I recently took the X-Mid 1 on a desert backpacking trip. I have some impressions and suggestions regarding the X-Mid’s pitch. This review discusses the basic design features and decisions for the tent. This is not a long term review; it does not discuss durability, wind resistance, or waterproofness. However, the desert did offer its own conditions, and specifically the challenge of pitching on hard or rocky soil.
I’d like to give some general impressions of the design and volume, and then also touch a few points where I think the tent can improve.
First pitch, general structure impressions
There are great many reviews of the X-Mid available today, and I won’t repeat them all. I pitched the tent a few times in my back yard to get it right, and I share the general sentiment: this tent is super simple to set up. It’s down to making a rectangle, and the rest just follows (I did use six stakes, with the additional two at the door/vestibule placement). This is my first trekking poles tent; I used freestanding or semi-freestanding tents previously, and was a bit concerned with stability and tight pitching. Again, the weather conditions I pitched in were quiet and I can’t offer advice on windy or stormy conditions. At least the pitching process was very easy to follow. I felt like I couldn’t go too much wrong and overall got the tent fairly nice and taught.
I also share the general enthusiasm about the tent’s design. The “X” in the X-mid is brilliant. The pole placement does not get in your way in or out the tent. The vestibules are spacious, and are likewise positioned to be out of your way. Ventilation seems excellent. I love the fact this one person tent offers two full doors, two vestibules, two vents.
I absolutely loved how the inner mesh hardly goes close to the outer fly. Other than two corners, the space between the inner and outer walls is such that even as you lean against the inner wall, there’s just no way you can make it touch the outer fly. The conditions I pitched in were extremely dry with zero condensation even forming on the fly, but my impression is that even in high condensation conditions, you are at no risk of getting that condensation onto your sleeping bag.
Sizing and volume
I am 185 cm or 6’1″. I got the X-Mid 1 with mesh interior. When I ordered the tent I was concerned it would feel constrained. It did not!
I use a large (long and wide) Therm-A-Rest X-lite sleeping pad. On the website, and in videos, the tent always shows what seems to be a regular sized sleeping pad, boasting tons of extra floor space around the pad. With a long and wide pad this space is minimal – but still exists. There’s no room to put anything to the side of your pad, and yet there’s a couple inches before the walls rise, so you have some space to wiggle. There’s a small amount of space to the top or bottom of the pad, mostly thanks to the parallelogram shape of the floor. It’s enough to put a puffy jacket or spare clothes and other essentials. There’s not enough space for your backpack. I found the floor space to be more than adequate, and it exceeded my expectations.
Height-wise, the inner mesh dangles a few cm or inches down from the fly, and I found I couldn’t fit my head while sitting on my inflated sleeping pad. I did appreciate the nice ridge the tent offers between the two trekking pole peaks. Height was better near the poles, but then again the tent pockets are also placed at exactly those positions (no doubt to enjoy the stability of the high tension area) and the items kept competing with my head space. I see that the pocket placement on the 2023 X-Mid 1 Pro is changed: the pockets are on the vertical wall along the line of the poles. That’s an improvement and a good placement, that still enjoys some tension and does not interfere as much with livabiity.
I used the two inner mesh tie points to the outer fly, but did not tie guylines at those points. This made kind of a reverse outcome. Instead of the fly pulling the inner outwards, thereby increasing volume, the inner pulled the outer fly inwards. I suggest either tie both inner to outer and pull the outer with guylines, or don’t bother at all. Nonetheless, the volume felt fine. The fact you can see through the mesh made me feel like the space I had was actually larger than in reality, which I found comforting. I wonder what the solid inner feels like.
The stakes
By far the single weakest point of the tent are the stakes. I bought the tent with accompanying stakes: four v-shaped and two shepherd hooks. Let’s first let the picture speak for itself:
Of the original 6 stakes, 5 completely failed on the very first pitch of the tent. The ground I pitched in was hard desert soil, covered by a bout 15 mm or 1/2″ of gravel. Not only was the ground hard, it contained rocks in random places.
