Bed tents ?

Are bed tents a reasonable alternative to RTTs? What are the drawbacks, etc.? Any issues with waterproofing? Thanks for the intel.

 

Heres another option if you wanna save your bed space and not have to pay RTT pricing

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/cheap-rtt-for-those-on-a-budget.478273/

 

Don’t have experience in them, but there is normally flaps that goes over the side of the truck to prevent water pooling. I seen them before from strangers at campsites I been to.

Drawbacks (in my opinion):
First, I like RTT due to easy and fast setup. From what I have seen, bed tents takes as long as setting up a ground tent. When I get to the camp site, it literally takes me less than 3 minutes to pop up an RTT while chugging a beer and be done with it.

Second, there’s no bed/foam mattress in bed tents which means I would have to get a blow up bed. Again, takes time and don’t really like blow up beds.

Third, I don’t like unloading every gear I have from my bed. If I find another path to explore or want to mess around, I don’t want to take long to pack everything up.

Now if your destination is one spot and you don’t plan on messing around with your truck when you get to your destination, then it wouldn’t be bad to have a bed tent. Literally RTT is just for convenience and to look cool.

 

I don’t really get the benefit. It’s all the work of setting up a ground tent but......smaller, more expensive, you have to clear out your bed to use it, and you can’t drive anywhere once it’s setup.

It seems like all of the negatives of a camper shell, RTT and ground tent but with almost none of the positive of any of them. Except I guess you only have to park level and not find a level spot to set up compared to a ground tent.

 

I have this tent, it goes up quick, comes down just as quick. It does not have a bottom, so you can set it up with all your stuff still in the bed.


You can add the SUV tent to it, this gives you a place to put all the stuff that was in your bed, then you can take the bed tent down and put your stuff in the suv tent if you want to go drive around.


Only thing with these tents, is that it will cost you around $450 for the pair of tents. But still cheaper and more space than a roof top. Plus the added benefit of not needing to pack away the whole thing if you want to go driving.

 

I have a Rightline Gear bed tent for $140 local pick up in SoCal