Nemo Mayfly Osmo Review: A Lightweight 2-Person Backpacking Tent Leave a comment

Nemo Gear’s backpacking gear will not be low cost, however it’s among the lightest, best-made, and most well-thought-out gear you’ll discover available on the market. The corporate’s new Mayfly Osmo two-person backpacking tent exemplifies this. The Mayfly Osmo is fast to arrange, light-weight, and cleverly designed, and it gave an impression of sturdiness in my 5 nights of testing.

The Mayfly is available in two- and three-person variations and sits in Nemo’s backpacking tent line between the ultralight Dragonfly and Hornet sequence and the roomier, heavier Dagger sequence (8/10, WIRED Recommends). The Mayfly is an effective alternative for backpackers seeking to choose up a high quality Nemo tent that weighs slightly extra however at $400 prices fairly a bit lower than the ultralight Hornet.

The Fundamentals

The Mayfly is a three-season backpacking tent with a path weight of three kilos, 8 ounces for the two-person model I examined. Purists would possibly take concern, however to me that places it firmly within the ultralight tent class. Cut up between two individuals, every is carrying beneath 2 kilos. That’s not as mild because the Nemo Hornet, which has a path weight of simply 2 kilos, however it’s effectively beneath our suggestion to maintain tent weight beneath 2.5 kilos per individual. The Mayfly can be $250 cheaper than the Hornet, making it simpler on the pocketbook.

The Mayfly makes use of a semi-freestanding design, very similar to the MSR Freelite we reviewed last year. This design saves on weight since there are fewer poles, however it does imply it’s a must to stake out or in any other case safe the foot-end of the tent. In case you’re headed someplace you would possibly camp on onerous rock, it’s price including some further twine in case you might want to get inventive.

There are two tent poles, each aluminum. One is a hubbed three-piece pole that forks above the door. The second spreader pole goes throughout the center and helps keep the steep sidewalls that make the Mayfly surprisingly roomy for its dimensions.

The Mayfly provides 27.9 sq. toes of dwelling area, with two 7-square-foot vestibule areas for gear storage. In observe, this works out to be a livable, although not roomy, tent for 2. Since I occurred to be testing Nemo’s new Tensor Path sleeping pads as effectively, I can say that two of these match aspect by aspect, however simply barely (see picture). There’s a number of inches of room down on the toes for gear, however no matter you set down there shall be touching the sidewalls, which is usually a recipe for moist gear.