I knew that in advance. Also, I’ve already come across warnings iduring my research of the X-Mid. So I did come prepared with extra 6 Vargo Ti shepherd hook stakes – and I’m glad I did! As you can see these help up perfectly well.
I did try to be gently while driving the X-Mid stakes into the ground. I did try to identify it when I was driving the stake into a rock. I actually couldn’t even feel when the v-stakes bent the way they did and was shocked when I pulled them out of the ground.
I recall listening to an interview with Dan Durston, it was about the Durston Kawka backpack. I remember him saying that it’s important that backpack has consistent durability across all components. As I recall he compared the strength of the bag fabrics to the weakness of common mesh pockets or the shock cord elasticizing them. It was important to him that all parts were made of similar quality, so that they could all hold up to same conditions with similar durability.
The X-Mid stakes fail the X-Mid tent at exactly that point, in my opinion. I would go farther and say that the X-Mid might be unusable with the standard stakes. Allow me to explain: as I mentioned above, I did my research and brought extra stakes. Possibly, given the origins of the X-Mid, its user base used to be experienced backpackers, who do research, or come prepared, or can improvise in the field. But given the now wider availability of the tent, and no doubt thanks to its affordable pricing, this will be less and less the case.
I am trying to imagine a backpacker who, like me, tests their tent in the backyard, checks their gear, then goes on a trip to the desert. What can that backpacker do without extra stakes? Ah, you could use rocks as anchors, those are available in abundance in the desert! Alas, the X-Mid’s guylines are super short making it very difficult to use “little-rock-big-rock” techniques. So the backpacker is left with no options.
To pitch the tent a backpacker needs either extra stakes, or guyline extensions. Without these, there’s a real chance they won’t have shelter!
Lastly, as I returned home I threw the stakes to the waste bin. Sure, I put them in the metal recycle bin. But, the stakes were just waste.
If I may offer suggestion to Mr. Durston or Durston Gear: either provide quality stakes (rather, high quality ones, to match the high quality of the tent), or do not sell stakes at all, and let the consumer find their own good stakes.
The guylines
A standard routine when pitching a tent is to drive in the stakes, get the tent up, then improve the pitch to make the tent taught and stable. The most obvious and arguably the first way to do so is by tightening the guylines.
My thought process was as follows: to extend the guylines completely, to then drive the stakes (an extended guyline gives me more freedom of placement because of the larger radius), add the trekking poles, extend them as much as possible, and then tighten the guylines.
I mentioned earlier that the guylines are short. Which is why I wanted to extend them all the way through, to squeeze as much length as possible. This unfortunately causes a problem. The lineloc has a locking mechanism to ensure your guyline does not loosen. That’s good. However, the lock, implemented by a rugged and narrow canal into which the guyline is tensioned, is on the, well, tight side. And when the guyline is completely extended, that leaves you with almost no leverage to release it.
To better explain what happens: when you pitch the rectangle, and as you drive the stakes, and as you raise the tent with the trekking poles, that already creates some tension on the guylines. That’s a good thing. And you normally want to then tension the guylines even more to achieve even more stability. But, what happens is that by the time you extend the trekking poles, the guylines are locked so hard, that you need to unlock it in order to tighten it. But to unlock it you need micro fingers that can catch onto the guyline’s end knot, and use that with quite a bit of force to wiggle the guyline out of the locking canal. That’s very challenging and in fact I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t able to be precise, gentle, and strong, all at the same time. I had to unpitch the tent and start over.
The way that worked well for me, and which I recommend, is to leave 1/3 to 1/2 of the guyline unextended. That is, leave a fair amount of lever to pull onto. That means starting with a smaller radius which translates to less pitching options. I was still able to pitch that way, but for the next trip to the desert I’ll also bring guyline extensions, and potentially increase the radius by some 30cm or 1 foot.
Trekking pole placement
I use trekking poles, obviously, or else I wouldn’t use a trekking poles tent. But I use rubber tips, because I don’t like how the pole’s bare metal tip drives into the ground. I like leaving less impact, and I also appreciate the muffled sound.
The X-Mid is designed to erect with the pole tips facing up. There are two sockets, which form the ridge line of the tent, into which the pole go. Each socket has a grommet that can both hold onto the metal tip, as well as ensure the tip does not rip into the fly fabric.
