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Tent Reviews: Vaude Badawi Long 6 Man Family
Tent and Awning Reviews Index > Vaude > Badawi Long 6 Man Family Reviews
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Current Model?
Berths:
Weight:
RRP on date added:
Bedroom inners:
Living area groundsheet:
Pitching Style:
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Yes
6 (more 6 berth tents)
16.50 KG
£520.00
2
Fully Sewn-in
Fly first
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Average User Rating:7.67/10 from 3 reviews
Viewed: 36441 times
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3 Reviews of the Badawi Long 6 Man Family
By: GLEN ETIVE Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2008 Rating: 
First time pitch rather difficult due to poor instructions and high winds. It did not help that the day after purchase, I packed the car and headed to Glen Etive on my own, with a huge smile on my face, ready for wild camping in Scotland in late Oct.
Positive thoughts on tent;
1) Stunning tent to look at.
2) Ventilation excellent, in summer
3) Materials used, very good quality.
4) Spacious,but have only used as a 4 person.
5) Very stable in high winds.
6) Once you get the hang of tension straps for poles they are good.
7) Great organiser,perfect for ipod docking station and free.
8) Small pack size, room for more gear.
9)Sleeping pods have plenty of room,double and single mattress fit well.
10) quick to take down and pack.
Negatives;
1)Difficult to pitch, first time took an hour with some re-adjustments needed,have halved time with practice .
2)Pegs are lethal , replaced after first trip .
3)Straps are confusing initially .
4) A bit breezy inside in high winds,bought the comfort footprint ,which was expensive and came with no instructions. This has partially rectified the problem but have still to master the set up.
Overall impressions
Very good tent which once you have mastered the set up will bring you much happiness .
2 from 2 people found this review helpful, was it helpful to you?  
By: Norfolkinway Reason: I've used one Made in: 2007 Rating: 
I've just returned from a wet and windy bank holiday weekend in Norfolk with a Badawi Long TC as our home for a few nights.
Just like the previous reviewer I have owned a Vaude Space for about 10 years and was really impressed with it. I expected a similar qualiy tent with the Badawi, but I must admit to being pretty disappointed.
I must put this review in context first of all. This is not my tent, I am between tents at the moment and am in fact off to the Netherlands this weekend to purchase my dream De Waard tent. Friends of ours generously lent us their Badawi this bank holiday. They bought it off a family whilst on holiday in the Scilly Isles last summer - their own tent had blown away during the holiday - yet another victim of the nightmare summer of 2007. The couple were on their way home and generously offered it to our friends as they were effectively homeless and facing an early exit back to the mainland.
So to put things in context the tent that we took to Norfolk had experienced 2 weeks on a coastal campsite in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean during a pretty terrible 'summer'.
We arrived on a warm and sunny afternoon and took the tent out of the bag. I expected to find a clear set of instructions sewn in to the bag, instead I found a small paper instruction booklet that was at best inadequate. The diagrams were too small and there were not enough of them to help you set up the tent. The instructions themselves were too brief and didn't give you enough detail. After struggling with the tiny booklet for about 45 minutes, my friend and I , with a significant amount of camping experience finally managed to get it up. This was my first criticism, as a separate paper booklet can not only get easily lost, but is also prone to getting wet and damaged. Not a good start.
We layed out the triangular template and pegged it down and then inserted the poles into the flysheet. The tent then went up without too many problems, but we had to use guesswork and experience in order to get it up correctly.
We took out the pegs and started to peg out the tent. The tent pegs are of a design I have never seen before and bizarrely have been machined to have very sharp edges. The effect of the sharp edges on the tent pegs was to act as a cutting edge that helped to cut through the elastic fasteners on the corners of the canvas. The elastic was already damaged from the previous trip to the scilly isles and the constant movement of the flysheet and the tensioned elastic by the wind caused the elastic to be quickly cut through! This seems an incredibly poor design choice by the manufacturer and without spare elastic and guy ropes our holiday would have been ruined.
The tent is spacious inside and the inner tents are comfortable , but because of the lack of any kind of mud flap or protection at the bottom of the flysheet the wind and rain easily entered the tent and soaked some of our shoes and clothing. Please remember this is an expensive tent. VauDe have the temerity to charge extra for a groundshhet / mudflap to protect against this- it should come as standard on a tent that costs as much as this.
