Is the Vango Soul 200 Worth It for UK Festivals?
Three independent sources reach the same conclusion about the Soul 200 — it pitches fast, it keeps rain out, and it is tighter inside than the badge on the box suggests. Two of them, with no connection to each other, flag the same fault.
Where the reviews line up
Read enough reviews of the same tent and a pattern shows up. Outdoors Magic, the six campers who reviewed it on UKCampsite and the buyers rating it at Alpinetrek come at this tent from completely different directions — a magazine group test, a decade of owners, and a retailer's rating block — and they still land in the same place.
All three agree on three points. Pitching is genuinely quick — the claimed time is five to seven minutes and one camper reports beating it in under four. The waterproofing is not a weak spot: a 3,000 mm hydrostatic head on the Protex flysheet is quoted identically by every retailer and no reviewer anywhere reports the fabric wetting out. And the tunnel shape holds up in wind, which is the reason to choose it over a cheap dome at the same money.
They also agree on the catch. This is a two-person tent that most reviewers would rather use as a one-person tent with room for kit. The porch is small, and one criticism appears independently in both the magazine round-up and a user review: open the door after rain and water drips off the porch lip into the inner. That is the single most credible fault on this page, because two unconnected sources found it.
Worth buying if you are one person carrying it to a festival or an overnight, and you pay near the £47–£55 street price rather than the £80–£90 RRP.
The three reviews this summary is built from
- Outdoors MagicMagazine budget round-up, Aug 2024. The only genuine editorial test we found.
- UKCampsite.co.uk7.17/10 from 6 member reviews, 2013–2020. The fullest independent UK feedback.
- Alpinetrek4.5/5 from just 2 reviews. Useful mainly for a complete, consistent spec block.
Specification at a glance
Where sources disagree — and on this tent they do, because it has been sold across several model years — both figures are shown rather than one being picked.
| Spec | Figure | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Sleeping capacity | 2 person | Realistically 1 adult plus kit, per four of six UKCampsite reviewers |
| Type | 2-pole tunnel, inner-first pitch, not freestanding | Consistent across all sources |
| Pitching time | 5 min (older spec) to 7 min (current retailer spec) | One user achieved under 4 min |
| Packed weight | 2.17 kg most commonly quoted; 2.0 kg and 2.26 kg also listed | Varies by model year |
| Packed size | Around 50–52 × 15 cm | Retailers differ by 2 cm |
| Flysheet | Protex 70D polyester, 3,000 mm hydrostatic head, taped seams | Unanimous |
| Groundsheet | Sewn-in polyethylene | A 10,000 mm figure circulates from a single user review — we could not verify it and would not buy on it |
| Poles | 2 × Vango PowerFlex fibreglass | Fibreglass, not alloy — see weak points |
| Dimensions | Outer 270 × 130 × 95 cm; inner 220 × 120 × 90 cm | 95 cm peak is sitting height |
| Doors | 1 door, 1 small porch | One retailer's listing denies there is a porch; the majority describe one |
| Typical UK price | £47–£70 street, RRP £80–£90 | Checked across seven retailers, August 2026 |
Outdoors Magic
The Soul 200 appears third in Outdoors Magic's budget round-up, listed at £80 and 2.17 kg, and described as the cheapest tent in the group. The magazine's confidence in its weather performance is structural rather than lab-based: tunnel designs like this one, it says, "tend to be reliable options that will hold firm in blustery conditions, particularly when pitched with the lower end facing into the wind." That is a fair way to put it — nobody has taken this tent to a wind tunnel, and its stability comes from shape and guying rather than from anything exotic.
The porch gets the most balanced treatment anywhere. On the plus side, a front door means you are not climbing over your tent-mate to get out. On the minus, there is not much room in there for gear or a stove, and — the line worth remembering — "in wet conditions, you need to take care to ensure that rain doesn't drip down into the tent from the top of the porch when the door is open." The verdict is that £80 buys a good space-to-weight ratio, durable materials and a sturdy design. Pros listed: sturdy. Cons listed: small and narrow porch.
Watch: Is This the Best Backpacking Wild Camping Tent for £50? | Vango Soul 200 Tent Review
A UK wild-camping review that frames the Soul 200 as a sub-£50 backpacking option — the closest video equivalent to the magazine's angle.
Watch on YouTube ↗UKCampsite.co.uk
This is the most substantial independent UK feedback that exists on the tent, and it is where the sales copy meets the field. Pitching gets straightforward praise: one member reports setting it up in under four minutes, comfortably inside Vango's claim. Weather performance holds too — reviewers report good stability and warmth, one of them across a two-week cycling trip, and another singles out the flysheet for praise.
