Airstream Basecamp 20X

We own a 2021 model year Airstream Basecamp 20X. It’s an interesting travel trailer. It’s been over a year since the purchase, so I figured it was time to write down what I actually think about it. If it helps someone else, great. If not, it’ll at least help me organize my own thoughts for the next time I want to buy a trailer. This is not a brochure review — it’s a field report.

TL;DR / Verdict

After ~a year, about half a dozen trips, and roughly 4,000 miles, here’s the honest take.

Best for

• People who want a tough, small trailer that tows well and can handle imperfect roads.
• Those who want something that feels closer to an “aluminum bunkhouse” than a rolling condo.
• Couples who camp outdoors a lot (not a family): fewer compromises, and the Basecamp probably really shines.

Not great for

• Anyone who wants to carry a lot of gear and water and people without doing careful weight math.
• Families of four who don’t like breaking down the entire interior every morning.

My one-sentence verdict It’s a very good trailer wrapped around a handful of baffling design/quality choices — and the payload/tongue-weight math is the part you ignore at your peril.

History

or why do I even own an Airstream anyway?

Traditionally my family of four traveled by car and stayed in Airbnbs. Over time Airbnb became something of a dumpster fire. One can only deal with so many stays that cause problems before getting soured on the nondeterminism of the whole experience. This is especially true with young kids.

Then our youngest was diagnosed with ASD at level 2. By that point travel was already hard, but the Airbnb model made it worse. It’s the instability: a totally new environment every few days can throw him completely off. And airports? lol. Yeah… no.

So what do you do?

In our case we tried to create a traveling environment that stays consistent. Something controlled enough that routines can still exist. Routine is utterly critical — the difference between being on routine and off routine can be dramatic. How do you get that kind of consistency while still traveling? It pretty much has to be an RV or a travel trailer. (Or a G-IV… but I’m not a lotto winner.)

Why Airstream?

So, you want to buy a travel trailer…

Buying one of these is a weird experience.

We were initially attracted to Airstream because of the perceived quality. A lot of that perception is real. When you go to a dealer and compare an Airstream to many other brands on the lot, the difference is stark and obvious.

This isn’t to say Airstreams are as well engineered as they could be (or should be at their price point). But are they better built than a lot of the other aluminum boxes you’ll find at dealers? Yes.

So yeah: we liked the look, and we liked the build quality versus a lot of what else was out there.

Why a Basecamp?

Where do you want to go?

We were attracted to the ethos. In some ways it feels more like an aluminum tent than a rolling house. We don’t intend to camp at RV parks. We’re going to state parks, national parks, and places that are more “out in the sticks.” The Basecamp design point matched our needs.

I also liked the “X” package: the lift kit and AT tires make it tougher and more forgiving. Even without the X package, the departure angle on the rear is great.

Our basic requirements were:

• Sleeps two adults and two kids
• Bathroom. Our own bathroom. This is a big deal.
• Stove and microwave
• Fridge
• Can dry camp
• Tough and low drama
• Holds value

The Basecamp 20X met all of those. It also looks pretty cool. (There. I said it.)

Actually buying one is kind of a pain

We started down the path of buying new. It was somewhere around $72k as I recall. Except they wouldn’t give the best price unless I took financing, and that meant more paperwork and more pain. Eventually I bailed and started looking used. Honestly, if they’d just given me the same price cash, I probably would have written a check.

We found a 2021 up in Virginia that had only been driven once. The owner bought it in Greensboro, drove it home, and parked it in the woods for a year or two. Never actually camped with it — just occasionally used it for a nap (and maybe let someone else do the same). It looked dirty outside but seemed fine when we drove up to inspect it.

Note: don’t go inspect a large purchase like this with an autistic kid. Your ability to do a real, deep inspection goes to zero.

So we bought it. Around $46k, as I recall. It took about a month to close because the seller had a loan on it, but finally we brought it home and backed it into the driveway for the first time. (This was sort of scary, but didn’t go as badly as I feared.)

First impressions: it’s basically new!

We had a lot of cleaning to do, but everything seemed to work. After scrubbing it down inside and out, it was basically like brand new.

Except where it wasn’t…

First: who sells a travel trailer without dumping the waste tanks first? Ewww. Just ewww.

Also: leaving the fridge running while the unit sits for years in the woods might not be the best idea. It still works, but I’ve always wondered if some later fridge weirdness traces back to that. Hard to say.

But other than that, it was time to go camping.

A review

At this point we’ve got roughly a year, about half a dozen trips, and ~4,000 miles behind us. I’m finally qualified to have opinions that aren’t just “new trailer dopamine.”

