Review: Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo Tent

Finding the right tent for a backpacking trip is always tricky. You have to balance packed size and weight against livability and how well it stands up to wind and rain. I've always erred on the side of a sturdy tent over any weight concerns, which is why I love the Hilleberg Akto, but I don't always need the Akto.

There is a short season in my neck of the woods called summer, when storms are less likely and temps don't drop much below the 60s. This is when I've been using the Lunar Solo, Six Moon Design's flagship ultralight one-person tent. After several late and early summer trips around the north woods of Wisconsin and Michigan, it has proved itself a capable shelter. It weighs just 2 pounds, packs down quite small, and checks a whole lot of other boxes on my tent wish list.

Plenty of Space

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

There is no one tent to rule them all, and trying to find one is a mistake. You're better off with two tents, knowing the limitations of each and using each when it's the best for the job. Which is to say, I love the Akto, but I also think Six Moon Design's Lunar Solo is excellent for summer trips when you prize traveling light over withstanding intense storms.

That's not to say the Lunar Solo won't keep you dry. It will. The silicone polyester fabric, or Sil Poly, is plenty waterproof, though you'll either need to seam-seal it yourself with some Seam Grip, or have the Six Moon Designs team do it for you before they ship it, which costs $35. My testing tent arrived seam-sealed, but being old enough to remember when you had to seam-seal just about every tent, I've done it enough times to say it's not hard should you choose to DIY it.

The Lunar Solo is single-wall, single-pole tent intended to be pitched with a trekking pole. This makes for a very small and light tent but also has two potential drawbacks: structural integrity and condensation. More on those in a moment. Once pitched, the Lunar Solo offers 26 square feet of living space and a peak height of 49 inches, and the vestibule offers 8.5 square feet of additional gear storage. Overall I found the Lunar Solo to be plenty spacious for one person with gear. The rear wall expands out slightly, giving you a place to stash frequently needed items without pushing them up against the tent wall.

The 20D silnylon and mesh walls feel as durable as anything you'll find at this weight, unless you want to go with a Cuben Fiber/Dyneema tent, but to my mind the high price of Cuben puts it in a different category. The floor of the Lunar Solo is a more robust 40-denier (40D), and has a bathtub shape to help ensure water doesn't get in. The rear of the Lunar Solo has a 6-inch mesh portion between the floor and the main wall that helps with ventilation.

Any single pole tent is going to struggle in wind, no matter how many guyline points it offers. I did find the Lunar Solo compressed a good deal when I pitched it in high winds on the exposed shores of Lake Superior. It was admittedly not a great campsite from a seeking-shelter point of view, not one I would pick if I wasn't testing the wind resistance of a tent. But it did convince me that the Lunar Solo needs either a trekking pole or a heavier tent pole than the ultralight pole Six Moon Design provided. (I did a good portion of my testing while bikepacking so I didn't have trekking poles.)

I eventually made a more robust pole from a couple of thicker (albeit, heavier) pole segments I had lying around. While I did not get a chance to repeat the wind test, I feel like this combo, which is what I used the rest of the time testing the Lunar Solo, would have held up fine. Most backpackers will use trekking poles to pitch the Lunar Solo, which will provide a much stronger pitch.

It's important you pitch the Lunar Solo correctly, which is a little tricky at first. I highly suggest practicing in ideal conditions before you hit the trail so you can get a feel for it without the added stress of rain. Six Moon Designs has some instructions on its site, which I highly recommend reading. The Lunar Solo pitches with six stakes for the base, two at each end, one for the back, one for the vestibule. The method I found that works best is to stake out the three rear stakes to form a nice taut triangle. Once that's done, I put in the pole to raise the tent up, then stake out the vestibule tension line and put in the remaining two side stakes. Once I came up with this system, I found I could get a good pitch in just a few minutes.

One thing worth emphasizing is that you don't want to try to keep the stakes high up to match the height of the tent off the ground. Use the guylines to handle the height difference and put your stakes all the way in the ground. This will make the Lunar Solo much stronger.

Wet Mornings

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

The Lunar Solo is what Six Moon Designs calls a hybrid single-wall tent. Technically, it is double-walled since it has a mesh door and mesh around the floor. But the sides and back of the tent are single-walled and thus vulnerable to condensation. Condensation happens in all tents to varying degrees depending on conditions, but single-wall tents put the condensation on the wall you're going to touch, making the consequences considerably higher. Waking up with water dripping on your face, or in a sleeping bag that's been rendered a sopping mess by condensation, is no fun.

The Lunar Solo attempts to manage condensation the only way you can—by offering a variety of ways to ventilate the tent, reducing humidity (at least the part you're creating) in the process. The Lunar Solo has a vent at the top of the vestibule, the entire door is mesh, and there's mesh all the way around the base, all of which do help with ventilation.

The fly does not reach all the way to floor, allowing more airflow, and the vestibule can be raised up when it's not raining to increase the effectiveness of the front mesh. Unfortunately, whether all this is enough to eliminate condensation depends entirely on the conditions you're in. If the humidity outside is high enough, all the ventilation in the world won't stop condensation.

I did not have a huge issue with condensation in the Lunar Solo, save one scenario—wind after a rain. I carried a small microfiber towel which I used to wipe off condensation in the mornings, and for the most part this kept things under control. One night last fall though, it rained for hours and then the wind picked up and shook a good bit of condensation off the tent walls onto me and my sleeping bag.

A Backpacking Bargain

The Lunar Solo is a capable tent that doesn't weigh much and for $260 is a bargain. The nearest competitor is probably the Zpacks Plex Solo Lite, which has a very similar design but is made of Dyneema Composite Fabrics (DCF) and more than twice the price. I haven't tested the Plex Solo, but I have used other DCF tents and I am not a fan. Like all Dyneema, it crinkles loudly. I much prefer the packability and relative silence of silnylon.

The other interesting competitor is the Durston X-Mid 1. I have spent a few nights in an older model, but the X-Mid 1 was recently redesigned with 15D walls, and a slightly larger interior. The X-Mid 1 is a double-walled tent, which I consider an advantage, but it does require two poles and the max height is only 41 inches to the Lunar Solo's 49 inches. I'm hoping to get a chance to test the new X-Mid 1 this summer.

The Lunar Solo is tough to beat, though I do wish Six Moon Designs would use heavier zippers. I'd happily carry a couple extra ounces to have more robust zippers. The mesh front wall does limit it more to summer trips, but the Lunar Solo is a great option for those who want to travel light in the backcountry.

Update May 28, 2025: A previous version of this review referred to the fabric as sil nylon. It is actually sil poly and we have corrected that.