SAMOUT Vehicle Awning, 8.2ft x 10ft, 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.

Great Awning. Not easy to set up alone but it's doable. Great shade, makes a huge difference having shade at work. I know most people use these for camping/over landing but they're great for mobile mechanic work. The price is right, all hardware for install is included, just be ready to spend some time installing it. Would buy again

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.

Had this for just about a year. Super nice when its deployed. Unfortunately the rivets are now giving out after a year and it isn't supported for about half the length. Have a giant twist tie holding it together now. Heading on a trip this weekend and hoping it works OK still. I guess you get what you pay for is for real with this.

I bought this a while back as a cover for shade at the deer lease. Just got around to setting it up for bow season. Worked beautifully. I know it was made to be used for Jeep camping. 8’x10’. I didn’t want to spend the money for an expensive RV roll out cover. I didn’t think about the length of the legs being shorter than my trailer height. Instead of lowering the whole thing down and drilling more holes in my trailer I bought two joints of PVC pipe 1-1/4 OD and slipped the legs inside. I had anticipated the cover to angle down but it’s made to come straight out. The nice part of how the base of the unit is made you can drill your holes into the rib frame of the trailer and slide the whole unit into place and tighten it down. Looking back I could have lowered it down. It’s probably 18”-24”inches higher than it should have been. But I am pleased with the outcome

While my expectations were not set very high being a prime day deal, I was very pleasantly surprised with the build quality. I needed a replacement for the awning on my van. The original one from 25ish years ago, broke the gear mechanism to wind it out. Due to age repairing was not possible. Similar awnings required a leg support being attached at the bottom of the van for support. I did not want to drill new holes for supports. It did take some pretty significant modification using pieces from the old awning to give a surface to bolt the new awning to. Once the surface was created, it was very easy to install. It's rather lightweight and I'm worried about it's strength in the wind. I use the van to tailgate at football games in the fall/winter and I may not be able to use it on days with not so great weather. It also definitely takes 2 people to set up and take down. The smaller sizes you might be able to do by yourself though. It is very easy to setup though. I was hoping to not have to use guy lines just cause of the hazard, but I don't think it's heavy enough to stay in place. Overall, I think it was a great value but it took 2 months to get delivered. Easy to install and setup. Seems pretty sturdy but lightweight and uses Velcro to secure the fabric. I would have given it 5 stars if delivery was faster and there was more pictures in add showing how it's mounted.

10/10 this is an great add on. my only complaint is that they do not make a longer one. I would love to have a 13ft or even 15ft long that could shade the whole side of the van. I need to make some cross supports to help with rain as it does collect the rain. you have to slope it to let the rain fall off. As in my video you can see you can shorten it a bit so the longer one is the best option. All the parts where there when it arrived. I ended up using some that was not provided since I wanted it to go into my extrusion roof rack but it is easy to mod this thing. The shade is great, it is not a total black out fabric but you can feel the coolness of the shade hit you like a wall. Again this is totally 100% water proof to a fault as it could totally hold enough water weight to crush the supports. (BE AWARE OF THIS) All that said this is a good buy, and will provide a lot of shade for you no prob. would buy again.

I know it's been a while since I purchased. I just got to my van build this year and opened up the awning. Love the build and design. Had the mounting brackets but no screws or bolts to mount it. Frustrating to be this close and have a miss like this slow me down.

Es un producto muy aceptable, accesible, apenas lo instale y vamos viendo su rendimiento. No estoy seguro que la lluvia pueda hacer algo bien, ni la humedad. Se ve que solo es contra sol, pero volveremos con más actualizaciones si es necesario.