The good

Towing & chassis

• It tows well. Really well. More on this in another piece, but for now suffice it to say: it tows like a laser-guided bullet.
• The lifted “X” version with AT tires is the way to go. Tough, forgiving, and the OEM tires are better than the “AT” tires you often get on pickups from the factory. (I.e. these are real quality ATs.)
• It has a full size AT spare, under mounted in front of the trailer. This is great.

Livability & layout

• The interior is nice looking. It’s not “warm”, so you might want to add some personal touches, but it is nice and clean.
• The panoramic front glass is genuinely great inside the trailer. The tint is effectively one-way when it’s bright outside, and the view forward is fantastic.
• The rear hatch is nice sometimes, though I wish the glass in it was larger for the times you can’t open it.
• The king bed in the back is indeed large. Setup is a bit of a pain, but it’s nice when it’s up.
• The cushions are actually decent as mattresses for sleeping - but only if you are a back sleeper and less than around two hundred lbs. If you are a larger adult and a side sleeper, they are not great for longer term use.
• Our family-of-four sleep setup: we don’t use the king. We use rear bunks + front dinette.
  • Leave rear bench back cushions at home; use throw pillows instead.
  • Leave the king-bed support parts at home (saves weight - yes, always be thinking of weight!)
  • Removing back cushions adds shoulder room for adult bunk sleeping.
• The exterior shower head is great for kids. It helps with all sorts of cleanup - and using it doesn’t eat into your gray tank budget!
• We’ve used the shower in the “wet” lav. It actually doesn’t work bad at all. But it’s probably best used when you have sewer hook ups as you can really use up some gray tank space otherwise.

Systems

• Plumbing is all PEX-B, which is easy to work with. There are isolation valves in sane places.
• The pressure pump is good quality and works well.
• All the gray and black water drains work well and drain quickly.
• The propane water heater works well and seems efficient.
• The solar panel sizing is maybe a bit on the small side, but not too far off for the baseline configuration of the trailer. The panels and chargers are good quality. We’ve dry camped with the trailer and the power has always worked out OK.
• Lighting is all LED and is decent, but it would be nicer with dimmers. (I would really like to add a dimmable LED strip around the entire upper edge where the walls and ceiling meet.)

The not-great

Weights & payload reality

This is the big one. The Basecamp 20X is not “heavy” in the grand scheme of trailers, but it is heavy for its size, and the payload math is not optional.

Here’s a quick table for intuition (water is ~8.34 lb/gal):

If your usable payload is ~500 lb, a full fresh tank is not “a little weight.” It’s a major chunk of your entire budget. That’s the part I think most people don’t internalize until after the first “why does this feel sketchy?” trip. If you have all the tanks full, you can burn through most (or all) of your payload budget before you’ve added any gear — and it’s very easy to end up at (or over) GVWR without realizing it.

You also need to be aware of where the tanks sit relative to the axles. Some are forward and some are aft, which means they can change tongue weight. The fresh tank is behind the axle, so adding fresh water can reduce tongue weight — but only inside your overall GVWR/payload budget.

Visibility / “feel” inside

• Rear-half visibility isn’t amazing. It can feel a little dark and closed-in. In many campsites the better view is out the back, and this trailer doesn’t show you that unless the hatch is open. There is a screen for the hatch; we used it when we were camped on the Indian River lagoon with the back to the water and it was amazing. I wish I could get that view without the screen sometimes though.

Factory choices that are… a choice

• The factory tongue jack is weak and shaky. Mine stripped a tooth on the pinion gear and I replaced it with a higher capacity jack. (I went with one rated for 5000lbs and don’t regret it for a moment.)
• AGM batteries are heavy and have lousy usable capacity. You can replace the two 100Ah AGMs with four 100Ah lithiums and still end up with lower net weight and nearly 4x the usable capacity! If you replace the two AGMs with two lithiums, you can dump a good amount of tongue weight and still have more usable capacity than stock.
• The corrosion resistance of the steps and stabilizers isn’t amazing. They’re painted (not powder coated), and the paint UV fades quickly. Then rust starts.
• Internal storage in the factory configuration isn’t enough for a family of four. You have to get creative. Those overhead nets on the sides are critical storage and you’ll use them constantly. Ours are always stuffed full.
• The internal storage lockers to the left of the lavatory need more shelves. I’m a woodworker, so I just made some for ours. They helped immensely.
• The magnetic latch on the retracting screen door is so strong even my 9-year-old can’t open it!
• The USB-A ports are semi-convenient, but they only charge at basic rate and they’re easy to break. I’m replacing ours with modern marine-grade units that can do USB-C PD.
• With four people, we’ve found you basically must never leave any bunks set up during the day. You have to tear them all down in the morning. Not exactly a flaw so much as a design limitation.

