Big Agnes’ Titan 4 mtnGLO

This beast of a 4-person tent is designed with car-camping, base-camping, beach-livin’, and festival season in mind. The most notable feature of the Titan 4 is that the “exoskeleton” poles are set up outside the rainfly. Essentially, once the exoskeleton poles are set up, the tent can be customized to your needs.

To set the tent up normally, you attach the rain fly and put the poles together. The tent body, which is secured to the bottom of the rainfly by rows of buckles, is automatically erected as well. This setup system has pros and cons: the tent can be setup with just the rainfly, and the interior tent can be easily removed, and suddenly you have a sweet open air shelter perfect for the beach and festivals. On the other hand, this means that the tent must be setup with a rainfly—in hotter weather or when skies are clear, this comes at a cost to ventilation and visibility.

Pros:

The ability to use the tent fly on its own as a shelter makes the Titan 4 a great option for people who want it for shade from the sun or shelter from the rain during the day—it’s a spacious setting for a game of cards or a place to get out of the sun and vibe out at a music festival. The poles themselves are DAC DA17 poles—they’re thick, burly, and they’re not about to bend in a windstorm.

While you can’t stand up in the tent (it’s 60 inches high in the center), the interior is very spacious. Due to the design of the structure, the tent walls are near vertical, so there’s minimal space lost to angles. Our testers agreed that you can actually fit 4 adults comfortably in the tent—not always the case with 4-person tents.

Cons:

Some testers were unsold on the removable tent design. “I’d rather be able to set up the tent without a rain fly and have better ventilation and a view of the stars,” said one. Velcro on the outside of the tent door made for catchy zipping. The tent is extremely heavy, though that’s not a dealbreaker, as you won’t be lugging this far from the car. Also, while tent setup is straightforward, that’s only the case if the inner tent is clipped into the rainfly. If the tent and rainfly are unclipped, it becomes a much longer and more frustrating task.

The biggest complaint testers had is that the tent doesn’t come with a vestibule—leaving no place for storing wet shoes and muddy boots, protecting gear from the rain, or cooking out of the wind and weather. We were unable to test the accessory vestibule, and while it does look pretty rad, it also tacks on an extra $130 to the price.  

Favorite Feature:

The mtnGlo system, which one tester called “party lights,” is a removable strand of LED lights is powered by three triple A batteries. An unobtrusive switch allows campers to flash through three settings: on, off, and dimmed. The lighting feature is ideal when hanging out in the tent, setting up sleeping bags in the dark, etc., though it’s not really bright enough to read with.

Tester Comments:

“This tent is going to work wondrously for some people and be a bummer for others—most of that depends on whether or not you like an exoskeleton setup that must be used with a rainfly. The thing is, at least for me, the times when you’d want to have a shaded open structure—shade in hot weather, a place to hang during the day, etc.—you’d also want to have the ability to set up a tent without a rainfly at night (more ventilation, clear skies, etc).”

Key Attribute: Innovation

Bottom Line: The Titan 4 isn’t your average 4-person tent. The versatile, innovative style will be perfect for some families, and less so for others.