Ready to prove itself as one of the most versatile four-season tents on this planet or any other, the Freespirit Hub V2 is built to travel the world and camp the calendar. Its instant wall-hub design means that the spacious, standing-height four-sleeper is pitched and ready for bed before the rest of the weary family has even dragged themselves out of the car, and its roll-up walls easily make the switch from canyon-wind-level all-mesh screen room to fully insulated backcountry bunker. The Hub V2 works as a family or crew shelter, a spacious awning room, or a comfy first floor porch for a rooftop tent.
The first time we covered Freespirit Recreation, it was still a fledgling company in Bend, Oregon, hitting roads with an ultralight tent-top motorcycle trailer in tow. Less than 10 years later, it's moved its base of operations across the American West to Golden, Colorado, and grown a large impressive lineup of hard- and soft-shell rooftop tents, ground tents, awnings, camp lighting, and other related gear and accessories.
Freespirit's latest release, the Hub V2 tent may simply be labeled as a second-generation Hub, but it really has the feel of a completely new design, with loads of features not previously offered. The original Hub always appeared to us as a Freespirit-branded version of the classic instant-pitch ice fishing hut or camping tent, a general design shared by other products like the Qube modular tent, Shiftpod festival tent and Gazelle overlanding tents. Such tents use integrated poles connected at pull-and-lock hubs on the top and four+ sides to pitch quickly and live spaciously.
Instead of going with the classic hub-based tent design with X-framed walls on every side and awkward-looking D-shaped doors squeezed inside the frame segments, Freespirit has opened things up with a screen-room-style design. Used for instant backyard and backcountry screen rooms and sun shelters of various sizes, this layout relies on a three-sided hub frame for structure, removing the cross poles from the fourth side to free up a large entryway.
Unlike those companies that stop right there with products that work only to shelter occupants from sunlight and pests, Freespirit has added in four zippered, roll-up walls that batten down for full element protection. The four-season Tri-Layer walls featuring polyfill insulation sandwiched between 150-D ripstop oxford exterior and interior layers. The rainfly is waterproofed with a 1,000-mm polyurethane coating. Both the roof and floor are made from a heavier 210-D ripstop with higher-grade waterproofing.
So with the basic structure of the Hub V2, campers can roll up all the wall fabric to create a screen room or zip the insulated walls closed to create a much warmer shelter. To bolster the design for true winter use, Freespirit has also added a stove jack in the roof, a feature of a winter hot tent designed for exhausting a wood stove pipe. Fire up a wood stove, and the Hub V2 becomes a much more inviting space during the months of early darkness and icy temperatures.
In addition to working as a standalone tent and screen room, the Hub V2 is designed to work as part of a vehicular base camp. It can attach directly to the tailgate of an SUV or hatchback using the available Car Connect kit. The V2 front door can also attach to Freespirit's four-season Evolution tent to work as the porch of a two-story all-season camp.
However one is using the Hub V2, it pitches into shape in a matter of seconds via the pop-out hubs, easily with the exterior grab loops. Complete setup time will vary based on how one is using the Hub V2, but it's designed to be a fast and straightforward process that eliminates the headaches involved in setting up large, four-season base camp tents with separate poles and material.
Inside, the Hub V2 sleeps four+ (without a wood stove inside) on a spacious 96 x 96-in (2.4 x 2.4-m) square floor. Or, if you're traveling in a twosome, it can also provide loads of toss-and-turn space by accommodating a king-size mattress ... with room to spare. The interior peak height is 80 in (2 m), comfortable standing height for most people. A Velcro-attached LED light strip sits neatly under the edge of the roof to provide integrated ambient lighting.
With its integrated frame and heavy-duty materials, the Hub V2 is anything but compact or lightweight, wrapping into a 12-in-diameter (31-cm) package that stretches 5.5 feet (1.7 m) long. At 42 lb (19 kg), it'll provide a decent workout on the way from garage, to car, to ground, and back.
Freespirit introduced the Hub V2 last month and showed it at Overland Expo West 2023. The tent is available now for US$695.
Source: Freespirit Recreation