Tentbox Classic – an honest review of this car roof tent
How does the Tentbox Classic compare to the Tentbox Lite 1.0?
Set-up
The Tentbox Lite 1.0 is by no means slow to put up, as it usually takes us somewhere between 5-10 minutes to set it up fully. But the Tentbox Classic is much quicker, and having set up the Tentbox Classic, we're loathed to go back and set up the Lite 1.0. It takes literally seconds to fully set up the Tentbox Classic because of the gas assisted bars. All you have to do is lift the lid up and the gas-assisted bars will kick in and help the Tentbox Classic stand upright. It's really clever technology and if you're someone who gets really frustrated with setting up tents then this is a huge advantage of the Tentbox Classic.
Storage
You also get more storage in the Tentbox Classic compared to the Lite 1.0 - the inside pockets on the Classic are much bigger than the Lite 1.0, plus you get a cargo net with the Classic that you can set up if you like for even more storage. This is useful if you're camping for a few days and you want to keep stuff in your tent rather than in the car, but to be honest we find ourselves storing stuff in our car when we use our Tentbox Lite 1.0, and we don't imagine that if we had a Classic we'd be storing more stuff inside the tent.
Shape
Our favourite thing about the Tentbox Classic versus the Lite 1.0 is the difference in shape - the Lite 1.0 has a classic pyramid tent shape, but the Classic has more of a box shape with a flatter roof (although still with a slight slope so rain doesn't sit on the top). The box shape makes you feel more like you're in an actual room than a tent, which is actually quite a different experience and an experience that we really enjoyed.
Price
It's the price that we just can't get our heads around - we bought our Tentbox Lite 1.0 for just over £1k, which is a lot of money to pay already (although having said that, we've had a huge amount of use out of it). The Tentbox Classic is currently priced at more than double what we paid for the Lite 1.0 on the official Tentbox website, at £2,250. We don't think the Classic is twice as good as the Lite 1.0, so we don't think it should be twice the price.
How does the Tentbox Classic compare to similarly priced car roof tents from other brands?
Final thoughts
So as much as we're impressed by certain parts of the Tentbox Classic, we would personally never pay over £2000 for this car roof tent when we could buy a Tentbox Lite 1.0 for half the price. However, if we were to go for a car roof tent with a hard shell and faster set-up, we'd definitely go for the Tentbox Classic over something like the James Baroud Discovery.
We'd also say that if you've been thinking about buying a caravan or campervan but you're not sure about spending lots of money, then a TentBox is a great alternative. A TentBox will provide much of what a caravan or campervan will provide but at a much lower cost.
Do you have a TentBox or do you plan to buy one? Let us know in the comments what you think of our guide and if you have anything else to add!
Finn H
Finn is the editor of You Well and has been writing about travel, health, and more for over 10 years.