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Hello and welcome to UKCC - best place for free and unbiased camping advice in the whole of the internet!

I agree with JK98 - Vango and Outwell are well known and reputable brands.

The Redstone tents appear to come from cybercheckout on Ebay - there are many threads on here about Cybercheckout tents, and most of the experiences are negative, with tents that leak, break and end up in the bin after one night! It might look like you are getting a bigger tent for your money, but the Vango and Outwell models you are considering will be of far superior build quality and will withstand the UK weather much better.

I think jeff22 also makes a good point about getting a tent like the Icarus 500, which you can add an extension to when you can afford it.  For 4 of you, you do need to think about getting a 5 or 6 berth tent, as the "berth" usually refers only to sleeping spaces (whcih may be as little as 50cm per person in some models and thus may not actually accommodate a double airbed, for example). You need to think about the other kit you will need - cooking stuff, table, chairs, fave toys to keep the children entertained etc this all adds up to needing quite a bit of space in the living area.

As for the other kit you need, when on a tight budget it is difficult to know what to prioritise. I would advise that you make sure you have good quality beds, as poor sleep will soon ruin health, moods andthus the whole holiday. The main options are foam mats, self inflating mats, air beds or camp beds that have a metal frame. If you choose airbeds, you will also need to have some insulating layers to go on them, as there is nothing more chilly than sleeping on a slab of cold air. The other item to make sure you get good enough quality on is the cooker, becuase cheap ones may be dodgy in terms of safety.

Most of the rest of your kit can be either improvised from stuff you already have at home ( e.g. quilts, pillows, pots n pans) or bought cheaply from poundland type shops (chairs, torches, plates). Also check out your local Freecycle website; people like me who are a little obsessed with camping gear will often give away bundles of camping kit that are no longer used.

Those cybercheckout brands also include Skandika, Leben and Rage so don't touch them with a barge pole. I have the Vango Icarus 500, it's a very easy to put up tent but it's a bit of a squeeze for three of us never mind four. I agree that two tents might be an answer for you. Something like the Kyham Ontario 8 for campsite camping and maybe a 5 man dome for your festivals. Although discontinued, the Vango Venture 500 was a great tent and still makes appearances on ebay quite often.

I empathise, choosing tents makes your head spin. But that's what we are here for so make use of us and also we love helping people spend their money!

Yes; Royal tents are a recognised make so you should be safe there. I think the Memphis is an older model, I found it here though it is out of stock. The waterproof rating is good but the main difference I can see is that it does not have a fully sewn in groudnsheet (the pic shows you can see grass in the living area).

This means getting a separate loose groundsheet to go in there, and this also means your living area is not so well sealed against water and bugs becuase it deos not join up to the sides of the tent. The Vango Icarus you mention in your original post has a fully sewn in groundsheet so you don't have the extra cost of a groundsheet (unless you get the separate footprint groundsheet as an extra layer of protection for the one sewn into the tent) and you are better protected from weather and wildlife in the living area.