This $2,000 tent lets you camp outside without sleeping on the ground — it’s pricey, but it’s a lot cheaper than buying an RV

Insider Picks writes about products and services to help you navigate when shopping online. Insider Inc. receives a commission from our affiliate partners when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.

Yakima

The Yakima Skyrise HD Tent ($2,199) can turn just about any car into an adventure basecamp.
It weighs 114 pounds, which is light enough for two people to lift and a small car to carry.
The sturdy tent and included foam mattress is easy to set up so you can park at a campsite and doze off in a patch of grass in just a few minutes.

There are two types of campers — those who sleep on the ground, carry all their gear on their backs, and cast disdain on anything more luxurious than an inflatable mattress and dehydrated dinner, and those who prefer to bring everything they have at home to the great outdoors.

I’ve always been a staunch member of the tent-and-boots brigade because I love the convenience of having everything on my back and the freedom to sleep wherever I want whenever I want. But there’s definitely the added stress of finding a flat-enough campsite before my wife and I set out on our (almost) monthly camping trips so we don’t have to sleep in our car or deal with the frustration of trying to pitch our tent as the wind does its best to turn it into a kite. Neither of us like waking up to the delightful sensation of a rapidly deflating air mattress at 3 a.m. either.

Read more: The best tents for car camping

Yakima

That’s why I almost caught myself looking for a little RV trailer to solve all these problems. Except that I really like taking the fly sheet off to look for shooting stars as I fall asleep or waking up with the morning light and feeling like I’m outside and in touch with the place I’m staying. I wouldn’t get those experiences in an RV.

Some judicious Googling and a trip to the Outdoor Retailer trade show revealed an option that would give me the sense of being outdoors but with the additional convenience and comfort of an RV — a rooftop tent.

My wife works in a building with a low-clearance garage so we needed a low-profile unit that wouldn’t add a lot to the height of our car. I also wanted something that was light enough for us to lift on top of the truck without having to summon our burliest friends and quick to set up.

The Yakima Skyrise HD Tent checked all the boxes.

Yakima

It weighs 114 pounds so it’s light enough for two people to lift up and for even the most compact of cars to hold. All we had to do was attach Yakima’s crossbars to the ones on our own truck and lock it in place. The tent mounts on virtually any crossbar without needing any special tools, so if you already have a bike rack or rooftop box, you should be good to go. The fact that it locks onto our car’s crossbars to prevent theft is really nice when it gets left at a trail head for days at a time. We can also take the whole thing off and store it in our garage where it takes up just a fraction of the space compared to an RV.

The unit includes a ladder that helps distribute weight along with the car’s crossbars so you’re not crushing the roof, and it has a foam mattress so you can pack less. My wife and I can sleep comfortably in our Skyrise HD and there’s still enough space for kids, dogs, extra bags, or the inevitable curious visitor who wants to come and check out or tent every time we’re at a campsite.

The tent itself pitches in less than five minutes using the included poles to secure the waterproof fly sheet. The huge mesh windows make us feel like we’re sleeping outside and let us take full advantage of the amazing views when we’re seven feet above the ground in the flat desert.

Yakima

At $2,199, it isn’t a cheap item by any means, but I think it helps to look at the Skyrise HD as more than just a tent. Ultimately, the reason we all buy outdoor gear is to have cool experiences and this tent has allowed me to have more fun. I’m about to embark on a road trip to Northern California and normally, I would stay in motels unless there was somewhere nice to camp. But with the Skyrise, I can pull off anywhere and sleep on the comfortable mattress for free. It has also opened the door to adventures that my wife and I wouldn’t consider otherwise like summiting a peak in a day or cycling 14 hours to Mt. Whitney from Death Valley.

Now that I don’t have the added stress of mapping out the logistics, I can put my time and energy into actually enjoying my adventures and spending weekends literally looking down on my friends who are still too snooty to embrace the rooftop tent life.

Buy the Yakima Syrise HD Tent for $2,199 at Backcountry