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LL Bean King Pine 4 Tent Review

The LL Bean King Pine 4 has a great screened in front vestibule for hanging out in on buggy days.
The LL Bean King Pine 4 has a great screened in front vestibule for hanging out on buggy days and nights.

We kicked off our car camping season last week with a trip to the Dolly Copp campground at the foot of Mt Madison in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

On this trip, we tried out LL Bean’s King Pine 4 tent, in our seemingly endless quest to find the perfect car camping tent to suit our needs. All in all, this tent comes pretty close to being perfect: the King Pine 4 has excellent cross ventilation, it’s spacious without being colossal, we can both stand up inside without stooping over, and it’s very easy to pitch, even in the rain.

I think we were surprised at how much we liked it, although we still plan to try out one other car camping tent this year.

Inner Tent

The inner tent requires three shock-corded poles to pitch. All of the poles are color-coded and run through roof sleeves, before they are secured to side webbing straps that are staked by the sides of the tent. We pitched this tent for the first time in pouring rain, without looking at the directions beforehand and without getting a divorce, which speaks to how well LL Bean has idiot-proofed the pitching process. (Those are her words, not mine.) Now that I know how it goes up, I’m confident that I can pitch the King Pine by myself.

The inner tent has a front door and a rear door, which can be used as a back entrance or for additional storage under the rear vestibule area.
The inner tent has a front door and a rear door, which can be used as a back entrance or for additional storage under the rear vestibule area.
Large roof and side vents provide excellent ventilation even when covered by the external fly.
Large roof and side vents provide excellent ventilation even when covered by the external fly.

Interior Space

The King Pine is available in a 4 person and 6 person size. Having tried a colossal 6 person tent last year, we wanted to see how a smaller 4 person one would suit us. We bring a lot of odd and ends when we go car camping and there’s nothing minimalist about it. I think you could fit 4 people in the King Pine 4 if they lay side by side in mummy bags, but the space is quite roomy for two wide car camping sleeping bags/pads, with a vertical vaulted ceiling that increases the feeling of interior spaciousness. I can also stand fully erect in the tent (I’m just under 6 feet tall), which makes getting dressed and moving around effortless.

Looking in from the back door, through the inner tent, and into the front vestibule
Looking in from the back door, through the inner tent, and into the front vestibule

The King Pine tent has a heavy-duty urethane bathtub floor with taped seams to provide plenty of weather protection. There are large pockets sewn into the corners of the tent so you can get delicate items off the floor like your glasses or iPad, and there’s plenty of interior light from the lightly colored fabric used in the inner tent and outer rain fly.

Front Vestibule and Screen Room

The King Pine 4 has a front screened in porch which is nice to sit inside when you want to hang out.
The King Pine 4 has a front screened in porch which is nice to sit inside when you want to hang out.
Solid fabric panels cover the mesh windows in the vestibule and are 'shut' using dowels instead of zippers.
Solid fabric panels cover the mesh windows in the vestibule and are ‘shut’ using dowels instead of zippers.
When closed the interior panels provide privacy, rain protection, and help retain interior warmth
When closed the interior panels provide privacy, rain protection, and help retain interior warmth

The King Pine 4 has a front screened in porch that you can set up chairs in or use to get your gear out of the weather. It has four windows, with interior panels than can be closed for privacy or to keep wind and rain out of the tent. The panels do not zip closed, but are held in place using dowels, probably for increased durability since zippers are so prone to breaking. While the dowels don’t provide a fully waterproof seal, the solid panels do a good job at keeping rain out of the vestibule in heavy weather, because the bottom of the panel is sewn to the base of the tent, forcing water to exit through the mesh and not into the interior.

The front vestibule and screen room are not 100% closed to bugs since there’s a small space where they can enter between the main tent and the vestibule side wall, as well as from the ground since the screen room doesn’t have a urethane floor.

Still, we found that any bugs that do enter the front vestibule and sitting area gather along the top of the vestibule which has the most light, so they don’t bother you. If this is still a concern, your best bet would be to spray the vestibule/screen room ceiling with Permethrin which will kill any bugs that land on it. Spraying Permethrin on tents and hammocks is all the rage this year on the Appalachian Trail.

Interior view of the front door.
Interior view of the front door.
Exterior view of front door
Exterior view of front door

Front Door

If there’s one thing that’s sub-optimal about the King Pine, it’s the bottom of the front door, which is easy to trip over when entering or existing the tent. The front door consists of two screened panels with a zipper in the middle and zippers at the bottom of each door panel. Below them is a piece of fabric that stretches along the bottom of the entire doorway, which you have to step over to enter and exit.

