I dunno, I have the Lanshan 2 Pro and I have found it to be every bit as durable and capable as my brand name tents. I've been using it for about three years now.

What you have to remember is that outside of the cottage industry, the majority of your "real" brand gear is made in China just the same as the knockoff stuff. What you are paying for with a lot of name brand gear is the brand name, and also theoretically some level of warranty and after-sale support. (I am 100% positive I will receive none on my Lanshan if I ever need it, but I haven't needed it.)

Even most of the word-salad-brand-name, all-copies-of-each-other Chinese tents on Amazon and Alibaba are at least to the level a decent department store tent would have been ten or fifteen years ago.

I'm still less sold on the usefulness of knockoff sleeping bags and so forth. A tent is a tent, and as long as it stays up and can be made not to leak is pretty tough to screw up. I guess what I'm getting at is that there are really no specifications to lie about regarding a tent, and all the Chinese non-brands just seem to love to lie about any specification they can. So I would not, for instance, trust the temperature rating on a yum-cha sleeping bag without some outside data to back it up. But if you know what you're getting into in advance (or maybe buy a "20 degree" bag when you're only expecting 40) they are probably serviceable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Seconding this, my 3F backpack is great and very durable (6 countries as checked baggage, 4+ months of carry with no sign of any usage).

Does it have all the bells and whistles of a pack thats 3-4x the price? No, but you know what features you get when buying.

I'd never purchase a knock off sleeping bag, way to risky.