Tent listings are dominated by two numbers that tell you almost nothing. Capacity is measured by laying that many adults shoulder to shoulder with no gear, so a two-person tent is a comfortable one-person tent. Season rating is not a standard anybody administers — a "4-season" tent from a marketplace brand and one from a mountaineering company are not the same object.
The specifications that do decide it: pole material, because aluminum bends and fiberglass shatters. Rainfly coverage, because a partial fly leaves your doors exposed and the doors are where water gets in. Wall construction, because a single-wall tent condenses your own breath onto the inside surface and drips it back on you.
Two people exhale roughly a pint of water overnight. In a double-wall tent that moisture passes through the mesh inner and condenses on the outer fly, where it runs down and away. In a single-wall tent it condenses on the only surface there is, which is directly above your face.
Reading a tent listing properly
Poles: aluminum over fiberglass, always if you can
Aluminum poles flex under load and take a set rather than failing. Fiberglass poles hold shape until they splinter, and then the tent is done — usually at 2am in the wind that broke it. The upgrade typically costs twenty to forty dollars and is the best money in the category.
Rainfly: full coverage or nothing
A full-coverage fly reaches close to the ground on all sides and covers the doors. A partial fly is a cap over the roof, which handles dew and fails in wind-driven rain. Look at the photographs rather than the description.
Hydrostatic head, where it is published
Measured in millimeters: 1,500mm is the usual minimum for a rainfly, 3,000mm is good, and the floor should be higher than the fly because you kneel on it. Many budget tents do not publish it, which is itself informative.
Rate capacity at minus one, or minus two
Two people plus gear want a three-person tent. Four people plus gear want a six. This is not manufacturers being dishonest so much as measuring a different thing than you are — they are measuring floor area, you are measuring comfort.
Seam sealing and a footprint
Factory-taped seams are standard on better tents and absent on cheap ones; a tube of seam sealer costs almost nothing and fixes it in an evening. A footprint protects the floor from abrasion and is genuinely worth having — a groundsheet cut slightly smaller than the tent floor works just as well as the branded one.
How these were picked
I haven't handled these. Here's what I did instead.
Everyone in this category says they tested twenty of these. I haven't tested any, and I say so. What I do instead: read the manufacturer's manual and published specification, compile the numbers that decide the purchase, do the arithmetic in the open, check the live price, and name one product to skip. The scores above are judgments from that research against a published rubric — they are not measurements I took, because I do not have a lab and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
