REI Half Dome 2 Plus: One Tent to Rule Them All

I’m a huge fan of REI’s house brand of gear. Their Magma down jacket is a better value than anything from Cotopaxi or Patagonia. If you don’t want to shell out $25 for a single pair of Darn Toughs, their two-pack of merino wool socks is a total steal. And their Wonderland camping chair is the affordable upgrade you need. But there are few products more ubiquitous, or time-tested, than the REI Half Dome tent. I recently checked out the most recent iteration of this tent to see how the REI Half Dome 2 Plus has changed and whether it continues to live up to its reputation. 

This tent is primarily for people who are new to the outdoors, and not sure exactly what they’re going to be doing with it. It’s spacious enough for car camping. It’s light enough for entry-level backpacking. And when you’ve dialed in what your needs are — whether it’s lighter weight or more space — then it transitions perfectly to become your loaner tent. 

While the Half Dome has been around for decades, this latest iteration incorporates a number of new design details that I’ve seen on the best backpacking tents and the best camping tents, making it one of the best models yet. 

Packed Size

I knew I was going to like the REI Half Dome Plus as soon as I saw the stuff sack. That’s because it features a side opening, rather than one at the end. If you have ever tried to stuff a wet tent back into its stuff sack, you know what a big deal this is. With the old end-style openings, you’d make yourself crazy and muddy carefully rolling a tent around the poles as tightly as possible to get it back in the bag.

But with the side openings, you can do a pretty haphazard job and then yank on the drawstring to get it the rest of the way into the stuff sack. 

Setup

Like most other camping and backpacking tents, there are four parts to the REI Half Dome Plus when you open up the package — tent body, rainfly, poles, stakes.

There is also an optional footprint you can use — I recommend this for camping and low-key backpacking trips where weight isn’t an issue. Preserving the bathtub floor of this, or any camping tent, should be a priority when weight isn’t an important issue, as it will help ensure your gear stays dry when inclement weather hits. 

Once the body of your tent is laid out, it’s time to assemble the poles. Like many of the best 2-person tents these days, there is a single pole that snaps into place. Further simplifying setup, the pole is helpfully color-coded to match the tent. The black ends go into the black four corners of the tent, while the orange ends fit into the grommets in the center section. I also really appreciated that the pole was reversible. These kinds of details help make this tent one of the easiest to set up that I’ve tried in recent years. 

While grommets are not always the easiest to use, especially for entry-level campers and hikers, I think it’s the right choice for this tent. First off, you don’t need as much flexibility to get poles into grommets as opposed to tent sleeves, which means you can use higher quality DAC aluminium poles and not fiberglass. More importantly, higher quality tents always use DAC or similar style poles, and so you can expect to be using grommets, which are a widely available and very lightweight and durable component part. Getting used to setting up this tent will set you up for success in the future. 

Once the poles are inserted into the grommets, there are a bunch of clips to tack on. Now you’ve got the body of your tent set up. Next up is the rainfly. Like all rainflys, except a little trial and error while you get this one oriented. Some day, a tent designer will figure out how to save us from inevitably putting the tent fly on inside out and at the wrong 90-degree angle, necessitating a few moments of confusion, but I haven’t seen it yet. (Although one could argue that the European style, like the Hilleberg Allak, of connecting the poles to the rainfly and hanging the body of the tent does solve for this.) I did appreciate however, that there are buckles to connect the rainfly to the body of the tent. These were easy to use and easy to tighten into place.

While the directions for tents always call to stake in before you set up the poles, I always do it last. It’s just a lot easier to figure out exactly where I want to stick the tent once it looks like, well, a tent. In this case there are six stakes you’ll want to use, four for the four corners, and then two more, one more to pull out each of the doors. While these aren’t the absolute best tent stakes (that’d be the MSR groundhogs), these are high-quality stakes that will last you for years. 

Interior Space

A lot of so-called two-person tents are really stretching the claim. Two small people, sure, but two large people? No way. So I was impressed at the amount of floor space inside of the REI Half Dome 2 Plus. This thing is 7.5 feet long, and 4.5 feet wide. That’s enough for two full size men and their gear. The pole design also helps you get the most out of its 3.5 feet of interior height. Not only does that peak height extend across the middle of the tent (where the orange pole section is), but the H-design created by the connection to the two black poles means you get a lot of that height extend lengthwise too. All this really helps to make this a very livable tent for car camping in addition to its potential use on a backpacking trip. 

It also has no fewer than six pockets, staged at three different height levels on either side of the tent. 

What the REI Half Dome Does Best

As usual, REI has nailed the details on this one. From setting up to tearing down to setting up a base camp on the inside, everything is geared to make for a seamless experience. And while other brands are getting fancy and reinventing the wheel, REI has been very judicious with the new trends that they’ve incorporated into this tent — these are real improvements and not just fads. That’s great because it means that the skill you learn with this tent will be transferable to whatever you upgrade to in the future. 

Where the REI Half Dome Needs to Improve

While the REI Half Dome 2 Plus is nowhere near the top of the market — other similar tents from the likes of Sea to Summit and MSR retail for as much as $100 more — it is still quite expensive. Expensive enough that you’ll want to make sure you have an excellent warranty and (ideally) a repair program for when you need it. While REI did have a near legendary return policy once upon a time, their current warranty policy is a little more opaque.

If there is a blatant manufacturer defect in the first year (rare with a quality brand like this, but it does happen), you’ll be covered, but if there are other issues down the road it’s less clear if you’ll get the support you need to keep using the tent. (Queries to REI about their warranty policy directs readers to reach out to their customer service line.) I’m hopeful in the future that they’ll start to sell component parts for this tent (such as a replacement pole), given that this flagship part of their brand line isn’t going away anytime soon. 

Final Thoughts

First-time backpackers and campers have been encouraged to pick up the REI Half Dome for years, and this latest iteration continues that legacy. Even if you’re an experienced camper or backpacker, it’s worth having one on hand for when friends and families need a loaner for the long weekend.