I could, of course, remove the rubber covers, but I wanted to experiment with leaving them on, because I was afraid of losing them and just wanted to see what would happen.
At the floor of the tent, both the inner as well as the footprint (if you have one, and see next section) have rubber loops that can hold onto the pole handles. These loops both make it very clear where the poles should be placed, as well as give more structure and space to the tent’s floor.
I found the loops to be a bit small for the poles’ foam handle. They fit, but I felt like the rubber may lose its elasticity if I did that too much. To reiterate that this isn’t a long term review, and I have no claim that the rubber will indeed have any problem.
At any case, for both these reasons I decided to try pitching the poles with handle on top and tip on ground. On the floor side, the rubbers worked really well. On the top socket side, it was definitely something to look after. With the large bulk of handle foam, it was difficult to make sure the pole and socket remained attached in place. Once or twice the pole slipped out of the socket and I had to fix the pitch.
I think it’s a safer bet to use the pole placement the way it was intended to be: metal tip upwards. I will, however, continue to experiment with the inverse placement, and I think with more practice I’ll be able to get it right.
The footprint
I chose to purchase the footprint. The places where I intend to use the tent will commonly have:
- Small, sharp stones/rocks,
- Thorns and spikes from native vegetation,
- Disrespectful leftover waste, e.g. broken glass or nails from campfire wood,
Or, all of the above. So I wanted to play it safe, at least until I’m more experienced with this tent and can trust that I won’t rip the floor fabric.
The footprint is purchased separately. It has the shape of a parallelogram, similar to the tent’s floor. So it does not cover the entire rectangle shaped by the four stakes, but rather just the area underneath your sleeping pad/bag. This is an important observation, as discussed further on.
The way the footprint connects to the fly is similar, even symmetrical, to how the inner connects to the fly: there are chords and keyclips that stretch from the footprint’s four corners and extend to the fly’s four corners.
I believe there is room for improvement in this design, and I wish to offer an alternative that I think wins in all respects.
I leave the fly and inner connected when pecking the tent. If I roll the tent correctly (still working on the best technique), then I can potentially open the tent in rain without wetting the inner/floor, or at least that’s my hope. This means the tent is rolled and stuffed with all the clips and chords still connected.
As you can see in the photo, the footprint adds quite a bit of chord overhead. And while the inner stays attached (relatively) closely to the fly, the footprint does not. It adds a noticeable amount of mess to the fold/roll process and I worry that the excess chords will tangle.
In my opinion, the footprint’s chords are unnecessary. The footprint can rely on the floor’s tent for placement and taughtness, rather than rely on the fly. The X-Mid’s design does a great job at making the tent’s floor taught once the rectangle is complete. I believe the four corners of the footprint should attache to the respective four corners of the tent’s floor, directly above them.
This has zero impact to functionality. Let’s compare with, say, Big Agnes Copper Spur’s footprint. With the Copper Spur, the footprint covers almost the entire floor space under the tent’s dome, which makes it possible to pitch fly & footprint, and without the inner, as a quick and light shelter variation. But in the X-Mid, the footprint only covers a small portion of the dome (rather, the pyramid). It makes little sense to pitch fly and footprint. You may as well pitch fly only. So I don’t see the advantage of attaching the footprint to the fly.
I think my suggestion of attaching the footprint to the floor:
- Is simpler,
- Avoids risk of entanglement,
- Makes stuffing/packing simpler,
- Is lighter (less material),
- While not reducing functionality.
Summary
Many have expressed this already, but I am impressed with the multiple design choices made into this tent. The tent has a smart and successful structure: the way the poles are not in your way; the large vestibules; the way the inner and fly don’t touch each other; the ventilation; the two doors; the simplicity of forming a rectangle.
The tent feels high quality and makes a good impression. It is livable (as far as 1 person tents can be). I think the extensions to the tent have a way to improve. But then again, these are not an integral part of the tent itself, and so I find that I am able to fix those: better stakes, guyline extensions, footprint connectivity.
I can’t wait for my next trip to the desert, where I intend to bring this tent again!