Unless you're lucky to have someone else put your tent up for you, your first impression of any tent is when it's still in the bag. So how did the Reisa fare on this first encounter? Quite big and quite heavy to be honest, with the bagged up tent weighing some 10 kg and measuring 25cm by 65cm.
But then it's not really aimed at backpacking anyway - though you could at a push split it four ways without leaving each occupant with too much to carry.
No, this is much more likely to be the kind of tent that gets chucked in the back of a car, and to this end it's a good size and weight that will leave plenty of car boot space for other gear.
Tip it all out of the bag and your next impression is of beautifully finished quality and attention to detail.
If you can rate a tent on its pegs alone, this tent would get full marks, with each 16g square profiled aluminium peg anodised in glowing gold. The 'non-twist' square profile works too, with the pegs going in straight and true with a push of the toe.
Putting it up
Once you've finished cooing at the nice detailing, such as the colour-coded zips and tough, double-stitched pockets for the pole feet on one side, it's time to get it up.
The true test of a tent's design it is to put it up without instructions, so we just went for it, laying out the tough-feeling rip stop fly sheet, and snapping together the three elastic corded poles, which are colour matched to the three pole channels on the tent.
The longest one goes in the middle, giving you an impressive 190cm height in the 'corridor' between the tent's two side entrances - more than enough for a six footer with a big hair.
Then it's just a question of pushing the poles through the sleeves and pegging out the tapered front and back of the tent to pull the hoops upright and form its tunnel shape.
You will need to peg out the guy ropes for extra strength but at this point, after only about five minutes, you have a water-tight structure, inside which you can put up the rest of the tent if needed.
Inside
The Reisa comes with two living 'cabins' with built-in groundsheets, and each one just clips into fixing points at each corner and to the ceiling, with little plastic clips securely fastening to rubber hoops around the arched ceiling to finish holding them in place.
The only concern we have with these is that rubber can tend to be one of the first things to perish after years of use and abuse in the outdoors.
Once in place (another five minutes, perhaps), you have one cavernous rear main cabin, a smaller front cabin that's actually about the size of a small two-man tent, and the full standing height corridor between the two.
Dotted around the inside are handy meshed storage pockets and the roll-up side doors have windows with roll-up blinds and colour-coded zips - you can also roll up the door and leave a flyscreen in place.
A separate groundsheet made of 150 Denier 100 percent Polyester with a water-proof rating of 8,000mm clips into place in the corridor, and its upstand around its edge keeps draughts and rain out.
If you don't want or need the front cabin, you can always remove it and raise the whole end panel on the two included extra poles to make a large lobby and covered veranda. The poles can also be used to make a veranda out of either door.
We put this tent up immediately before a storm and found it equal to its 3000mm water column rating.
In conclusion...
A fantastically versatile and well-made tent for family or friends. For a family with slightly older children we'd be tempted to upsize to the Reisa 6-person model, which would also easily suit up to six couples in a similar but larger shape.
