RV review: Roam Resilient Baja Edition overlanding trailer
Today’s RV review is of the Roam Resilient Baja Edition. What this is is an incredibly capable overlanding trailer but I think there’s a lot of significant pieces in here that it’s worth paying attention to, even if you wouldn’t consider this type of rig.
I recognize that not a lot of people are in the market for a trailer like this, although there certainly are people who might be. But many many of you have reached out to me to ask about RV companies looking at things differently and doing things better.
Overlanding - not for me?
As some of you know we visited the Overland Expo West where we saw a lot of vehicles that fit right into the Overlanding world. But the key takeaway from this might not be as much the fact that vehicles that we saw could be great at camping deep in the woods or in remote places without issue, but more the point that these vehicles offer a lot of self-sufficiency without compromise.
According to a number of recent reports including ones from KOA and the RV Industry Association, an ever increasing number of RVers are interested in camping off the grid. Not that they want to find remote spots, but they just don’t want to camp in campgrounds with noisy neighbors and crowded spots all while paying as much as a hotel cost not that long ago.
So, like me, people are looking for a camping experience that’s more of a true positive experience and that means that your RV has to be outfitted to achieve that.
Most modern RVs have plumbing and heating systems that do enable off-grid camping. As better battery and solar systems come on line, like the one we got from MasterVolt and ABC Upfitters, that further enables us to go off the grid.
But this camper takes that and goes beyond.
Better systems in the Roam Resilient Baja Edition
I recently wrote an article about how long a battery and solar system could run a traditional RV air conditioner. The problem isn’t that we now have incredible battery and solar systems, it’s that RV air conditioners are primitive in so many ways.
So the first thing that caught my attention about this rig was the company’s use of a 24 volt 11,000 BTU air conditioner. This mini mini split system was quite and efficient and used very little power compared to what most of us have on our own RVs. But, being a mini split, it also didn’t represent a huge hole in the roof. Instead, the outside unit was nestled into the back wall of the trailer and the inside component was mounted on the wall.
I also saw a similar unit in the new Grand Design Lineage VT that I reviewed.
A very unique suspension
As someone who’s been to car shows where there were low riders I always wondered by someone didn’t make an RV with an air suspension that could raise and lower the rig but also provide the ability to level the rig.
Well, Roam Resilient did just that. They developed their own air suspension system that allows you to raise and lower the rig based on road conditions and also level it. There are two on-board air compressors and the whole suspension is a swing arm affair. I’d love to see this type of system in wider use, but it’s not, and it was designed by Roam Resilient.
Know that there is also a similar system in the Palomino Pause.
You can also use the air suspension to adjust the tongue weight of the trailer to a certain extent.
Power to spare in the Roam Resilient Baja Edition
There are many of us who have upgraded the power systems in our RV to something sort of like what this trailer has, but this trailer has all the pieces and they’re very impressive.
On the roof are three 52 volt 450 watt solar panels with the option for a fourth panel. There is a single 400 amp lithium battery system with the option to add a second. Overall the attention to detail in their installation and choice of components and integration of those components was absolutely first-rate.
Construction of the Roam Resilient Baja Edition
For all those people who want a four-season camper, perhaps the example set here might be a good place to start. The holding tanks on this trailer are all stainless steel with a main holding tank of 65 gallons along with a “reserve” tank, with its own second water pump, of 16 gallons. There’s also an additional ten gallon tank intended just for drinking water.
All of these tanks are inside the trailer itself so they don’t freeze.
There’s also a 27 gallon gray water tank. The toilet is either a cartridge toilet or a composting toilet so there’s no black tank, per se.
Hot water as well as interior heating come from a Truma Combi diesel water heater.
The chassis itself is a tubular steel design, of course built by the company.
The walls are really interesting in that they’re 2 1/2” thick of foam with the exterior being a sheet of aluminum and the interior being the trim. The aluminum exterior provides the rigidity and structural strength but, not having aluminum studs in the wall, also means that there aren’t cold and hot spots.
The roof, too, is built in the same way but with a thicker three inch foam core.
The corners of the walls and roof are an extruded aluminum piece that everything slides into. Overall it makes for a very strong RV.
Another interesting thing - the windows in this are dual-pane swing-up windows and I’ve seen this style of wind in a lot of higher-end RVs, but they’ve been made of a polycarbonate (plastic). These are glass.
Truly Brilliant rainwater capture
Something I have never even considered is that this trailer incorporates a rain water capture system. There are channels at the front that lead down to a drain at the bottom designed to capture that water. You can then use the RV’s built-in filtration system to refill your tanks.
What’s inside the Roam Resilient Baja Edition
The model I saw was the bunk model and, what struck me, was just how much this interior had the feel of a yacht. It was clean, beautiful and well designed. There are no slide rooms on here but, with all the windows, including a flip-up window over the front queen bed, it didn’t feel crowded at all. In fact there was a rather spacious feel even when three of us were in the rig.
The front was a queen-sized bed with a kitchen on the road side and a very small two-person dinette on the camp side.
Being a bunk model there were bunks at the back with a staircase that looked like a spiral staircase but with tuck-and-roll upholstery on the outside.
The kitchen in the model I saw featured a two-burner induction cook top and an electric oven (the oven is an option).
Bathroom in the Roam Resilient Baja Edition
The bathroom took up the back wall of this and is a dry bath. There’s a proper stand-up shower and then the toilet, which can be either a composting model or a cartridge toilet. Your choice.
The bathroom was certainly big enough to do what you went to do but not much space for changing clothes or that sort of thing.
My thoughts about the Roam Resilient Baja Edition
There are so many examples of figuring out solutions to the problems we all have as RVers and just making the overall experience seamless.
For example, when all of us go out on adventure we might need to kick on the air conditioner but, in most cases, you’re apprehensive about doing so unless you have full hook-ups. Not here. And, should you need more water, you have the ability to use rain water if the weather permits.
Leveling is easy and the build quality of this trailer is pretty incredible.
So while we might not all be wanting a camper that can go deep into the jungle on an expedition, the core thinking of this rig is incredible. Some of it isn’t far removed from what we have now but is nuanced enough that it creates a solution to a problem that is pretty common.
These aren’t inexpensive but are less so than some competitors. But the thinking is really what stands out in my mind.
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