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• Price: £400
• Weight: 800kg

www.vango.co.uk

At £400 and weighing just 800kg, Vango’s new Helium Carbon 100 is the lightest and the joint most expensive tent on test. So what do you get for your money?

As with the Terra Nova Laser Competition 1, everything here is dedicated to saving weight, from the extra thin material to the poles and pegs. Six of the pegs are the micro-thin ones we saw earlier with the Terra Nova and we’d worry about them both on rocky ground and in bog. Also, four of these extra thin pegs have the flysheet and the inner tent to support, and the pressure of these tends to twist the pegs round making it easier for them to come unhooked. However, the two pegs at either end of the tent are thicker and studier – we’d prefer to see them all like this, or we’d substitute the thin pegs for stronger ones if we knew we were going somewhere where conditions are tough. The three poles are exceptionally light and still tough – they’re called Carbon X Lite and are made by a company called Force Ten.

• Price: £400
• Weight: 1.6kg

www.hilleberg.com

Hilleberg tents are a delight and testing one is a privilege, so I couldn’t wait to give the Akto a go. And as I’d hoped, the Swedish company didn’t disappoint.

The Akto is easy to pitch, with one aluminium pole going across the middle and the two ends pegging out away from it. Everything has been considered with the user in mind, even down to small details like the sturdy pegs having bits of rope on the end so you can pull them out of the ground easily. The guy ropes have superb tensioners that make them very easy to tighten; these are one way only so there’s no way of them coming loose until you take the peg out.

• Price: £330
• Weight: 0.93kg

www.terra-nova.co.uk

The Terra Nova Laser Competition 1 is to many people synonymous with the lightweight one-man tent, and when you pitch it you immediately see why. Every part of the tent is dedicated to saving weight, from the bin-bag thin material to the micro-thin pegs, the string-like guy ropes and the minimalist (yet effective) tensioners on the guys.

The Laser Competition 1 is fairly easy to put up, with one centre pole and two built-in 40cm poles at each end. You need to peg out the inner groundsheet and outer tent together which is a little tricky at first but simple once you’ve got the hang of it. The tent comes with an optional ‘pole hood’ – a protective, waterproof cover that ties on over the centre pole. This is because the material used to make the tent is so light that the seams can’t be taped in the conventional way, but once the pole hood is on (easy to do as long as your hands aren’t cold) the tent is fully waterproof, as the other seams are positioned so they aren’t over the inner tent. And if you know the weather isn’t going to be too appalling, it’s another few grammes you can leave behind.

• Price: £320
• Weight: 1.27kg

www.cascadedesigns.com/msr

The Hubba HP is, joy upon joy, a free-standing tent; a rarity in one man tents and infinitely useful, especially if you’re in rocky terrain like in the Dolomites, where finding a perfect grassy spot to sleep can be pretty much impossible. It does go up inner tent first though (and it’s not option to just leave the two attached to one another, which is what I usually do), which is always a pain if you’re pitching it in the rain.

The Hubba HP is basically a geodesic tent with the sideways pole cut off at the top. What this means is that is has an awful lot of headroom – I can sit up with plenty of clearance. There’s less space in the sleeping compartment than with others though; although our six-foot-plus guinea pig had plenty of room to lie down there’s not much room for extra kit inside the tent, and anyone taller than 6ft 2 will be starting to get a bit cramped.