I just published my Field Report for the Golite Xanadu on BackpackGearTest.org (read it here or start at the Initial Report here).  This is an oddball tent and I felt I needed to say a bit more about it.
The Xanadu is advertised as a four season, 2+ person tent that weighs in at well under five pounds. My measured carry weight of everything (tent, poles, stakes, stuffsacks, guylines, etc) is 4 lbs, 8.3 oz.   The main body materials are Epic (the yellow in the photo) and Silnylon (the grey). Additionally, there are large no-see-um mesh walls and vents.
There are some reasons I am concerned about this tent and its marketing, but it’s not all bad.  In fact, it has quite a lot of good things going for it.  I’m incredibly fond of its openness and space.  Everyone who has ever bought a tent knows that when a manufacturer says a tent fits two people, that really means you better like your tent-mate, because you’ll be squeezing into space that is, in reality, much more comfortable for one person.

This particular tent is advertised as fitting 2+ people, and when compared to industry standards I think this is a conservative designation.  Many manufacturers would call this a three person tent.  It’s incredibly spacious and comfortable for two people, and in an emergency you could certainly squeeze in a third, but that would put it at that ‘hope-you-all-used-deodorant-this-morning’ level of closeness.
The Xanadu opens up into an airy palace.  Beneath each silnylon vestibule (one on each side) is a mesh wall that unzips completely.  In the photo to the left the vestibules are open and walls collapsed.  Also, under that flap on the end is a tent-width giant mesh vent.  While this mesh makes for an open and airy environment, it is exactly the reason that this shouldn’t be considered a four season tent.

I had the Xanadu out in Lava Beds National Monument a few weeks ago, and the wind was vicious.  I secured the tent, tightly staking it in, tying out guylines, and tightening the vestibules.  A short while later I poked my head in to grab a jacket and everything was covered in dust. The wind would whip up the lava rock dust and blow it through large vents on the end, as well as under the vestibule and through the large mesh walls.  There was no way to close down the tent further – the mesh walls and vents were at the mercy of the wind.  There isn’t even a flimsy piece of velcro to hold the vent closed over the mesh. My mind immediately flashed back to a painful night in a snowstorm a couple of years back up near Carson Pass.
With ~100 mph gusts and ~3 feet of overnight snowfall, the tent we were in at the time did an incredible job protecting us from the elements.  But it had a small mesh vent that was difficult to keep closed, and over the course of the night spindrift would make it through this vent and collect on our sleeping bags and gear.   And if there is one thing you want to avoid on a cold, stormy winter night it is getting your insulation layers wet.
Now, take this tiny vent, make it impossible to close, widen it across both ends of the tent and make two entire walls of it.  Suddenly the Xanadu is anything but a four season tent.  I decided that I would not be testing the Xanadu in true four-season conditions due to safety concerns. And it turns out that my concerns are valid – see here for another tester’s experiences in the snow.
My problem with this tent boils down not so much to the tent itself, but in the way that it is marketed.  This is a bad, even dangerous four-season tent, but it isn’t a bad tent.  In fact, I see this line of tents as perfect solutions for people who want to give up their old, heavy backpacking tents but aren’t ready to commit to a tarp or tarptent style.  I know lots of people who just feel more comfortable in a ‘real’ tent and are willing to take the hit in weight, and this tent would be a decent (though expensive) stepping stone into lightweight backpacking.
In my review, I compare the Xanadu to tarptents that I have used.  Essentially, it’s a tarptent on steroids.  It has some of the features that help save weight with tarptents, along with the corresponding issues.  It is single walled (condensation) and uses a lot of mesh (dust/snow can get in on windy days).  At the same time, the Xanadu provides a much more robust body, poles, and staking setup, and is therefore capable of handling conditions beyond that of a traditional tarptent.
This tent seems to fit in a weird, narrow niche between a lightweight, 3-season setup and a true, 4-season tent –  too heavy and overbuilt for most conditions, but not robust enough for others.  I actually have a trip coming up on the Lost Coast where it will be a great solution since I expect a lot of brutal wind but not snow.  I don’t entirely trust my lightweight shelters in those conditions, but the Xanadu should be nice.
I expect that most people aren’t regularly taking tents out into snow storms, and those that do would recognize the limitations that the open mesh creates, but I really think Golite needs to reconsider the branding of the Xanadu as a four season tent.