I'm super biased here, but lots of experience, research, and customer intercept interviews as well. Autohome is the tent I found after lots of research for year around use in NORTHERN states and across the Americas.
Full disclosure - Bought first tent in 2011, became a reseller of Autohome in 2012, bought controlling share of Autohome USA in 2020, and have used all the models of tents we make as well as the knockoff and lesser alternatives. Our tents are expensive, work in all conditions, and we have tents still in use that are older than every other RTT company in existence.
The cliff-notes version is:
1: Dont buy a crap tent new, pick up one used to try out RTT camping (Ikamper, FrontRunner, Thule, and the hundred other same factory tents from Asia) - they are only good for a few seasons if you use them on the regular and you are better served trying a used tent and saving $$ for a good unit if it works for you. Cheap tents are the reason there is a bad RTT reputation - a good tent can last decades and if you use it will be worth the few hundred dollars a year it costs to offset the $5k price. I met a woman last year with a 37 year old Autohome tent and offered to by it from her and give her a new tent so I could put hers in the showroom. She refused to sell me her tent as she bought it new when she took a travel job after college and still uses our tent ~50 nights a year.
2: Soft shell for more room relative to footprint if you are a fair weather camper. Slower, louder, and less comfortable when there is wind or weather.
3: Hardshell for year around use - Be mindful of roof weight but don't go so light that you loose the benefits of speed and comfort. The skinny tents with no storage mean you are still bringing bedding up and having to store it in the car during the day - loosing two of the benefits of a good hard shell tent. The Alucab tents are sturdy but too heavy for a Defender in my opinion. Most of the knockoff hard shell tents are not sufficiently structural and flex or dont seal out dust & water. We make the lightest full hardshell tent in a full carbon fiber layup but the cost is high. Our fiberglass tents are all fully structural (only crossbars needed) and seal up - most are between 110-140lbs.
4: RTT use are practically limited to two adults - a small child is OK but 4+ is too many to manage on the roof. I went from three of us in the tent to moving the kid "downstairs" and eventually to a ground tent for the kids with wife and I in the roof.
5: trailers suck... Except when they dont. An easy way to carry a second RTT and loads of stuff. Fine if you are on long trips and mostly forest roads, crap in a city or tight trails. Storage and maintenance $$ considerations as well. But if you have a hobby or sport that needs gear the trailer solution is a game changer. IE motorcycles are tough to carry more than two at a time in a 130, but with a trailer I can carry four bikes and four people...
Hope this helps - reach out if you have any specific questions
I’ve never seen someone set up a RTT faster than a ground tent. Only advantage is leaving the bedding in the tent. Check out a tunnel tent for fast setup.
I'm in bed in 30 seconds from parking the car regardless of, dark, wind, rain, or snow. If you can beat that with the ground tent color me impressed. The $$ however is quite different from my ground tents.
