OLPRO's Cubo V2 Is a Drive Away Awning for Campervan UK Sunshine, Not British Rain
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Twenty-three five-star reviews call it huge, light and quick to pitch. Twelve reviews say the rain got in. Which camp you land in depends almost entirely on the forecast, and that is not a bet we would take on a British summer.
Twenty-three of the 43 UK reviews on the OLPRO Cubo V2 are five stars. Nine are one star. That is a violent split for a piece of camping kit, and once you have read all 43 the dividing line is obvious: it comes down to whether it rained.
Those 43 reviews average 3.72 stars. The badge on the listing page says 4.4. Twelve of the 43, just under 28 percent, describe water getting inside, and the reports run from July 2020 all the way through to November 2025. On an awning sold on a 5000mm hydrostatic head and "reliable protection from rain in typical UK conditions", that is the one failure it cannot afford.
So we will put the verdict at the top instead of making you scroll for it: we would not buy this one right now. What follows is the working, because the Cubo does several things properly and there is a narrow case where it still makes sense.
Twelve Wet Nights Out of Forty-Three
Twelve of the 43 reviews report rain coming through. Six of those twelve point at the seams, the stitching or the join at the van, and one reviewer did the diagnosis for everybody else.
Roland Plumb gave it 3 stars and wrote: "There is a leak in the canopy that attaches to the van. All seams except this one were taped, so believe this to be the reason." That canopy is the tunnel, the fabric sleeve that bridges your side door to the awning body, and it catches more weather than any other panel on the thing. If it really is the only untaped seam, it is exactly where you would expect water to show up.
The rest describe the same problem in different places. Stan (1 star) hit it on the fourth outing: "Fourth time in using the awning and water leaks in the corner soaking the full ground sheet, not good as not even heavy rain." A sewn-in groundsheet keeps wet grass and beetles out beautifully, right up to the moment water gets inside the bathtub with you and has nowhere to drain away.
Not all twelve are disasters. michelle hall (3 stars) put it in context: "Leaked from the seams but very heavy rain. Withstood high winds no problem." gilly (4 stars) had a slight leak, decided the unit was faulty and ordered a second one. But four of the twelve report water on the very first outing, and all four of those gave one star. One of the twelve got the awning second-hand with a camper rather than buying it new, which is worth knowing, though it does not change the pattern in the other eleven.
Three Metres Square, 220cm Overhead
The floor plan in the listing images puts the main body at 300cm by 300cm with a 72cm tunnel on the van side, and 220cm to the peak inside. Nine square metres of covered, groundsheeted floor is a serious amount of room for a van awning, and it is one of the two things reviewers agree on most: 15 of the 43 mention the space, several of them surprised by how much of it there is.
antonia griffin (4 stars) gave the most useful version of that, noting "Plenty of head height for us girls at 5'5" while adding that a "taller person might find it a tad small around sides as it is domed". The side profile in the diagram backs that up. You get 220cm in the middle and the walls curve away quickly, so anyone near six foot will be stooping within a metre of the edge.
The groundsheet is sewn in, which is the right call for a van awning: no draughts creeping up the edges, no separate footprint to peg out. Two reviewers still wanted more from it. antonia griffin found the floor "a little thin under foot" and planned to lay a separate groundsheet underneath next time, and David Richardson (5 stars) recommended buying the groundsheet and carpet as well.
The fabric is OLTECH Re-Pro 210T RPS, which OLPRO's own listing image says is made from 198 repurposed single-use plastic bottles, rated at 5000mm hydrostatic head. Hydrostatic head is simply the height of a column of water the cloth holds back before it starts seeping, and 1500mm is the usual line for calling a tent waterproof in the UK. At 5000mm the cloth itself has plenty in hand. The cloth is not what is failing here.
OLPRO Cubo V2 Campervan Driveaway Awning 3m x 3m
Nine square metres of covered floor, up in around 20 minutes, and the right shout only if your camping is summer-weighted and you accept the leak risk.
Ten Minutes, Twenty, or Thirty: What Pitching Really Takes
OLPRO claims 15 to 20 minutes. The reviews land either side of that, and the spread is mostly about practice rather than about the awning.
One reviewer has it up in under 10 minutes with their young daughter helping. Andrew Murdoch (5 stars) was "Up in 20 mins" on a micro camper. Craig (4 stars) took 20 to 30 minutes first time out. antonia griffin, who describes themselves as not so able bodied, managed 30 minutes with a friend and was clear that anything that came out crooked was down to the pair of them rather than the tent. Twenty-one of the 43 reviews call it easy to pitch, which is a strong share for a three-metre poled shelter.
The caveat comes from Donna Louise Stanley (5 stars), who rated it five and still wrote: "It was easy to put up , definitely a 2 man job though". Fibreglass poles across a three-metre span in a breeze are not a solo job, and lynne ellis (5 stars) makes the related point that the second and third pitches go much better than the first.
