Vehicle Awning, 6.6ft x 8.2ft, Rooftop Pullout Ripstop UPF50+ Side Awning, Reinforced Hinges & Poles for Jeep/SUV/Truck/Van

I bought this awning basically for shade on the beaches when I go fishing down in Hatteras. I’ve got the 8x10, and IMHO going large is better, at least for me. I would have bought the 270° unit, but didn’t want to spend the money. I’m sure at some point in the future I wish I had. In any event, this unit is very well made.I’ve read many reviews which complained about the bolts, not being right, SAMOUT not being responsive, cheap fabric, weak/undersized, poles, etc. Be advised, NONE of these reviews are accurate. I would dare say it’s not only untrue, but total disinformation; and I wouldn’t doubt they were paid or were provided by competitors. Let me assure you. That the bolts are a 270 stainless steel. The mounting brackets are heavy duty and powder coated. The poles appear to be engineered with the factor of safety, i.e. they’re more than satisfactory. The fabric is quite thick, is internally reinforced and if used properly with slope, I see no reason why it will not shed rain.I don’t know about you folks, but I’m so sick and tired of reading reviews which Trash a product for no reason. I can assure you that I looked at them all and made the decision to go with Samout over the competition for not using plastic in the corner clips, which is where all the stress is going to be.To mount this onto my truck cap, I have Yakima mounts with round Yakima bars. To connect to the bars, I purchased on Amazon round pipe connectors that are typically used to mount lights on top of a truck. These I placed on either side of the rack support as depicted in the picture. I elected to mount on the underside of my bars by turning the L bracket facing down. I did have to go and buy four 5/16” x 1 1/4” SS bolts, nuts and washers at the big box store because I didn’t want to utilize the long bolts nor did I want to cut them off. If you have a rooftop basket, they have short little pieces that mount horizontally on top of the basket and the brackets Mount below the basket. FYI. Installation took me about a half hour. The hardest part was fitting the sliding bolts into the bracket. On that I had to help of another person. Everything else I did solo.Now that I have the unit mounted, I wanted to see how hard it would be to set up by myself. Once you unzip the bag, the first thing you do is r the three retaining straps, unroll the unit about a foot and flip it over above and out of the way. Then you can reach in and grab the horizontal bars and pull them out past 90° so that you can unroll the shade without difficulty. Once the Shade is fully unrolled, I dropped both legs and extended them to about 6 feet tall and had them leaning away from the vehicle. Then I extended the horizontal sides, one at a time and attached them to the corner brackets and attached the side Velcro pieces. I didn’t bother staking the unit down, because I was just opening everything up to make sure nothing was missing or broken, and everything was fine. When I was through looking at it and taking the above picture, I disconnected the Velcro, disconnected the side members one at a time by pulling the pens out of the corner, brackets, and push them out past 90°. Then as I held the outside edge, I replaced the vertical SUPPORT legs back into their place and started rolling it up. You have to take care enrolling so that it rolls evenly all the way up, otherwise you may have a problem fitting the end into the bag. Once I got it close to the bag, I flipped it up over the rack, put the side members back into their respective slots, and re-strapped it starting at the center then zip it back up. it was that simple, I did have to roll it back out because I had rolled it up unevenly. And even with all that, it only took me about five minutes to set up and about five minutes to take down. It definitely would’ve been easier with two people, but it was easy enough for a man in his late 60s to do alone.I did contact the manufacture to find out if there was any concern of how far away from the attachment point (which in my case was at the horizontal bars) you could cantilever the unit away from the attachment. I did this because there was no information in the instructions. Samout responded to my email in less than 24 hours, so anybody that says the manufacture doesn’t get back to you is mistaken.If you’re like me and plan on using this at the beach, you may want to purchase some sand screws like the screws you use to hold a dog to its chain. I plan on using a couple of 5 gallon buckets filled with sand and attach the ropes accordingly. If I remember, I will come back on here at the end of the summer and provide a review after full use. Hope this helps.

This awning is very well made and is very durable. Setting up and closing up the awning is simple and easy enough to operate by one person. The poles are durable and easily support the awning. The fabric seems durable as well. The size provides plenty of protection from the sun and the elements. The case for the awning is also well made.Mounting the awning on my rack took a some additional parts. I purchased some electrical pipe clamps and some unistrut which gave me something to bolt the awnings L angles to. Parts were inexpensive and easy to install.Overall this awning is well made, easy to use and a great value.

Box came damaged to no fault of the company or Amazon. I blame FedEx. Thank goodness nothing was missing. It’s BIG! But it’s perfect for what my husband plans on using it for. Mounted on his roof rack and he upgraded the bolts first thing. Rolls out smooth. Easy set up and take down. Zipper seems sturdy. We’ll be able to tell with more use. We will use it for surf fishing. Have not used in heavy wind yet so I can’t give an opinion on that. So far we’re happy with it.

This awning is super easy to put on yourself. I took me about 30 to 40 minutes to install. Also the quality and weather resistance seems to be of great material so I'm pleased about that. Now for the reasons for why I'm knocking off a star.1) the L bars that are supposed to connect to your racks, at least in my case, they were a little short, but it still worked out just feels like the extra inch or two would have been better.2) the poles to set up the awning do not stay in place when I'm trying to put it away. Which is fine since I'll be with my fiance most of the time anyways therefore I'm not too worried about not putting back away. But for those solo campers, I'd say itll get annoying pretty quick trying to put it back away by yourself. (It can be put away by itself though).All in all for the price I'm really happy with it, and do recommend it.

For the cost - I think this is a pretty good unit.You do need to be gentle put it in up and down and not overstressed the joints.I would recommend buying Much better stakes to hold it down with.I also recommend buying the biggest one that your car will hold and that you can afford.

Great value for this awning. No awning can handle really heavy wind but this one did pretty well without ripping. I thought it would have been some of the parts when I took it down in the wind and it was whipping around. But it actually helped amazingly well and didn't bend so much that I couldn't put it back together.

Good quality and good customer service. Recommended! SAMOUT, if you’re seeing this, reach out to me so I can send you these high quality photos. Love it!

Got to use this today. It's a little flemzy. But set up was easy. And I'm in high winds today and it's holding up great. Definitely a great buy. And cheap too