Soft Shell vs. Hard Shell Rooftop Tents: Comparison Guide to Help You Decide

Whether you love overlanding or just like the occasional weekend get-away-from-it-all in your custom truck or SUV, you need the best rooftop tent for your camping lifestyle. With so many hard-shell and soft-shell rooftop tents on the market, it can be hard to pick a style to meet your needs. From space considerations to ease of use, there’s a lot to unpack when you compare these styles head-to-head. We’re going to break down some common features of both soft and hard-shell rooftop tents, where they differ, and how to determine the right choice for your build.

Taking Your Tent On the Trail

Rooftop tents are becoming increasingly popular. They’re easy to add to most builds, available in sizes that fit everything from smaller cars to monster off-road beasts, and simple to set up after a hard day of driving. Manufacturers have taken note, with brands vying to add features that let them claim the title of best rooftop tent brand. This has led to an explosion in options that creates a market with the perfect tent for almost any vehicle-based camper. All rooftop tents come with a few common benefits.

• Get Above the Action - Since they’re mounted on the roof, these tents mean an end to sleeping on a hidden tree root or finding a shard rock with your spine in the middle of the night. It also lifts you above many of the more troublesome critters who might see a ground tent as a comfy new burrow for them and their families. Almost any clearing you can drive to, you can camp in. Telescoping ladders provide you with easy access, even on uneven ground.
• Fast Set-Up - Rooftop tents are already secured to their platform–the roof rails or rack of your vehicle. There’s no pounding stakes, just set the inside up, and you’re ready to go. The best rooftop tents can be set up in a matter of minutes, letting your head hit the pillow before the engine gets cold.
• Easier Set-Up - Even the best ground tents take more than just the tent. There’s the ground tarp, stake it down, assemble the posts, attach them to the tent, then go get your bedding and set up the bedding, and the list keeps going. Many rooftop tents include a custom mattress, and while some do use poles that need to be assembled, they are minimized. The entire set-up process is streamlined for convenience. 
• Saves Storage Space - No matter how big your vehicle is, when you’re miles away from civilization and limited to the resources you can bring with you, cargo space is at a premium. Rooftop tents get out of your interior cargo box or bed and onto the roof of your vehicle. This not only leaves more space for gear but means you’re not wrestling with your tent and tent accessories every time you need to get into the back of your vehicle.

Soft-Shell Tents

Soft-shell rooftop tents have fabric walls and a roof but use a hard base–often hinged to double the footprint of the tent–to give you a stable sleeping platform. This creates a spacious, lightweight tent design that offers more living space and a covered area under the folded-open base that’s perfect for an annex or additional cover. They are also usually both cheaper and give you a better view of the stars through large windows, but a rain fly may be needed to keep out precipitation and help you keep heat in during cooler evenings.

Hard-Shell Tents

Hard-shell rooftop tents are often heavier, have a smaller footprint limited to the base directly supported over the vehicle’s body, and are more expensive than their softer counterparts, but many overlanders still consider them the best value on the market. Hard-shell models set up faster-either in a hinged wedge or popping straight up, both with waterproof fabric sides–thanks to pneumatic struts that reduce set-up time to as little as a minute. 

This gives you a hard roof that blocks out the stars above you, but maintains interior heat, offers better protection from the elements in general, is completely waterproof, and provides more height at the apex of the tent for added shoulder room. In transit, hard-shell tents are more aerodynamic thanks to the smooth shell, and many hard-shell tents can carry additional gear on top of their own rails.

Best Rooftop Tents

There are some great examples of both hard and soft-shell tents on the market, each with its own features and benefits. Here are some of our favorites:

Hard Clam Shell Style

The Roofnest Falcon Pro took one of the best-selling rooftop tents on the market and amped it up to the next level. You can sleep two adults under the pressed aluminum roof, and large windows/doors provide plenty of ventilation and an unimpeded view of everything not hidden by your shell. The 8.5-foot ladder makes entry easy on the roughest ground, and the set-up is simple and straightforward.

Hard Pop-Up Style

The James Baroud Frontier Odyssey packs a lot of European-designed features into a tough-as-nails pop-up hard-shell to create one of the best rooftop tents on the market. It sets up in about a minute to give ample floor space, plenty of shoulder room, and a panoramic view of your surroundings. While the current Medium model sleeps two adults and a child, overlanders and camping families are excitedly waiting for the XL version coming soon with more space for more fun out in the wild. 

A thick memory foam mattress is included, along with a solar-powered vent to aid airflow and a rechargeable LED light that can also be used as a camp flashlight for late-light outhouse visits. Interior storage is built in, but your space is massively expandable with the addition of the James Baroud Falcon 270 awning, awning walls, and a whole range of accessories and add-ons to tailor your camping or glamping experience.

Big Soft-Shell Footprint

Go big when choosing a home for your adventures. The ROAM Vagabond XL gives you a massive 72” x 96” sqft floor to sleep four adults comfortably and gives you space for the necessities you need, with a high roof, waterproof rainfly with a massive window, and a super-comfortable 3” high-density foam mattress. The covered porch gives you cover entering and leaving the tent, or add walls to create a large ground-level annex to hold more gear or give you a mobile mudroom.

A Soft Shell For Every Vehicle

The iKamper family of tents was born out of a family trip that needed a better tent. The iKamper X-Cover 2.0 is the latest evolution of their popular soft-shell rooftop tent, with enough room for either three adults or two adults and two children. A quilted, insulated lining keeps you warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, and two massive SkyView windows are perfect for falling asleep under the stars. With excellent weather-proofing and wind-resistant features, it’s a great tent even when the weather doesn’t cooperate. To give even more vehicles a piece of the overland-camping action, this best-selling rooftop tent is also available as the two-person iKamper X-Cover 2.0 Mini.

Get Ready for Your Next Camping Trip

We have the tents and camping equipment you need for bigger adventures off the beaten path. Talk to one of our specialists if you need more product information or want to talk about accessories for your build. Old-school customer support is by the phone days, nights, and weekends. Order the best rooftop tents for your overlanding from Offroad Alliance today.