Egoé Nestbox Supertramp Review: Camper Comforts With Vehicle Versatility Retained
Looking for a way to camper-ize your vehicle without paying a ton of money for a build-out? We put the Egoé Nestbox Supertramp to the test on a road trip and found out what this beautifully crafted setup can — and can’t — do.
Egoé (pronounced “egg-oh-EH”) is a new name in the growing overlanding, van life, or, dare I say, car camping industries. Based in the Czech Republic, the manufacturer has come onto the North American scene with a uniquely positioned setup for vehicle-based camping and travel called Nestbox.
GearJunkie first mentioned Egoé back in 2020, stating how the company puts a camper in your SUV or Jeep. The premise is simple: a functional and deluxe camping setup that’s also versatile and removable from the vehicle. This is ideal for those who want a place to cook, wash, store gear, and sleep without a hard-mounted, permanently installed setup.
In short: If you’re looking for a way to maintain a vehicle’s ability to move people and gear, the Egoé Nestbox Supertramp could be a great option — especially for those who don’t have the means or want to do a full camper-ized build-out. However, it’s not without its shortcomings, and you may have to put in a personal request for something that fits your vehicle.
Multipurpose, Versatile, Camper in a Box
My wife, Mercedes, and I have a 1994 Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear van. This vehicle has to do double duty as a cargo/people hauler as well as a campervan. We wanted to retain this versatile functionality and weren’t going to install a hard-mounted permanent camping setup.
Before installing the Nestbox, we had a shoddily constructed, homebuilt camping platform made from scrap wood. It wasn’t very sturdy or comfortable and was barely functional.
While at the 2022 Overland Expo in Flagstaff, Arizona, we discovered Egoé and its Nestbox camping system. We thought this might be a good solution to our cargo van-campervan conundrum.
Egoé has a confirmed list of vehicles that will accommodate the variety of highly configurable Nestbox units. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese-market Delica wasn’t one of them. We reached out to Egoé’s US Sales Manager, Petr Kovařík, and provided some measurements. He thought the Nestbox Supertramp model would likely fit and agreed to provide a sample for us.
Ready to test everything out, we road-tripped from Portland, Oregon, to Egoé’s U.S. office in Denver, Colorado, to give the Nestbox a shot. Thankfully, the Nestbox Supertramp fits ideally in our Delica.
Egoé Nestbox Supertramp Review
Egoé’s Supertramp — its most rugged setup designed for 4x4s — can be had in what’s called either the Kitchen set, Sleeping set, or Complete set. Ours is a fully kitted-out Complete model with a bed frame and folding mattress, water module (sink, faucet, and four-gallon water tank with 12V pump), and cooker module (includes portable double-burner stove). Additionally, there are two drawers for storage.
Our setup came with the optional 12V Engel MD-17-F fridge/freezer and two slick-looking Nestpillows for sleeping.
The cooker, water, and fridge are all on a drawer slide. Simply grab two handles at the base, pull, and they easily glide out and lock into place as one platform.
The two drawers are located above the cooker/water/fridge and are also on slides.
The fridge and water pump are operated off of a 12V plug that simply plugs into your vehicle’s 12V outlet.
Nestbox Construction & Components
The Nestbox is constructed with a sturdy metal frame and birch plywood panels covered in a high-pressure laminate. The water and cook modules, as well as the fridge, are all removable.
The Nestbox base unit weighs around 110 pounds without the fridge. This means it’s easily installed or removed by two people. Everything installed (including the fridge) is about 170 pounds.
While it doesn’t need to get bolted in, the Nestbox still needs to be secured. Egoé has load-rated straps that can attach to a variety of anchor points to keep the Nestbox in place. Ours run to anchors in the floor and seatbelt areas.
All the Nestbox’s materials — from the plywood to the drawer slides — are very high quality. We were told nearly everything is manufactured in Europe, sans the plastic sink basin. The craftsmanship is exceptional and the engineering is impressive.
For example, Egoé uses heavy-duty nylon pulls for the drawers — simple and effective. The areas where these pulls are located are artfully routed out of the wood. This makes them easy to use and prevents the straps from rubbing.
The lever to operate the faucet is perfectly placed so it’s not knocked off by another drawer.
Folding surfaces lock into place with a satisfying click and feel stout.
