ALPS Mountaineering  Lightweight Cot

I don’t understand the reviews that said it was tedious to put together or that it took strength. If I had gotten the side rods that were supposed to come with it, I would’ve been very happy with the purchase. Unfortunately, I got three end pieces out of four and three middle pieces where there were only supposed to be two, so I couldn’t fully assemble the cot. Even without the last piece, I had the thing put together in a couple minutes. 

Decided to take a gamble on this cot for car camping due to the low cost. Overall, the quality of the cot is very good, especially for the price. It is large, sturdy, and seems pretty comfortable. I did not have trouble attaching the legs (54 year old woman), but it does take a bit of strength to do so. However, those side poles, as other reviewers mentioned, are incredibly difficult to slide through the canvas sleeve. And getting them back out again to pack up is even worse! There is no shock cord to hold the 3 pieces together, so they come apart and you have to try to shake, squeeze and shove them individually through 5 feet of stiff canvas. One side was a lot easier than the other, so it seemed like maybe a quality control issue where one seam was too tight. I will be returning this cot and buying a Helinox at 4x the cost because life is too short to spend time cursing at a campsite!

In a word: tedious. Although the comfort level is respectable (why it gets two stars instead of one), for the weight and sheer amount of frustration it takes to put this thing together, it's not even close to worth it. This thing is HEFTY. I'm not sure who's "mountaineering" with this cot, but they must be going in a tardis. It feels like you're lugging around a bag of bricks, and while not terrible in terms of packed size, it's not going to win any awards for compactness. Now, on to the real issue: the setup and takedown. Mechanically, it's a very, very simple piece of gear, especially compared to something like a Helinox cot, but putting it together made me want to tear my hair out. You have to push these long metal bars through the entire length of the canvas sleeves on the sides of the cot, but this sleeve has big square holes in it for the feet to connect to -- and the bars LOVE getting caught in them. It's like playing ring around the rosie. You start at one end of the cot, push the bar, go to the side to unbunch the fabric and/or remove the bar from the foot access hole, and repeat (at least 7 or 8 times). And the best part is this -- the bars have little holes to connect to the feet, but the holes are only on one side, and each bar has four pieces. It's been a few times that I've amassed my resolve and pushed both bars all the way through the sleeves, and halfway through attaching the feet (which require you to put a ton of force on the cot, BTW -- I could easily see a person of smaller stature not being able to do this), realized one of the bar pieces was rotated the wrong way. So I had to detach all the feet, pull the entire bar out, take it apart to rotate that one piece, and then got the pleasure of sliding it through all over again. For the price, the packability and weight I can forgive. But the design flaws are so egregious they just have me wondering what ALPS was possibly thinking with this. Do yourself a favor: save yourself the time and gray hairs. Opt for a different cot.