We started looking at caravans, complicating our 4WD build to be independent where a caravan couldn’t go. We shifted to a camper from ZoneRV, the Expedition 12, small, light, contains the basics, but still comes with drawbacks to our lifestyle and living arrangements, and it can’t go everywhere due to height and length limitations.
I knew that Patriot Campers had the X1 and a whole bunch of variants around that to appease the general camping market, but they didn’t suit our needs. We don’t want to just camp, we want luxury. What I didn’t know until a week ago, was that Patriot had branched out to build a luxury option.
Well… when I started looking into it, the X3 fits our needs better than anything reviewed to date.
- It’s compact – we live in an apartment, and this will fit within our basement parking limitations.
- It’s self-contained – it has everything, comfortable bed, internal living, hot water and kitchen / BBQ area.
- It’s super compact – this fits on the smallest barge for Dirk Hartog Island.
- Massive amount of storage to carry everything we need for a week or two away.
- The above factor into its ease of towing for 4WD adventures.
For us, there are no significant negatives to the X3 for our purpose, being something that can be easily towed for 4WDing Australia, quick setup anywhere, goes everywhere we take the 4WD (any carpark), luxurious appointments so we don’t go without the niceties when travelling, and when home we don’t need rental storage as it fits into our existing parking.
The Redarc implementation within the X3 is just fantastic. Lighting is covered, remote control, super simple. Plenty of 240V and the trailer is near unbreakable. I’ve seen enough videos over the years of people towing the X series off-road, punishing them without issue. Air suspension is a great addition too.
Pricing
The price for this is the same as the Expedition 12, both with their respective options, falling a bit over the $80k mark. The Expedition and X3 come in at the $70k mark standard.
Upgrades
The only issue I have is that Patriot have placed a bit of a premium on some of their options, for example, to upgrade the 2 x 100ah AGM to lithium, same size in lithium, they want $5400. In what world does two 100ah lithium cost that much? A good 100ah lithium comes in around the $1000 mark. Amptron, Enerdrive, etc. Their Revolution batteries have the same specs as Amptron and Enerdrive lithium, yet are literally near $2000 each.
The same is seen throughout their upgrades, the Dometic 75lt fridge is offered as an upgrade at $2000, you can buy at $1600. The Weber Baby Q has a $100 Patriot tax applied.
Not real happy about some of the upgrade costs, and may look at modifying the new camper after the fact to reduce the options cost from the Patriot tax. If anything, Patriot should be buying this stuff cheaper as a bulk buyer than the retail prices I can buy online. A little bit greedy IMO to fund their over-the-top Patriot Games, toys and such.
Customers deserve the most respect when it comes to these price levels for a camper trailer. Give the customer good prices, not excessive profiteering for upgrades that have no time cost difference when fitted at the build stage.
Push your product by all means.but don’t can the opposition it sounds pretty poor and doesn’t reflect well on your company
What drugs are you on? This isn’t a company and there is no pushing of any products. Its a post about my personal experience and how I feel at that time, in fact I have gone away from Patriot too, as they’re just too expensive for what they offer, and instead chosen an Ultimate Campers Nexus.