Pitching Coleman’s Vail 4L is intuitive and fairly easy. There are five shock-corded poles to assemble, some colour coded with the pole matching the sleeve. Once the groundsheet is spread and pinned in the corners the poles can be fed through the sleeves. There's then the job of wrestling to insert either end of each pole into the metal pins. Once each pole is complete you can clip the flysheet to the poles and secure the guy lines. The bedrooms come prehung, so there's no faffing around inside. In total pitching can be done in around 15 to 20 minutes which is reasonable for a tent of this size but slower and more difficult than an air tent.
The first thing we noticed about the interior of the Vail 4L is how bright and airy it feels. With large windows, plenty of headroom, and a big front covered area this is a very liveable family tent. In fact, even the front vestibule has large windows.
When combined with the front porch, the living area of the Vail 4L feels particularly spacious for this size of family tent. The inside living area is big enough for a small sofa or a couple of chairs and the massive windows bring an outside-inside feel.
The front door of the tent sits inside the porch and features a groundsheet that can be pinned down to offer barrier-free access to the inside of the tent. The side door offers an additional access point and also cable entry, but due to the nature of British weather and there being no porch on the side, the front door gets used much more often.
Coleman's XXL bedrooms offer 70cm of width for each person, very slightly more generous than standard tent bedroom sizing but still not really XXL. Although the fabric inside the bedrooms is not blackout, it is of dark material and keeps out a fair amount of natural light. There are plenty of storage pockets on each side, a lantern hanging hook, and a removable fabric divider.
Coleman's exterior fabric is watertight with a 4000 mm hydrostatic head and fully sealed seams. It's fire retardant and features SPF50 UVguard protection. Of course, the groundsheet is sewn in and is very thick and robust. The veil 4L feels particularly well made and will likely survive many camping seasons to come.
Overall, this is an excellent family tent. Of note are the bright and airy interior and the incredibly useful covered front porch. If you're looking for a poled family tunnel tent, this is one of the better options out there.
