point and some internal cable tidies.

There is a bag for storing the tent but there is no way we can fit the poles back in with the tent.

The pod attachment points are usefully colour-coded.

I think the footprint is an essential add-on as the sewn-in groundsheet is so feeble and the state the footprint gets in – you just wouldn't want that folded into your tent.

The tent size is 450 cm wide by 725 cm long.

(210 cm x 140 cm pods – two on the right joined together with a zip partition so it can be made into one. – + 300 cm living space + 200 cm porch area.)

The height of the centre of the tent is 210cm.

The bag is roughly 70cm long by 43cm high by 37cm wide.

There are two doors with large clear plastic windows for the front so you can have it fully open or half or closed in inclement weather.

Colour herbal.

We also have a side awning/extension and this is garbage too. It doesn't fit snugly to sides of the tent rendering it even pretty useless for a storage area as it is nowhere near weatherproof. The groundsheet is not sewn-in. At best it would be a bit of a porch – but the tent's main porch is better suited for that purpose.

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By: RustyT Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2016 Rating: 9 from 10

Just come back form first camp with the tent with as a family of 4. This is my first family tent and I've previously only owned a couple of simple dome tents.

First impression was that the tent was larger and heavier than I was expecting when it arrived. It took up a lot of space in our estate boot when it arrived (with footprint and carpet). The tent weights 30kg so it is hard to lift on your own and in future I'll probably pack the poles separately.

I chose the tent after extensive research as it is well specced for the price and appeared to be the only tent within our budget that had 3 large meshed doors (front and two sides), which appealed to me as I love as much fresh air as I can get. Note that the two side doors can only be used meshed when it's dry though.

There was loads of space in the tent. We used the bedrooms with a 2 & 4 configuration and would probably always use is this way as sections into 2/2/2 would give no space around the footprint of a double airbed to get in and out of bed (similar to a lot of tents though). There is so much head height around the whole tent that it really did feel spacious. It was glorious weather while we were camping (sunny and still) so the tent did still warm up quickly. But I can imagine on a rainy day or with a breeze the tent would be an amazing space for a family to hang out in.

I also loved the amount of light throughout the tent with lots of windows to the front and sides which can be zipped up and down quickly.

Pitching was straightforward. It took quite a long time as I was pitching it largely on my own while my wife entertained the children. However, next time, so long as it isn't too windy, I would be happy to put the children inside as soon as the main poles are erected whilst be both peg out which this would save a lot of time.

Packing - we managed to get the tent back into the bag on the first attempt, with inners attached which will save more time when we pitch next time out.

The one thing I didn't like about the tent were the clips that attach the inner to the groundsheet. These are incredibly hard to unclip. Fortunately, I left the inner tents attached but if I ever needed to remove the inners, I would find this really frustrating and would have to replace the clips.

Overall I think the tent is very well made and good value for money.

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By: Mother goose 1 Reason: Other Made in: 2014 Rating: 9 from 10

We are a family of four and I just purchased a Vango Woburn 500 with awning from the internet, was very disappointed with the size of the tent not the quality. We are new to camping so I did not know what I was looking for but I think I would like the Vango monte verde 700 with steel poles or the Vango oravo 600xl. I was wondering if I could put up these tents on my own as my children are 11,9 and 7. Has anyone any advice for me before I make another bad purchase. I like the fact that the porch is enclosed, verde has a sewn in ground sheet in porch, both have zip up curtains which I also like. Thanks in advance for any advice

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By: Robeallen Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2015 Rating: 8 from 10

Chose this for the bath-tub construction of the main tent which keeps the water and beasties out; plus the open construction of the front porch to give ventilation for cooking and the gas-fridge. Very spacious 'lounge', just-big-enough sleeping tents, and good-sized porch. Ample windows give a good vista and let the light in. The porch is good for cooking, but is difficult to vent without opening a front door fully (not so good in the rain), and turns into a hot-house in full sun. I rigged up a make-shift awning to give shelter.

The tent withstood moderate (25-35mph) gusts and a good lashing of rain. But make sure the guy-lines are well situated as the whippy poles bend a lot with the wind. Quality is good, with no problems to report. Groundsheet feels a bit thin, so worth getting the supplementary foot-print and carpet. Good vents keep things airy at night, and you can just about keep cool under full-sun having the three doors to play with.

Pitching is reasonably straightforward (c.30 mins on a level pitch), but don't stick too rigidly to the somewhat generic instructions.

Overall, a nice tent to camp in come rain or shine.

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By: Bstokegirl Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2015 Rating: 9 from 10

We're very pleased with our Orava. Put up with a very windy coastal campsite with no problems. Lots of living space and cooking space if you use the porch. Only two moans, one of the pole elastics snapped as we took it down, and the porch has an awning facility but no poles, which is a little strange. We managed to get it up in about 30mins, it is pretty simple as per other Vango tents.

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By: Aboardy Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2015 Rating: 10 from 10

Fabulous and spacious. Huge amount of living space and a separate, enclosed front porch. The TBS system is used when it us windy and it really does work to reduce movement in wild conditions. Bought the side awning to go with it but don't need it as the tent itself is huge! Really happy with it. The homework paid off!

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Manufacturer's Description

NEW for 2015 is the Orava range, a winning combination of space and flexibility. The living area is enhanced by the use of pre-bend poles and is complimented by zipped curtains and storage pockets. The fully flexible built in front extension allows you to create either an outdoor space or an indoor sanctuary, depending on the weather. A groundsheet for the awning area is supplied with the compatible Orava Footprint. This tent is ideal for any family who requires the ultimate in versatility.

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