Kit Review | Luxe Mini peak II

Description

A closer look at the Mini Peak II and its features.

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Tags: Bushcraft,Bushcraft Skills,Wilderness Skills,Outdooors,Hiking,Camping,Survival,Survival Skills,woodcraft,wood craft

Video Transcription

you

hello and welcome to another video in today's video I've got another kit recommendation for you and today we're going to be taking a look at this which is the looks mini peak 2/10 so about this tent around twelve months now I've been playing around with a few different tents and this one is by far my favorite for a number of reasons it's got the most space and if the light is that the key reasons why I really like this near the tent which was a close competitor this was the Bangor Banshee so I'm gonna kind of compare it to that a little bit through this video because I know that's another popular backpacking tent but to be honest this is the one that won out in the end I've still got my Banshee but this is gonna be the one that I go to most of the time a couple of reasons why I might choose the Banshee occasionally but to be honest it's gonna be this one the main thing being it is very very light so this tent mmm as its applied so that's the outer the fly sheet the inner which is like the mosquito net II bit inside it and the pegs weighs in at just over one and a half kilograms I think it's one point six two kilograms so that is phenomenally light for a 10 especially when you see the size of this thing

when it's off so this is how it comes supplied you can get it to pack down a little bit smaller I have packed it in such a way to fill the entire bag of this to show you kind of about the maximum pack size of it but I know that you can get it down to about this size if you're sort of careful with packing it so it comes in this bag even the bag I like about this it's got this handle on the back so that you can sort of push it into the into your rucksack upside down and use this to pull the to pull the tent out and also it means that when you're taking the tent out you're not trying to get hold of the end of this bag you've got that nice pull cord just yank it out well it comes out of the bag has this nice little and sort of velcro strap that goes on it which I've nearly lost a few times so good thing to do with that is put it straight into the bag okay so there's not much I can say about it when it's folded up so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and I am going to so folks this is the outer of that tent hopefully that time-lapse worked well for it otherwise I'm asked to pause it and I've not put the inner in yet because I wanted to show you how that attaches I think it's very innovative how that actually clips in and I wanted to show you the floor space inside this tent the fly sheet this bit here dogs off in under five minutes if you've got a decent pitch for it which it's absolutely incredible for hiking because if you get to camp and then it starts to rain you can get the tent up really really quickly and get all your stuff inside and have a nice dry space for everything to be in whilst you put the inter up or attach the inner so I'm going to do is I'm going to open the doors to show you the space so the doors to this are fantastic they open right the way to the top and you can really open the whole thing up so these roll back

this

we've got a nice big open space like so and these hooks are really easy to undo because they just pull out but they're pretty secure a door on each side which I really like because it gives you excellent ventilation so now you can see the space that's available in there what I really like about this is if you've got a deal like I've got today where it has been raining but it's still for its pretty hot and humid you can open the whole thing off and have that ventilation but still have a dry space inside it there's another way to use this as well which I'll show you in just a moment the 10 I use it support it with just AM hiking pole because I've got them anyway you can buy a pole for this personally I don't really see the point in that cuz if you're hiking you should have hiking pole anyway even if you've got the one so it means you're carrying less and these do the same the same job so I'm using these for walk and during the day and then they hold my tent up in the evening rather than having just the pole which is just a pole these were dual use item in this case I've got two with me because I want to show you one of the things that I've been doing with this and so what we do is I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna put the inner into the tent now and it's really good it just clips to their corners and you can see the space you've got left over with the inner so the inner compartment is simply a place to sleep which I quite like rather than the whole tent being a sleeping compartment you've just got a section to sleep in and that leaves half of the ground space for you to actually do stuff in of an evening