Accessories, such as the folding cutting board (complete with included Czech-made paring knife) and sink fit perfectly in their respective places. Egoé even includes a Fiskars hatchet for your camping excursions.
Equally impressive? The setup didn’t rattle on our trek back from Colorado to Oregon.
The Nestbox’s dual-burner cooker module is a feat within itself. It utilizes a pair of powerful backpacking-style burners. That means they’re lightweight, durable, and use standard fuel canisters. This module also has a super slick party trick; it can be removed and placed onto a picnic bench or table for cooking duty.
Going backpacking? You can even pull a burner from the cooker module and place it in your pack. The Egoé-branded burners are powered by standard screw-on-style fuel canisters (Snow Peak GigaPower, MSR IsoPro, etc.). An adaptor will allow for the small green Coleman propane cylinders.
Egoé Bed Basics
Our Supertramp also included a sleeping setup. When not in use, the three-piece mattress platform — slightly resembling a jigsaw puzzle — stacks neatly atop the Nestbox. The multifold mattress goes on top of that and the parts are held in place by two side-mounted metal tabs and a strap. A long zippered pouch houses the bed’s plywood frame rails and legs — a total of eight parts.
The mattress is about 2 inches thick and composed of polyurethane foam wrapped in a removable antibacterial Aquaclean washable cover with a non-slip base. There are also two long, narrow side pads for when the frame widens (more on that in a minute).
Setting the bed up isn’t difficult, but there’s definitely a learning curve to putting it together. I’d recommend building the bed a couple of times before attempting to set it up in the dark for the first time or after a couple of campfire cocktails.
The bed is an eight-piece amalgam of wood that needs to be assembled specifically to work. It can be a bit of a puzzle, but once assembled, it’s sturdier than you’d think.
Each of the three mattress platform pieces has interlocking “wings” that pull out and lock into place to make the bed wider. Once the frame is built out, the mattress is then flipped onto the platform and the side bolsters can be installed.
Fully assembled, the bed is 73.6 inches long and 50 inches wide with the wings extended (38.2 inches without).
The bed is not without some concerns. The longest bed platform parts attach to the Nestbox’s frame with a metal c-channel. The metal-on-metal contact is bound to scratch the structure’s powder coating. Adding thin padding or heavy-duty black tape would probably remedy this.
Those interlocking wings to widen the bed shouldn’t be knelt on as they’re not designed for much weight. We were advised to open them once in bed, which is hard to do. Also, the bed narrows as it approaches the Nestbox itself, going from 50 inches to 38.2. I wish there was 50 inches for the entire bed.
The mattress is also on the firm side. If you’re looking for a cushy pillowtop, you might want to bring an additional pad.
Camp Cooking With the Nestbox
After setting up the bed, it was time to cook dinner. We slid the main drawer with the cooking module, water, and fridge out and formed a plan as to how best to go about doing dinner.
We pulled up the extension in front of the stove and the area for the sink, which, when stowed, holds the folding cutting board and ultra-sharp paring knife. You’ll need to swap these two items’ positions; the unfolded cutting board goes where the sink sits when not in use, and the metal washbasin frame and collapsable washbasin click into the end.
We also popped on the faucet for later use.
The stove has a three-piece stainless steel wind guard, which is stored in a pouch and lives in a plastic basket under the stove. Be careful: the guards’ edges are quite sharp.
This night’s menu was Brussels sprouts with onion and balsamic vinegar, quinoa, and chicken-apple sausages. The sausages would go over a grill on the campfire, as we used both burners for the sprouts and the quinoa.
The fuel canisters are housed in a convenient mesh bag under the burners. They screw on easily. The regulators are anodized aluminum knobs and are easy to use. The burners do not have ignitors, so I used a long-reach lighter to light them.
These burners are powerful and had our water boiling very quickly. The flame was easy to regulate and the wind guards worked great.
It seemed a little concerning to be cooking so close to our sleeping area, but there was no danger of igniting our sleeping bags. However, getting grease splatted onto our sleeping bags was a concern. Also, we were prone to setting cooking utensils on our bags/the bed, as there was a lack of counter space.
There isn’t a ton of room for meal preparation. I’d love to see some sort of platform atop the refrigerator for extra space. Next time we go out, we’ll definitely bring a camp table to use as a prep area.
