Great insight and perspective by SoftSpot. I'll just chime in on my opinion of Aegis 2250. I currently own a Frabill Trekker II, the non-thermal version with stadium seats. I have been thinking about the 2250 for the future (not this year) because I like the tent better than my 300 denier tent, which can be annoying on a windy day. Also, my Trekker has a rubbery coating on the inside and it needs to be resprayed because of the vast pinholing effect from the material wearing off... another story, but a consideration for any non-thermal portion of typical canopy's on almost all of the non-thermal shelters.
Aegis is really a redesign of the Trekker with of course a different name. To SoftSpot's comment, it is definitely more compact even than the Trekker from a ground to highest point inside aspect. They made some nice improvements though, including where the shape of the windows and where they are placed. Frabill also makes all windows removable by velcro, which means they can be replaced if needed. This is a nice feature. Seats are very comfortable. The plastic rails were a change from Trekker to Aegis in order to make the shelter lighter for transport, especially by hand. It still weighs 80 lbs., but compare the weights on what you are looking at. Frabill claims it's very durable and customer service is known to be excellent if there is a problem. Also, I'm guessing these plastic parts were introduced by the engineers at Plano, the company that recently purchased Frabill. Plano knows how to make plastic strong, so I'm guessing the odds are good that it's well-constructed, although the verdict is still out on this. Please post back what you've decided on and update us about how you like it. Good luck!
