Review: MSR Freelite Backpacking Tent

My backpacking life is an endless struggle between my desire to carry as little weight as possible and my desire for comfort.

Lately, comfort has come to mean good food. That is: real food, not the typical dehydrated, boil-in-pouch, backpacking food. If I can carve a little weight out of my basic kit—tent, sleeping bag, pad, clothes, and such—I can bring bacon and eggs without overloading myself. This is why the MSR Freelite piqued my interest.

At just 2 pounds for the two-person version, the new Freelite shaves 9 ounces off the previous model, but remains surprisingly spacious. It’s well-ventilated, features plenty of storage pockets and gear lofts, and unlike many tents at this weight, offers two doors with two vestibules.

There are three Freelite models available: a one-person, the two-person I tested, and a three-person. All are made of 15D ripstop nylon with MSR’s 1200-mm Durashield polyurethane and durable water repellency (DWR). The 15-denier (15D) polyurethane and silicone-coated nylon isn’t quite as heavy as the 20D used in MSR’s popular Hubba Hubba tent (see our guide to the Best Tents for more comparisons). As with any lightweight tent, you’ll want to treat it with care. I would strongly suggest picking up a footprint to extend the life of the tent. The mesh upper portion of the tent is 10D micro mesh, which is pretty typical for a well-made lightweight tent.

MSR bills the 2-person model I tested as a “semi-freestanding tent for backpacking pairs.” I think what MSR means by that is that this tent is great for two people who don’t mind being, well, close.

At 50 inches wide, the Freelite offers room for your standard 25-inch wide inflatable pad. I tested it using a pad from Sea to Summit, and the Tensor pad from Nemo.

One of my favorite aspects of the Freelight is that there’s no taper. The Freelite is truly rectangular: the width at the feet is the same at the width at the head. The tent is 82 inches long, and the inner walls are steep, making it good choice for taller folks. I am 5’ 11”, so it’s a little tough to truly test, but I would think it would be comfortable for people up to 6’ 3”.

While it’s just wide enough to accommodate two, there isn’t much room left over. For couples, or if, like me, you’re backpacking with kids, this is the perfect amount of sleeping space. I shared it with my 10-year-old and found it to be plenty roomy. If you don’t want to be right next to your hiking partner, you might want to look at the three-person model ($480), which adds 12 ounces but is over a foot wider.

One of the ways MSR has saved on weight in this tent is the pole structure, which consists of a central hub pole that sprouts out in three directions, and a cross-pole that fits over on top horizontally. The hubbed pole ends fit into aluminum grommets at the base of the tent. The grommet straps can then be staked out using MSR’s “needle” stakes. Weighing a mere quarter of an ounce, these little stakes looked flimsy and made me a little nervous. I brought a few other stakes I needed to test as a backup, but in the end, I went with these. They’re light and thin, but stood up to some heavy pounding with rocks and worked great with guy loops at the base of each pole.

Once you have the grommet straps at the base staked and the hub poles set up, the tent clips in place and then you can install the cross pole. The cross pole helps increase headroom (38 inches tall by my measurements) and stretches the mesh side to side, allowing the Freelite to have nearly vertical sidewalls, which goes a long way to making this tent feel roomier. Altogether it took me about three minutes to set up.

One thing to bear in mind, though, is that this is not a free-standing tent. You need to stake out both corners at the foot of the tent in order for it to function properly. Additionally, the vestibules require a stake each, making for a minimum of four tent stakes to pitch it.

Staking out the foot of the Freelite was easy enough in the north woods of Michigan where I did my testing, but it’s something to keep in mind if you are primarily camping on slickrock mesas out west, where staking is impossible and the only option is tying the guy lines to rocks. I did test using only rocks to set it up. It definitely works if you have the rocks to do it, but a semi-freestanding design would probably not be my top pick for backpacking in the canyon country.

For those of us not camping on rock, the trade-off of needing to stake out the foot area is well worth the weight savings.

The inside design offers a good amount of storage space. There’s two gear loft pockets, each with enough room for a headlamp and pair of glasses. There are also two media pockets in the corners with a small hole at the bottom for headphones or a power cord, if you bring that sort of thing in the backcountry.

The Freelite has a head end where the nylon fabric comes up higher to protect from wind gusts, and foot end that’s all mesh. On cold nights, I’d suggest sticking with the head as the head, but at my daughter’s insistence we slept the other way for maximum stargazing through the mesh walls at the foot. The only downside to sleeping backwards is that it’s harder to get in and out, and theoretically, a little colder.

There are doors on both sides of the Freelite, and both doors have vestibules, making it easy to get in and out without disturbing your tent mate. The zippers are lightweight, but are easy to use and didn’t snag or catch in my testing. The vestibules open up wide and only open over the door so you can get in and out of the tent without having to climb over any gear stashed on the other side of the vestibule.

Like the Nemo Hornet, which uses a similar design, the rainfly is cut higher at the head end of the tent to save on weight. While I did not have any problems with this, pay attention to how you stake out your rainfly because the higher portion of the rainfly is more likely to flap in the wind, and could potentially let water drip on the inner tent if the fly is not staked and guyed out properly. That said, I had no issues with it even on a very windy, gusty night of testing.

MSR stopped making tent-specific footprints a while back to cut down on waste. If you plan to camp on rough ground, though, I highly suggesting getting one. I did not test it, but MSR’s two-person universal footprint will fit the Freelite two-person.

The Freelite 2’s square design and high headroom throughout make it unique. Similar tents include the aforementioned Nemo and the Big Agnes Tiger Wall UL2, both of which are heavier and have significantly less room in at the feet (the Big Agnes has slightly larger vestibules). We have not tried either, but based on specs and my experience in the Freelite, I would take it over the Nemo. If your hiking partner is not your significant other, the roomier Tiger Wall UL 2 or Freelite three-person model might be a better option.

The MSR Freelite 2 is one of the best ultralight two-person tents I’ve tested. It’s light enough to bring on a solo trip, large enough for couples, and is one of the cheaper options in this weight/size class. Note that stock fluctuates a lot on this one. It’s been in and out of stock at MSR several times in the course of testing, and the same is true of REI, which often shows it out of stock online but available in stores.