The Kelty Wireless 6 is a roomy, well-styled three-season dome tent that’s been part of my kit for four years. It’s ideal for couples who want proper standing height without hauling a mansion-sized tent around. Read on for my review after 4 years of camping in it.
Kelty Wireless 6 Tent RRP: £300
Overall Rating 
(3.5 / 5)
The Wireless 6 is a three-season dome tent with two doors and vestibules, and a peak height of 190cm, which, for reference, means it’s taller than me by a good 22cm. That height is both a blessing and a mild source of comedy, but I’ll come back to that.
Floor space clocks in at just under 87 square feet, with two vestibules adding a further combined 28 square feet of covered storage. On paper, that’s a six-person tent. In practice, it’s a very comfortable two and easily accommodates our double folding camp bed, a table and our usual luggage.
Pitch time is genuinely fast – solo you’re looking at around 10-5 minutes, with a partner its even faster, thanks to a clever quick-corner pole sleeve design.
The fly sheet, however, is a different story. At 168cm I am, apparently, not tall enough to wrangle a 190cm tent without a degree of physical comedy. Getting the fly sheet over the top involves a combination of throwing, jumping, and what I can only describe as interpretive dance.
The same goes for clipping the inner tent to the poles at the very top, the lower clips are fine, but those top ones require a bit of reach. This isn’t a deal breaker, it just needs acknowledging, particularly if you’re on the shorter side.
The two vestibules are genuinely useful and easily accommodate my camp loo (an absolute essential), or a small table and a camp stove with room to manoeuvre. That matters when it’s bucketing down and you don’t want to bring wet kit inside.
The interior is surprisingly roomy for a tent that packs down into a fairly compact bag. The clever corner vestibule zip design also means they’re easy to access from inside which is a small detail that makes a real difference in terms of usability.
There are only four smallish corner storage pockets, which won’t win any awards if you’re a person who likes to have a place for everything, but I don’t tend to use storage pockets unless I’m in a very small backpacking tent, which of course, this is not.
Aesthetically, I really like it. The styling is clean and modern and I love the colours. It doesn’t look like a budget tent, and it packs into Kelty’s signature duffel bag which makes loading it back into the car satisfyingly easy.
This is where I have to be straight with you, and where four years of real-world use actually tells you something that a first-impressions review simply couldn’t.
We’ve had significant condensation issues with this tent – more than with any other tent we’ve owned. We initially put it down to using an EHU hook-up in cold weather, which led to a damp floor under the air bed. Reasonable explanation, we thought. But we’ve since experienced the same issue in warmer weather, without an EHU, so it’s not that. I even bought an additional groundsheet to see if that would help with floor dampness – it didn’t.
Independent reviewers have flagged ventilation as a known issue with the rainfly on, and a quick trawl of Reddit confirms I’m not alone here – this seems to be a fairly common experience with the Wireless 6. It’s not a tent-ending problem and it hasn’t stopped us using it, but it does mean you need to be prepared – air it well in the mornings, keep a small towel handy, and don’t leave damp kit inside to compound the problem.
I love the space inside this tent, it’s perfect for weekend camping trip for the two of us. I also like taking it for solo camping trips when I want a bit more space but don’t want to take our huge Vango AirBeam.
The two vestibules genuinely add some extra usable space and for such a compact tent, it provides a surprising amount of space inside. But whilst the quality is good, the condensation is an issue, and whilst It hasn’t stopped be using this tent, it is the reason I’ve scored it the way I have.
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