Space is where it comes apart. Four of the six raise it. A 6 ft 2 camper could barely stretch out, found the tent claustrophobic and sold it, saying two would struggle. Another could not sit upright and found changing clothes difficult; a third said changing required "yoga moves". The bluntest summary is from a 2013 reviewer: "two people CAN sleep in it. One is better." Two further faults surface here. One member reported fibreglass poles splitting repeatedly and replaced them with alloy — a single report, so treat it as a possibility rather than a pattern. And water entering the inner when the outer door is opened after rain appears again, independently of the magazine. One reviewer's advice on price is worth repeating: buy at £40–£50, not at RRP.
Watch: Vango Soul 200 Review: Is This Budget-Friendly Tent Worth Your Money? Find Out Now!
A value-focused review asking the same question the UKCampsite members effectively answer: is it worth it at the price you actually pay?
Watch on YouTube ↗Alpinetrek
Two reviews is not a sample, and we are not going to present it as one. Both reviewers recommend the tent and praise the weight, the price-to-performance ratio, easy setup and waterproofing — but a page with no criticism on it and only two contributors tells you almost nothing about the failure modes. It is included here for a different reason: it carries the most complete and internally consistent specification we found anywhere, and Vango's own site would not load for us, so retailer spec sheets are what everybody is quoting.
That block reads: 2,170 g, 52 × 15 cm packed, 3,000 mm hydrostatic head on the main fabric, 100% polyethylene groundsheet, Vango PowerFlex fibreglass poles, outer 270 × 130 × 95 cm, inner 220 × 120 × 90 cm, one entrance, one vestibule, three-season, non-freestanding. The retailer's own description calls it a sturdy two-person trekking tent in windproof and waterproof Protex fabric, fire retardant, with a practical vestibule and mesh panels for insect-free ventilation. Note that the same retailer now lists it as no longer available, which is worth knowing before you plan around one particular colourway.
Watch: Vango Soul 200 CLR Tent Review 2023
A retailer walkthrough of the recycled-fabric CLR variant. Retailer-produced, so treat the tone as promotional — but it is the clearest look at the pitched tent.
Watch on YouTube ↗Strengths and weak points
What holds up
- Fast to pitch, and a genuine one-person job — five to seven minutes claimed, under four reported.
- 3,000 mm flysheet with taped seams. No source reports the fabric letting water through.
- Tunnel shape is stable in wind when the low end faces into it and the guys are used.
- Around 2.17 kg, so it is light enough to backpack with, especially split between two.
- At £47–£55 it is very hard to beat on price for what you get.
What people complain about
- Tight for two adults. Four of six UKCampsite reviewers raise it; one sold the tent over it.
- 95 cm peak height means sitting up, not kneeling comfortably to change.
- Rain drips off the porch into the inner when you open the door after a shower — raised independently by two sources.
- Small porch: enough for boots, not for cooking or a bulky pack.
- Fibreglass poles. One reviewer had them split repeatedly and refitted alloy.
Who it actually suits
Buy it if you are one person who wants a dry, quick, cheap shelter for a festival weekend or an overnight in the hills, and you are happy that "2" on the label means one adult and a rucksack. It is also a sensible first tent: nothing about pitching it is fiddly, and if it gets trashed at a festival you have lost £50, not £250.
Look elsewhere if two adults genuinely need to sleep in it for more than a night or two, if you need porch space to cook under in bad weather, or if you are heading anywhere the poles will take a proper battering — fibreglass is the compromise that makes this price possible. Anyone counting grams for a solo thru-hike will find lighter, and anyone camping through winter needs more tent than this.
What we could not check
- Vango's own figures. vango.co.uk would not load for us, so every specification on this page comes from retailers reproducing Vango's spec sheet rather than from Vango directly.
- The groundsheet's waterproof rating. A 10,000 mm figure appears in one user review and on no retailer spec sheet we could find. We have left it out of the table as a claim rather than a fact — if Vango publishes one, we would like to be told.
- Camping World's review scores and Amazon UK's ratings both refused to load, so neither is counted here. A 2013 blog review exists but sits in a redirect loop and could not be read.
- Whether the current stock matches these specs. The Soul 200 has been sold as the standard model, the recycled-fabric CLR and several colourways, and weight and pitch time differ between them. Check the figures on the listing you are actually buying from.
Sources last checked 31 August 2026. If a figure here is out of date, or you own this tent and your experience differs, we would rather know than be right.