The windows of the tent are also not ideal as they do not keep out the rain. We mistakenly left a couple of the windows open when we left the campsite for a couple of hours only to find the inside of the tent very wet. Clear impermeable PVC widows would seem a better choice than leaky mesh fibre.
On the plus side the tent was pretty stable in strong winds and the weird cap on the roof probably helped.
Overall this tent seems to be designed by people who have never been on a northern european campsite , and although it looks pretty and would probaly be fine for a few weeks in the mediterranean it is woefully inadequate for the UK climate. My opinion of Vaude as a reliable and trusted tent manufacturer has taken a real hit.
1 from 1 people found this review helpful, was it helpful to you?
By: vealmike Reason: I own(ed) one Made in: 2007 Rating:
Well, the Badawi is back in it's bag after it's first outing. Time to share some first impressions.
I bought the Badawi based on my previous experience with a VauDe Space II. I've had the Space for ten years now this fantastic little tent has never let me down. Vehemently waterproof, brilliantly stable in all conditions this little tent can be pitched in around three minutes. The Badawi has a lot to live up to.
After a little hunting on the Internet, I found that there are four versions of the Badawi; the Badawi, the Badawi TC, the Badawi Long and the Badawi Long TC.
The Badawi is a pod tent. It has two bedroom compartments. In the Badawi, the bedroom pods are short, sleeping campers lie with the door to the main living area to their side. In the Badawi long, these bedroom pods have been elongated allowing sleepers to lie with the zipped door at their heads.
The TC suffix given to the more expensive members of the Badawi family stands for 'Technical Cotton'. These tents have a more durable flysheet, constructed from a nylon cotton mix. However, this durability comes at a price - and not just one that you'll feel in your wallet. The Technical Cotton variants are less waterproof, heavier and therefore take up more space when packed.
As you've probably gathered from the title of this review, I opted for the Badawi long, forsaking the TC option and saving some cash.
What was the tent like?
We arrived at Rowlands Wait campsite at Bere Regis at around 10.30pm. It was dark, and after a long walk around the site with a torch, we reluctantly selected a sloping pitch under a very large fir tree. After clearing the ground of fir cones, the tent was emptied from it's bag and the head scratching began.
It took about an hour to erect this tent. In fairness, I'd expect to halve this given daylight and a little practice.
The Badawi has five main poles, all of which are manufactured from high quality aluminum. The three long poles erect the central geodesic dome, their lower ends held in place by a ubiquitous tent band. The two shorter poles hold up the far ends of the two bedroom pods. A nice touch was the anodised ends that these shorter poles have, the gold finish on the pole making it impossible to confuse short and long poles.
Two further poles keep the domes apse aloft and give the Badawi it's distinctive ventilation hat. Worringly the poles holding the top vent in place locate only in small pockets in the flysheet, although the flysheet is reinforced at this point, I'm surprised that VauDe couldn't find a better solution than this. Given enough use, physics dictates that the hard pole ends will eventually wear through the soft fabric.
Once the poles are up, things got a little confusing. The Badawi has a bewildering number of adjustable straps. There are straps to pull the bottoms of the poles together (tightening them decreases the bend radius). There are straps to pull the inner tent groundsheets towards the poles ( beware: overtightening these will result in the aforementioned straps going slack and probably in holes in the sewn in groundsheet!). Finally there are straps to pull the flysheet down towards the base of the pole. The first two sets of straps, I could, if plied with enough real ale, concede are needed, they reduce need for muscle power as you engage pole with strap. But the purpose of last set, tightening the flysheet is beyond me. Why can't this distance just be fixed?
Finally it's time to peg out. The pegs look like they are stamped from a shiny aluminum right angle extrusion. The peg's are tough, but have sharp edges, I'm currently sporting a bandaged finger to prove this point. There's no guidance in the single page instruction leaflet as to how VauDe intended you to peg the Badawi. Neither does the tent lend itself to intuitive pegging. I wound up pegging both the obvious elasticated flysheet loops and the metal rings at the bases of the poles.