The ugly (stuff that made me say “really?” out loud)

This is the stuff that feels poorly engineered and/or poorly executed.

• Locker door latches: the magnetic latches are pathetic and useless. I’m not being hyperbolic here - they really are a total joke. After a long trip where stuff spilled out every time we moved, I installed marine-grade slam latches on all of them.
• Exterior roof-to-wall trim cracks: the plastic trim around the top exterior tends to be over-tensioned at the fasteners and can crack. Mine has two cracks now. I repaired them with EternaBond (incredibly sticky, flexible, and if you use black tape with care it’s basically invisible from the ground). Replacing the trim would be a huge job, so I’m not doing that unless the problem gets worse.
• Plumbing fixtures: all of the fixtures are incredibly cheap and cheesy. The external shower head was terrible. I had to take it apart and remove some restrictor valves to even make it usable. It eventually needs total replacement.
• Furnace airflow: the furnace itself is probably fine, but the installation is terrible. There’s almost no airflow out of any vents. I need to redo this before we do a dry camping trip where we’re relying on propane heat instead of electric heat strips. The duct routing needs to be re-engineered and it may even need a booster fan.
• Under-seat storage lids: these need a gas spring or some kind of hold-up latch. It’s easy to slam them so loud it hurts your ears, and it’s easy to pinch fingers badly.
• Window shade attachment: the window blackout shades and the insect screens are attached to the window frames with double sided tape. Yes, you read that correctly. And it works as well as one might expect: not at all. I’ve had to replace the attachment with a metal backing plate and use button head screws to fasten through the cloth to provide a secure attachment. At this kind of a cost point, this level of fail is massive.
• Interior wall to ceiling trim: it’s just a crappy piece of rubber with some self tapping screws jammed in it. It’s sort of ugly and I’ve seen some weird residue leak out of ours when we’ve had interior condensation. This really should have been something of higher quality - like a better trim piece with an LED strip light or something.
• The black tank flush doesn’t work: supposedly this was some sort of systemic QC escape for the year range our trailer was built. I’ve read on the forums that a check valve was installed backwards of some such. Really? Sigh. I have not verified the root cause and fixed this yet since I use a Camco external tank flush unit, but I would really like it to work and would use it if it did.
• The refrigerator isn’t quite right: we’ve had issues with the fridge not working quite right. To be clear: I don’t blame this on Airstream. They picked a well known brand and it seems to work on the surface, so this isn’t on them. My process of debugging and upgrading the fridge probably deserves an article of its own. However, the short version is that ours has been flaky. The eventual “quick fix” I’ve developed is to load up the freezer section with a bunch of cold packs to help stabilize it. This seems to work well. More later.

What I changed (and what I’d do on day 1)

Already done

• Upgraded the tongue jack after the factory unit failed (stripped pinion gear).
• Installed marine-grade slam latches on the lockers so they stop vomiting your stuff onto the floor mid-drive.
• Added shelves in the storage lockers. Full-depth shelf in each locker helped a lot. Long term I’ll replace these with full-extension drawer slides since these are really deep storage areas.
• Repaired exterior trim cracks with EternaBond rather than replacing the trim.

In progress / planned

• Replace USB ports with marine-grade USB-C PD units.
• Fix furnace ducting / airflow so propane heat is usable in cold dry-camping conditions.
• Add gas springs / lid supports to under-seat storage.
• Convert shelves to drawers in the lockers.
• Fix black tank flush port
• Some sort of high quality internal water filter. Campground water is typically pretty poor, and those inline exterior filters are not amazing.
• Upgrade at least one side bunk cushion to be a better mattress for side sleeping adults.

Closing thoughts

After a year, a bunch of trips, and a bunch of miles, I still like this trailer. A lot. It does what it’s supposed to do in the places we actually go. It tows beautifully, it feels tough, and it’s a genuinely good size for getting out without dragging a rolling apartment behind you.

But: the payload limits are not optional reality, and some factory choices are hard to defend at this price point. If you go into it expecting to do a few targeted upgrades — and you do the weight math like an adult — it’s a very good tool. If you expect perfection out of the box… you will be disappointed.

In summary: would I buy it again? Yes! It’s been great. We may have to upgrade to something larger as our kids keep growing, but the Basecamp 20X has been great so far, and has helped us determine that this is truly a viable and fun way for us to travel.