The Best Backpacking Tent – The MSR® Hubba Hubba™ NX
Like any great piece of gear, the best backpacking tent only enhances your adventures. A quality tent offers safety and security far from the comforts of home, yet is light and easy to pack.
Achieving the ultimate tent is no simple feat. Yet, 15 years ago, MSR engineers created one with such an excellent balance of features, it’s been a best-seller every year since. The Hubba Hubba NX 2-person tent is now iconic. Refined over the years with advanced technologies, it remains at the forefront of backcountry tent design, continually pushing the industry forward.
But… what’s the feature people seem to love most about this impressive tent?
“I truly fell in love with its included stuff sack. I’ve never seen or used an easier tent storage solution,” Gear Junkie said in a recent article.
Yes, the stuff sack is among the Hubba Hubba’s high-performance features. Its unique design reflects MSR’s quest to improve the lives of adventurers because it bucks the hard-to-stuff, never-fully-fits, poles-sticking-halfway-out, maddening classic stuff sack.
With that preview, let’s dive into the precision engineering of this celebrated backpacking tent.
The ultimate stuff sack
Before you even experience the tent itself, you must interact with its stuff sack—the first impression; the cover to the book.
Made of ultralight, rugged materials, the engineered bag features a wide-mouth, top-loading design that opens expansively for easy access. This also makes repacking the tent super easy—all components fit neatly inside, no stuffing required. To keep it compact, two straps cinch everything down tightly. The bag’s easy-grab end handle is a final touch that represents MSR’s obsessive attention to detail. It’s a stuff sack worthy of the storied Hubba Hubba tent.
Virtually unbreakable poles
The tent’s other features are just as high caliber. In fact, they showcase our latest technologies, which were developed as solutions to the real challenges that adventurers face in the mountains.
The Hubba Hubba features cutting-edge Easton® Syclone™ Poles. Made of composite materials, Syclone poles are virtually unbreakable. Under force—such as strong winds—they flex and then bounce back to shape, maintaining the reliability of your shelter. MSR worked closely with the manufacturer Easton to bring these new poles to the market, providing adventurers a solution against the threat of broken poles from intense winds and other outdoor afflictions.
While aluminum and carbon fiber poles have their strengths, Syclone poles’ resiliency offers peace of mind when you’re deep in the backcountry. Exclusive to MSR tents, they’re the future of tent pole technology.
Our European Hubba NX series continues to feature our durable DAC poles.
Ultra-durable waterproof coating
Waterproof coatings allow you to camp in foul weather, but they also present a challenge for today’s lightweight tents. Across the tent industry, lightweight fabrics can experience a faster breakdown of their waterproof coatings from the natural process of hydrolysis. This leads to sticky, gummy tents with compromised fabrics.
Years ago, MSR tent designer Terry Breaux set out to solve this issue. Working with scientists over the next decade, he refined a formula for application on tent fabrics. Called Xtreme Shield, this coating is designed specifically to combat hydrolysis and last up to three times longer than conventional coatings. By protecting a tent’s fabric and weather protection, Xtreme Shield prolongs a tent’s life. The new Hubba Hubba NX boasts this superior coating, making it our most durable, longest-lasting version of this tent ever.
Our European Hubba NX series continues to feature our renowned DuraShield coating.
Precision detailing
From its hard-anodized grommets to its reflective guy lines, the Hubba Hubba showcases quality details throughout. MSR’s hyper attention to the details provides backcountry travelers the confidence and comfortable living quarters they need on remote adventures.
In 2014, MSR engineers sought to increase the Hubba’s livability, and reinvented much of its design. They added rain gutters on its doors, improved the stuff pockets, and gave it a gray fly for a neutral light inside, among other updates. In 2019, it gained a further durability boost. Throughout its iterations, the Hubba retained its legendary reliability.
Ultralight design: 1.60 kg (3 lb 8 oz)
The Hubba’s dependability carries forward without sacrificing its defining ultralight design. Add its spacious comfort, and it’s easy to see why this tent is as much a part of backcountry adventures as high peaks and towering evergreens. The Hubba comes in a one-, two- and three-person model. Each with its own sleek stuff sack.