It’d be a lot easier if that panel wasn’t there, because even I trip on it about 50% of the time. I can only imagine what a problem it will be for younger children or people with less mobility than me. One way to modify the door without completely redesigning the tent would be to lower the base panel so that it’s at ground level, although eliminating it entirely would be the best option. It’s not a showstopper, and we are willing to live with it, but it’d still be better if the door was easier to enter and exit.

Recommendation

If you’re looking for a spacious, easy to pitch 4 person car camping tent, I recommend you take a long look at the King Pine 4 Tent from LL Bean. It’s easy to set up and take down, with excellent ventilation provided by having a front and rear door. The front screen room is also a very nice convenience if you want to sit up late in buggy conditions, without having to retire to a horizontal position inside the tent. I really like the fact that I can stand up in the tent and vestibule without having to stoop over as well as the feeling of security I have when it’s raining and thundering outside, knowing that I’m in a solid tent for the night.

Likes

  • Easy to pitch
  • High enough to stand up inside
  • Excellent cross ventilation with a front and back door
  • Screened in front porch area

Dislikes

  • Front door “sill” is easy to trip over

Manufacturer Specs

  • Floor dimensions 8’5″ x 7’6″.
  • Tent area 63 sq. ft.
  • Peak height 6’1″.
  • Screen room area 35.8 sq. ft.
  • Packed size 13″H x 9″W x 31″L.
  • Minimum weight 22 lb. 14 oz.

Disclosure: LL Bean provided Philip Werner with a sample King Pine 4 tent for this review

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13 comments

  1. thank you for the review.. I had been looking at this tent an similar models from Bean for some time. What has kept me from buying is the screen room windows and the way they are secured against Rain…I wish they had a pull down outside Tarp or Flap to fit over the entire Screen room area….. You do not mention whether or not you were in the tent during a typical Summer afternoon Thunderstorm Downpour and then mention the areas where the bugs are getting in.. So that kind of makes me want to leave it up on the shelf in the store.. Oh if you car camping, I bought one of those Tennis Racquet type Bug killers a few years ago and they really work well inside a tent.. Before I go to bed or if I see one, I take the Racquet and make a tour of the tent, paying particular attention to the Corners and areas near a Light source. Gnats just love to home in on ceiling Lights…I also found one Racquet brand with a fold down handle which fits into my Backpack! So I take it along on my Weekend Backpacking Trips to clean out my Tent and make sitting outside a bit more pleasant. Waving the Racquet through a swarm of Gnats is quite interesting with the Snap Crackle and Pop as the bugs hit the Electric grid..I also have one on my boat which comes in handy for Mosquito Swarms out over the water…

    • We had intermittent rain on two days of our trip, so I was surprised that the windows didn’t leak, but they didn’t. I think it’s because the bottom is attached to the tent body and not completely hanging free.

      • Thank you…I’ll give them another look. My Mondo Condo (14×16) has just become to big for me and my 12×12 Bean has worn itself out after 20 years…..

      • I forgot to mention. I love those high walls at the entries. Couple of weeks ago in the Talladega NF we got hit with a huge downpour which lasted over a half hour and the campground was flooded to about 1 inch deep.. Those who had ground level entries had water leak into their tent since the ground and slope were not soaking it up or diverting the water fast enough…

  2. Really good point there Eddie.

  3. On my older King Pine Dome 4, the entry ways had a stake loop in the center. I learned that staking that down made the unzipping a one-handed operation and kept the tripping to a minimum as we stepped into the Screen room or the tent area. On the other hand, tripping or stepping on the stake became a issue. Pounding the stake down to ground level worked well until the take down process…then it became a curse word :-)

    • On our last trip – last week – I came to the conclusion that a center stake would be perfect there. I just have to figure out how to attach it without sewing….:-)

      We love this tent. Suits us perfectly.

  4. I know this is an old review but thought I’d ask anyway. The floor dimensions are listed as 8’5? x 7’6?. Is this for the enclosed area or does that include the screened room as well?

  5. My King pine imploded at Columbus State Park in New Mexico in just a 30 mile an hour wind, fiberglass poles cracked, so I don’t know what y’all talkin about, it’s a nice tent when the wind isn’t blowing but other than that it’s nothing but a sailboat that blew into the Mexican Sonora desert. and for the record I had it staked with every guy out that the tent had plus rocks on top of the guy lines.

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