Thread: Review: Durston X-Mid 2 Solid

The wife bought one of these for her 40th and generously let me use it on my recent hunting trip. Before this, we'd just used it on the lawn. We bought the Solid version as we want to have the extra warmth for mountain trips.

The campsite was a small clearing on the summit of a ~600m mountain in the foothills of the Tararuas. Beech forest.

Setting up was really easy. The first time we used it we put it away with the footprint attached to the inner, and the inner attached to the fly.

Once I cleared the site of a couple of ladder ferns, it was as simple as putting in 4 pegs, making sure the corners were at 90 degrees, taking off the rubber feet and baskets of my 2 trekking poles, and extending them until the fly was taut.
2 secondary pegs held out the vestibules and we were done. Total pitching time was under 5 minutes.

The vestibules (1 per side) easily held our 60l packs, daypacks and boots with plenty of room still to get out without tripping over gear.

Sleeping wasn't so good, but that was due to the site, which sloped on two axes (x and z), towards the feet and also to the right. This meant both of us slid down to the bottom of the tent in the night, putting pressure on the line connecting the top right to the fly. The connector unclipped just before dawn, leading to a mild collapse of that corner of the inner, but not a collapse of the tent.

I was glad it wasn't a tear or snap because it's a new tent.

There was some wind in the night, but it didn't even cause a ruffle, let alone a flap, so a plus on that.

My hunting mate was super impressed by the roominess of the tent, the vestibules and the smart design. These were what sold me on the tent too, and it didn't disappoint. At 1.1kg the weight was super low.

Pros (only ones directly experienced):
Massive vestibules,
Lightweight,
Good headroom
Quiet fabric
Easy to erect
Quality stitching

Cons:
Lightweight means more fragile
Too small to strap on the outside of my pack (taking up valuable space in the pack)
Slippery fabric means easy to slide down if pitched on a slope
Footprint of a 3 person tent (but can hold heaps of gear in those vestibules)
Need to buy trekking poles (but these are useful).

The marketing also says they're very stable in wind, can shed snow well, and have decent waterproofing.

I’ve got one and echo all your points. The slippery floor can be annoying trying to find the perfectly flat campsite

My hunting mate suggested surfer's wax might help with my slippery sleeping mat which slid down. Maybe it would help with the tent too?

I've run small beads of silicone on the underside of my sleeping mat to give it extra grip.