which is really good especially in those winter months when it's dark early one thing to be aware of with this you know there's only a zip on one side of it so make sure you've got it on the correct side I generally have the zip facing into the kind of the opening of the tent rather than straight up against the door I just prefer it that way you can have it either way doesn't really matter inner mr. touches to these little hooks on the inside - on these last one jeez put my hand a little rabbit poop and at the top of this poor cord which calls it tight and that's how quickly the inner goes himself three minutes the limits for the outer two or three minutes for the inner you know the whole thing going on ten minutes way to get your stopping so let's have a look at some of the features of this particular ten so what are the key points of this ten that I really liked is the sheer amount of space is available inside it so I've got my camera case here which is what I've got all my camera stuff in when I'm out filming these reviews and I've got my rucksack in there and I do have a little seat things off them receipt that I generally use I'm gonna sit on this today the ground is a little bit damp you can see even on this race seat I actually have a good half a foot of headroom in there still crouched a little bit to look out but when I'm straight up against the ground on my therm-a-rest I've got tons of space this is really good because I was bad where the camps because I've got a lot on my cook in here and I've left the door open so I'll demonstrate how to do in a minute I can have all my kit laid out here so my rucksack on all of my quick kit so it's really easily accessible and this was a big change in point for me I've been using the vanguard Banshee for quite a long time which don't get me wrong is it's a very very good tent but there's just no interior space for actually doing stuff in there the porch is about this big so it's not great for that you basically need to use a talk with it so as well as having all that inside space in there which is like the main point of it I also really like the build quality of this tent so these are the corner tie outs and these the pegs that come supplied with it I have to say these pegs are my least favorite part of the tent the good lightweight pegs this strong there's nothing really wrong with them as a peg what I don't like about them is this this shape at the top like today the grounds pretty hard so pushing these in can be can be pretty tough on the palm of your hand I've actually started carrying a bit of a bit of leather to push these in with sometimes I'll having to work gloves well they do have these little pull ties which makes them very very easy to pull out and store the quality out really really nice there's been a couple times where I've pitched this with a which hasn't been ideal but I've managed to get around it because of these adjustable corner tie out so you can make them quite long so I've what I've done in the past is actually had these going down a slope of on like an edge turning around or if like today you're a nice black thing you can cinch them up very very tight and they're pretty sturdy that's not going to come out the peg is going to come out before the strap works loose can't get these pegs in a little bit deeper I've left them out like this today just to kind of show you them and just here is one of those little corner tie out for the for the inner so you have the inner on either side it doesn't always have to be on one side so there's no worry of pitching it the wrong way around on the sides of this tent you've got these little bits that pull it out here and what these do is just add a little bit of rigidity to the tent and they pull the edge away from the inner and it's got this I think is it Dyneema cordage I could never remember the name of this stuff on here it's good solid stuff and you can get them they're not adjustable but if you need to you can just change the knot on it I've never actually had to do that but these are sort of reinforced here there's like a plate inside it which makes that rigid so it doesn't it doesn't gather rock like I see on some other tents that just pulls it away and then up here we've got our guy lines and I really like these little lightweight and guy line adjuster things there is a proper name for them and what it is and all the I's based a little triangle which the line runs through has a knot and a little bite in there and that comes loose to work the guyline loosely we need to or have you pull it through that just bites in and they're just nice like lightweight little adjusters some of the guy line things i've seen they're just unnecessarily large I think these are just clever little things and I have actually got some of these at home because I want to add some extra guy lines to this on the note of the guy lines I am gonna add some more and was I'm not concerned about the sort of structure of this 10 I've used it in pretty high winds and it's very stable and I do want to add some more possibly onto these little bits here just coming out a bit of an angle just to give a little bit more support to these and we've also got this tab at the top here which has a double uses you can use it in the woods and not need a pole in the middle and just hang that from a branch but also you could run additional guidelines if you're writing severe high wind so I think I am gonna add those like I said I'm not worried about the tents or collapsing in high winds or anything like that but what does irritate me a little bit is it winds put in the corner these corners do kind of go in a little bit if they're being hit by the wind not a major issue I just find it a little bit irritating on the top here we've got some vents and as far as I'm concerned these vents are absolute stroke of genius and all all they are is a little sort of pole sticks to the inside so you can close them up if you need to and then this is actually rigid it's got a little it's got a little like pole inside it and then that just velcro to this which means that the vents actually stay open I've used so many tents that have these nice big vents on them and they just sort of they've got like a bit of foam padding in here that's supposed to hold it out but as soon as it a wind hits it or you've had it folded for a long time they just kind of flop down and don't let anything breathe this is really good inside here in the past I have put a little little tiny Ridgeline in and you do get a ventilation through there which allows moisture out and I've done things like drying my socks and hats and gloves in there - really really good effect the zip here comes all the way to the top so it gives you a nice open space and there's another one of these vents on the other side so it is it's a symmetrical tent it's identical on both sides so another thing that I wanted to show you with this and it's something I discovered Wiles and Scotland earlier this year when we had some pretty bad rain and I do you think I'm about to get rained on here is that you can actually extend the size of this shelter slightly by having it open so if you've got more than one posts on me and Charlie sat in this together we use one of his poles and did what I'm about to do with both sides if you're on your own unless you've got an additional pole you can only really do this with one unless you have some cordage but demonstrate that slowly Oh demonstrate that quickly sorry not slowly because it's about to rain hopefully I'll get this to work today the ground is really hardly about or naturally dry weather for the UK lately so getting anything to the ground is pretty difficult but I'll see how we get so I'm going to do is just unhook the door and then using one of my hiking poles loop the elastic around there drop the pole to the right kind of size about here pull it out so that it's tight a bit of an angle and drive it into the ground like so but you get the idea so what I would do if I had some cordage is run an extra guy line off there and what this does I can sit in here and I have a lot more open space if you as I say if you got an extra pole you can do the same with the other side and it really does make a huge huge difference to it and I do think it's about to rain in a minute and that is really when this tent comes into its own is in bad weather I think it's got like something 5,000 hydrostatic head on this and having obviously I've said it before in this video I'm saying again having somewhere to sit when the weather's bad comfortably with space actually city not yourself lying down is an absolute GameChanger

