We think the REI chair is most appropriate for toddlers and kids up to about 7 or 8 years old, though reviews reveal that some small adults have found this to be their favorite seat. It comes in gray or blue, and as of this update it gets 4.7 out of five stars from reviewers on the REI site. Our not-too-discriminating underage testers liked all the kids’ chairs, though over time we found several reasons to declare the REI Camp Chair the best of the bunch. The REI chair’s polyester seat material feels both more ozark trail lounge chair forgiving and more durable than the thinner material on the Ozark Trail Kids’ Folding Camp Chair from Walmart. The box-shaped cupholder is a little roomier than the round cupholders on the Coleman and the L.L.Bean Base Camp chairs—better for stubby water bottles or mugs of hot chocolate around the campfire. We found that the cheaply constructed Walmart chair had a cupholder that was too small for a soda can, or any of the hard-plastic or metal water bottles that the kids we know brought on a camping trip.
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The Renetto chair usually comes in between 8 and 10 colors and is rated to hold up to 350 pounds. Walk around any campground or tailgate party, and you’ll notice the popularity of this variety of accordion-style seat. You can pick one up at just about any big-box store (sometimes for as little as $10), order one with your favorite sports team’s logo, or pay a premium for a similar model from Cabela’s or REI.
This low-profile chair is easy to carry, and it adjusts for uneven ground. The Chair One is rated to hold up to 320 pounds, versus 250 pounds for the Flexlite and for the third chair we tested, the Alite Monarch Chair (the latter chair is no longer available, as Alite went out of business in late 2019). The GCI Outdoor chair also has a pocket built into the back that can hold a phone or a book. ozark trail hammock chair “This is the Platonic ideal of your camp chair,” one of our campers gushed. We found the Coleman Kickback Breeze Chair to be a simple yet very comfortable seat, though women liked it more than men did (many of them judged it to be too snug). Anecdotally, we found that this chair category in general is more popular among women than among men, who generally prefer a higher, upright seat.
After spotting the Ozark Trail Oversized Mesh Cooler Chair on TikTok, I immediately knew I had to get my hands on it. The Coleman camping chair is big and durable, and of all the upright chairs that our panel of campers tested, it was the most comfortable. Before we tried the Renetto Original Canopy Chair, we had never considered buying a shade-equipped camp chair. But the Renetto’s utility was immediately apparent on our inaugural chair-testing excursion, a “winter” camping trip in California’s Joshua Tree National Park, where the beating sun made temperatures in the high 70s feel like the mid-90s. The shaded Renetto chairs were consistently the first seats snagged at a beautiful but harshly exposed Indian Grove group campsite. Like most chairs of this type, the Coleman Oversized Quad comes with an over-the-shoulder carry bag.