Moving inside the Badawi
It was nice to see that the inner tents were already hung. This seems to be a trademark feature of VauDe's tents and its a good one. This is the only guaranteed way to keep your inner tent dry when erecting a tent in Britains predictably inclement weather. It was a little disappointing to have to unclip the inner so that I could crawl round and attach the inner tents sewn in groundsheets to the base of the poles and to the pegged out flysheet, but this is a very minor complaint.
The Badawi comes with a free groundsheet that covers the living area directly under the geodesic dome. As you'd expect of VauDe, it looked like it was built to last. It too had a fair smattering of adjustable straps.
Our first night in the Badawi was draughtier than I'd expect from a base tent. The Badawi has no mudflaps, so expect any breeze to find it's way under the flysheet. VauDe will, for another £50 or so sell a tent protector groundsheet, a footprint that covers the entire area of the Badawi. This seems the right place to mention this extra, as dotted around the inner walls of the flysheet about six inches from the ground, are some unexplained hooks. I've not yet checked, but I would not be surprised to find that the footprint has a lip, and will act as both a groundsheet and a draught excluder. Personally I will not be purchasing one of these footprints. There is plenty of room in the Badawi's capacious tent bag to store this extra, but I was attracted to the Badawi's 16Kg weight and small packed size, something an extra groundsheet would soon vanquish. My Badawi will be paying a visit to a sewing machine just as soon as I've located some suitable mudflap material.
Living space in the Badawi is good. There's plenty of room for four adults and a table. The central dome is tapered so that little space is wasted when backing a chair up to the flysheet. We didn't get a chance to try out the Badawi's unique ventilation system, the tent's top vent remained tightly shut throughout this weekend, so it would be wrong for me to comment on it's efficiency
Overall
My overall impression of this tent is good. Very good, but not quite perfect. Build quality is excellent, the tent reeks of attention to detail, the taping of the flysheets seams is unbelievably neat and tidy. The inner tents hung neatly with no nasty sags or wrinkled groundsheets. I certainly could not fault the workmanship was constructed (note 'constructed' not 'erected'!). The size of this tent when packed is impressive. OK it's a bit smaller than a Vango Diablo 600 / 900, but it will take up less than half the space in your boot. Importantly, the tent appears to be very stable. Grab a pole on a VauDe and shake the tent, then walk up to a cheaper fibreglass poled rival and repeat the exercise and you will see an order of magnitudes difference. But please, ask the owners before you do this!
However there are a few things that let this tent down. The lack of mudflaps on a tent of this type and cost is inexcusable. The number of adjustable straps is confusing, you have no idea just how far they should be tensioned - perhaps if VauDe were to sew a white line on their black straps to indicate a default tension life would be easier, it's a modification I'll probably undertake myself before long. And finally I was confused by the guy lines, no I'm not simple, but the guy's were not placed symmetrically on each of the bedroom pods.
On the plus side, the free tent tidy makes an excellent in tent wine rack!
For the money, I'd expect the Badawi to be a Rolls Royce amongst pod tents. In my opinion it misses this mark, perhaps living up to the expectations of a Bentley, very good, but not quite perfect.
4 from 4 people found this review helpful, was it helpful to you?
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Manufacturer's Description
Vaude Badawi Long 6 Man Family Tent - extravagant design fused with maximum function. Ideal for all those tired of having to sleep in the back of the tent: the inner tent of the Badawi Long has been turned 90 degrees so that all can sleep lengthwise. Otherwise it's just like the Badawi with a large inner area, ideal ventilation with side mesh windows, and all the rest of the great features. New: with Groundvent mesh closure for all-round ventilation impervious to water spray and mosquitos.
OVERVIEW:
Max weight: 16.5 kg
Size when packed: 70 x 35 cm
Entrances: 1
Pegs: 25
Guylines: 8
SPECIFICATIONS:
Outer canvas: 75D Polyester 185T, PU coated, 3.000 mm
Inner tent: 70D Polyamid Ripstop 190T
Floor: 70D Polyamid 190T, Aqualine laminated, 10.000 mm
Rods: Al 6061/7001; 14,5mm/9mm
... there may be more info on their website
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