so my final thoughts on this tent and overall I think this tent is going to be with me for many years I can't see much of a way to improve it couple of things that I might add to it which like I've said already is the extra guy lines and also I think I'm gonna get you come by a ground sheet for this two reasons for that

one obviously there's wet the ground in this space here is gonna be wet as well so you still want some word dry to put all your stuff secondly whilst the sleeping space is absolutely fine for sleeping in isn't it the Mesonet which is apparently mosquito-proof but not migi proof but I can tell you it's keeping my midges out I've used it with in places where there's been a lot of midges and not not had an issue with them at all it's fine enough to keep them out but the problem with it despite the fact that it's supposedly a four hundred hydrostatic head on the bottom I think it's a nylon taffeta mix and I have in some severe weather had a bit of dampness come through the bottom of this and I do mean dampness not wet just damp and I do mean bad weather my thoughts there is if I'm on saturated ground or boggy ground I don't want it to get any worse so I think the addition of an extra ground sheet will make all the difference for that obviously out for multiple days if you sleep your stuff gets wet and it's raining constantly it's gonna stay wet so I am gonna add a ground here I just think it'll just add to the overall comfort of this tent yeah I absolutely love it I can't I can't really fault that there's a couple of things that I might change for my own sort of personal personal thing which we kind of do with everything the price of it here in the UK I got this from backpacking Light cold at UK came in about 140 pounds plus a little bit of extra for postage but it arrived the next day and not the cheapest tent in the world but it's also not the most expensive and I would say it's absolutely worth that money it's light weight you've got tons of space in it it's sturdy it goes up quick and it goes down quickly so yeah that is the a looks mini peak to from looks outdoor calm I'll leave links to this down there oh and it's available in two colors green like this and also coyote brown which I actually wanted to get but it have any in stock when I've got it I just find Brown kind of blends in a little bit better so I'm gonna go ahead and take this down and I'll probably time-lapse that again just so you can see how quick it is as always thank you all for watching please drop me a light or a comment in the in the comments below if you haven't been over to my Instagram go and check that out because you can see some pictures of this tent in use up in the mountains or in the valleys in Scotland if you haven't been to my website please go and check that out there will be a review with all the specifications of this tent on that blog by the time that this this this video goes out so that's www.fafsa.gov to my mailing list thank you all for watching and I will see you all in the next video