Now to do the dishes. We heated a pot with water and soap and opted to try out the 12V faucet and water module for rinsing. The running water had better water pressure than expected.
The wash basin is best for small items like silverware and cups. Bigger items, such as pot lids, tended to splash and spill water onto the high-pressure laminate and eventually, onto the plywood. I wondered how well this area would do over the years with repeated dousings. Wood and water can get along if done right, and Egoé has been making things since 1992. I recommend a careful wipe-down after use, just to be safe.
Interior Motives
There’s a lot more to talk about than just a bed, stove, and sink. The high-end, low-capacity Engel MD17F is Egoé’s fridge of choice. At nearly $1,000, it’s not cheap, and it’s also not big. It has a volume of 15 L (15.8 quarts), so you’re not going to be able to refrigerate or freeze a lot. But it’s more than adequate for a six-pack, a couple of steaks, and some vegetables.
It’s also fairly light at just 35 pounds. The fridge is designed to be removed but you’ll need to be careful as its latch is very close to the hatchet, making opening the lid challenging. Tight tolerances are a mainstay on the Nestbox Supertramp.
Speaking of tolerances, the company’s artful wooden bits fit together extremely well — sometimes too well. It’s incredible that wood can be cut so precisely. The wings on the bed that pull out for extra width, for example, are amazingly tight. Yes, they’ll probably loosen up over time. But the way every wooden bit fits together is truly impressive.
I was initially concerned about under-bed storage. I haul lots of gear for trade and consumer events. However, I was impressed with the amount of room under the bed — 17.3 inches in height, to be exact. Of course, the taller the bed’s platform, the less headroom you have when on the bed. Every vehicle is going to be different. In my particular setup, I can sit up in bed without hitting my noggin on the ceiling.
One other thing of note is the black laminate finish. While Egoé offers different colors, we opted for black thinking it might hide some fingerprints and scratches. We were wrong about that. The matte black laminate finish looks fantastic when clean but shows lots of smudges, dirt, and scrapes.
Efficient, Practical, Versatile, but Not Without Fault
The Egoé Nestbox Supertramp is a fantastically designed unit. It’s wonderfully engineered and solidly built, with European-good looks and a style that could be displayed in a modern art museum. The efficient use of space is nothing short of impressive.
The easy lifting out of the vehicle ability is also super practical, and the removable cooking module is a stroke of genius. And for those who don’t want a full-on campervan build-out, this is definitely worth a look.
In contrast, the amount of laminated wood also makes me wonder about long-term durability. However, the company is well-versed in woodworking.
There are a few wear-point items that also give me some pause.
Another thing not previously mentioned was the electronics for the water pump and fridge. There is a bit of cord management that needs to happen. The cords for the water pump and fridge move along with the drawer they’re housed in. You need to be careful not to pinch them in the tracks or frame, which could damage them.
Egoé Nestbox: Price
Now the question everyone’s waiting for: How much does this thing cost? The Supertramp starts at $5,889. Our fully equipped Nestbox Supertramp with optional fridge and Nestpillows retails for just under $7,000.
You might think that’s pricey. It’s certainly more expensive than some plastic totes and a piece of plywood, yes. But, compared to a custom campervan build-out, it’s a bargain.
No, you’re not getting custom cabinetry, countertops, or a house battery. For perspective, the last van outfitter I talked to about a full build-out on our Delica quoted me $18,500 — more than I paid for the van itself.
Is the Egoé Nestbox Worth It?
If you bundle the versatility and practicality of this unit with its easy removal and lightweight nature, then I’d say it’s worth seven grand to continue to use your van as a cargo shuttle or people mover (with the seats reinstalled).
At less than half of what a full-on interior build-out costs, you’re able to comfortably sleep in the van, cook, and wash out of the back. (Did I mention there’s also a sprayer attachment for the sink to hose off dirty dogs, feet, or take a quick shower?)
The Nestbox isn’t going to add tons of weight to your rig, either. It’s available for a wide array of vehicles from Jeep Wranglers and Land Rovers, to Mercedes-Benz G-class and Defender 110 — and, if you ask, apparently the Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear.
For those looking for a comfortable car camping — er, overlanding — setup, have a look at Egoé’s Nestbox camp offerings. This is especially true if you want to maintain the vehicle’s ability to move people and gear when not looking to be a happy “camper.”
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