Attachment is where you need to check your own van before ordering. The tunnel carries dual beading in 4mm and 6mm, which covers both standard awning rail sizes, and OLPRO quotes a rail height between 190cm and 250cm. Beading, sometimes called kador, is the piping sewn into the tunnel edge that slides along your van's awning rail. No rail on your van? Straps are supplied to run over the roof instead, and several reviewers use them without complaint. Leigh Cowley is the dissenter, finding it "Doesn't particularly fit the van well using the straps", and their leak arrived on night two.
Unhook the Van and Head to the Beach
A driveaway awning exists for one manoeuvre. You unclip the tunnel, drive off to the beach or the Co-op, and come back to a pitch still standing with your chairs and cool box inside it. The Cubo does the manoeuvre. Andrew Murdoch, using it on a micro camper, found it "Easy to disconnect and drive away" and reports that it packs into a neat lightweight bag.
What it does not do is give you anywhere to put the tunnel once the van has gone. J. Lawrence (3 stars) called this the one major design flaw, measured against a previous driveaway awning: there are "no ties to enable you to roll up and secure the tunnel when the awning is disconnected from the van". They photographed it flapping in the wind. A three-metre sleeve of fabric with nothing holding it shut is a rain scoop and a sail at the same time, and it sits on the exact seam other reviewers say leaks. Two toggles and a strip of elastic would solve it.
There is a second gap lower down. One 1-star reviewer notes there is "no zip or anything on the bottom of the door to van", which matches the listing photo of the tunnel over a sliding door: the sleeve is draped across the opening rather than sealed to it. The same reviewer flags the guying, saying you can only run guy ropes at the corners and not along the sides, so the walls bow inwards when it blows. Weigh that against michelle hall, who watched theirs ride out high winds without a murmur.
Pack-down splits people. Simon Kentfield (5 stars) found it a "Little hard to fold back away, but perseverance it will go", and antonia griffin got it packed solo but found the supplied bag would not do up afterwards.
Missing Guy Lines and Unanswered Emails
Three of the 43 reviews report parts missing from the box. Michelle B. (1 star) listed what was absent: "Guide lines missing,tent pegs and repair kit also missing". Roland Plumb found no guy ropes supplied for the lifting front canopy, which left that feature unusable. I BOADA expected three ropes to attach it over the camper and found one, with no clear instructions to check against.
Three reviews then describe trying to get things put right and getting nowhere. Roland Plumb was sent from OLPRO back to Amazon, and by the time that had played out the return window had closed. gfiery emailed photographs of the leaks and reported no reply at all. Michelle B. summed up the after-sales experience as poor. Three out of 43 is not the common experience and should not be read as one, but it is the same small pattern that turns a fixable fault into a refund fight.
Small parts come up too. b knapp had the door zip break off on the first night out. MR Duncan BRAMWELL (1 star) reported "the stitching has come undone after just five nights" and dismissed the supplied pegs as cheap, which is fair comment on nearly every awning in this bracket: the pegs in the bag are a formality, and a set of proper hard ground pegs belongs on your list whatever awning you end up with. gilly had an elastic snap mid-trip, and Aleksandas Levcenko (2 stars) found ripped mesh and threads pulled in a few places.
Why We're Saying No to This One
Our score is 3.0 out of 5, against the 4.4 on the listing page.
The working, in order. The 43 UK reviews average 3.72, so what buyers are reporting today already sits well below the lifetime badge. Twelve of those 43, 27.9 percent, report water inside. Nine reviews are one star, 20.9 percent of the sample. The 23 five-star reviews are real and they are mostly about space and pitching speed, but only one of those 23 describes camping in rain at all. That is the whole thing in a sentence: the people who stayed dry loved it.
For a UK awning that balance is the wrong way round. You buy a driveaway rather than a gazebo precisely so you can sit out a wet Tuesday in Cornwall with the door open and the kettle on. With more than a quarter of buyers reporting water inside a product advertised at 5000mm, the cloth is not the culprit, the make-up is, and Roland Plumb's untaped tunnel seam is the most credible explanation anyone has put forward. Reports of it run from July 2020 to November 2025, which is over five years to fix a strip of seam tape.
We would not buy this one. If you want a driveaway awning for a full UK season, step up to a fully taped-seam model from Vango or Outwell, the two names that dominate this category on British campsites, and ask the retailer one specific question before you pay: is the tunnel seam taped, or only the body? This review set says that is the question that matters.
There is still a narrow case for the Cubo. If you camp in summer, at festivals or on short trips you can book around the forecast, and what you want is nine square metres of covered floor for bikes, chairs and a portable power station, it goes up fast, it stands up to wind, and the space is as good as those 15 reviewers say. If you do buy it, pitch it in the garden with a hose running over it before your first trip, so any leak turns up on your own lawn rather than on a Welsh campsite at two in the morning.
OLPRO Cubo V2 Campervan Driveaway Awning 3m x 3m
Nine square metres of covered floor, up in around 20 minutes, and the right shout only if your camping is summer-weighted and you accept the leak risk.