Kings Double Hammock Review

What’s in the box

The hammock, two black tree straps and two steel carabiners, all in a blue drawstring bag with a Kings patch. The straps come rolled up in a small plastic bag of their own. The hammock is a 65% cotton, 35% polyester blend in a bright blue, and the ends are cords gathered into a woven loop that the carabiner clips into. You don’t need to buy anything else to hang it.

Quick Specs

Hanging it between two trees

Each strap has a steel ring at one end. Wrap the strap around the trunk, feed it through the ring and clip a carabiner through the hammock’s end loop and onto the strap. The flat webbing spreads the load, so it’s far kinder to the bark than a rope, and there are no knots to tie.

There’s no row of loops along the straps like on the Nakie or the Mountain Designs, so you can’t shorten them by a loop or two. The sag comes down to picking the right trees: Kings asks for 3 to 3.5 m between them. In the Watagans that was easy, but on a sparse campsite it can take a walk around to find a good pair.

Lying in it

This is where the Kings is at its best. The cotton blend feels soft and cool against your skin, more like a bed sheet than the slippery nylon of most camping hammocks, and it doesn’t stick to you on a warm afternoon. At 1.5 m wide there’s enough fabric to lie across it at an angle, which is the way to lie flat in a hammock instead of folded like a banana.

It takes two people, and the 250 kg rating is the highest of the doubles we’ve tested. It’s 2 m long, though, so it’s shorter than the 3 m Nakie and Mountain Designs; for two adults it’s cosy, and on your own it’s roomy lounging. The cords at each end are neatly woven into the fabric, and the stitching where they meet looks well made.

Weight and packing

All that cotton has a price: in its bag with the straps and carabiners, it weighed 1.41 kg on our scale. That’s the heaviest of our hammocks, and it doesn’t compress like the nylon ones, so it’s one for the car rather than the backpack. The cotton also takes longer to dry than nylon, so let it air out before you pack it away after a damp night.

The bag has a long drawstring cord that doubles as a hanging loop. At camp we hang it off the rooftop tent, where it’s out of the dirt and easy to grab.

How it compares with our other hammocks

We’ve tested three other big hammocks. The Nakie and the Mountain Designs are longer doubles with loop straps that adjust in seconds, and The North Face Wawona is the lightest. The Kings costs the least, carries the most weight and is the softest to lie in, but it’s also the heaviest by a long way.

	This oneKings Hammock	ValueMountain Designs→	RecycledNakie→	LightestNorth Face Wawona→
Size	2 × 1.5 m	3 × 2 m	3 × 1.8 m	2.13 × 1.22 m
Straps	Ring at one end	Row of loops	Row of loops	Row of loops
Bag	Drawstring bag	Stuff sack	Sewn-on sack	Sewn-on sack
Max load	250 kg	225 kg	225 kg	181 kg
Weight	1410 g	871 g	885 g	700 g
Price	$40	$60	$125	$150
Our score	8.9	9.1	9.3	9.1

Conclusion: Kings Double Hammock

The Kings Double Hammock is the comfy one. The cotton blend is soft and cool to lie in, it’s rated to 250 kg, and the straps and carabiners are in the bag, all for $40. It weighs 1.41 kg, the straps have no loops to adjust the sag, so you need trees 3 to 3.5 m apart, and cotton dries slowly. For lazy afternoons at a car-camping spot, it’s a lot of hammock for the money.