OK, received my Exped Venus 2 Extreme yesterday, and did a first setup in the yard.
At unpacking, a sack of repair material dropped out of the bag: Sheets of floor/inner/mesh/rainfly material, additional guylines incl. the famous tiny meshbags, and various other small items (incl. buckles and a zipp slider).
Love this as I prefer to do minor repairs on my own.
There is a 5yr limited warranty for the tent, too.
There are very many pegs in the sack, so I can chose how many to bring for every trip.
The total weight is 3 Kilos, and by bringing only the essentials it might get down to 2.8 Kilos.
Everything is very well engineered and perfectly manufactured, I could not find a single spot that looked whacky or crooked or dubious.
Tent setup is something I need to get used to.
While the tent looks like being symmetrical, there is a luv side and a lee side.
Setup is easier when you first decide on the exact spot, then lay out the tent flat the way and orientation you want to have it, and then peg down the two corners on the wind side.
It would be difficult to setup in the pitch black dark, you need to obey some colors and/or numbers.
Then you slide the poles into the sleeves - three of them, in the correct order. Two identical poles for the dome, and one of bigger diam. atop the ridge.
Manipulating the poles might be the biggest task of all the setup (and again of the teardown).
But once the poles are in the sleeves and resting in the endpieces (which is an easy task, including tightening the straps) you are almost finished!
The tent has already its dome shape, the inner tent is already clipped to the fly and you just need to peg down and tieout whatever you need given the weather Situation.
The tent is spacey, funny how a few cm of extra width (compared to the MSR) gives the impression of really generous space.
The materials the tent is made of are sturdy (70/40/30D floor/rainfly/inner) and I think I can go without a groundsheet (which puts the total weight into perspective, compared to the MSR incl. groundcloth).
The only item I did not like so far is the hammock-style net applied close to the cusp of the inner tent, designed to store some small items, mybe to dry socks overnight.
It is placed in a height above ground that, when I sit up, it just tickles the hairs (what few are left) on top of the head. I untied it and stored it away.
Another item that does not match up with all the other perfect details is the sack. The MSR sack works a bit better.
Will give the Venus a real-life test run over the night on a short hike with my wife, but am pretty sure that it will perform as expected.