We’ve just reached the two year anniversary of buying our nuCamp Cirrus 920 truck camper. Two full years of ownership, but we’ve been traveling full-time in it for over a year and a half. If you’d like to know why we chose this camper, you can watch our video explaining it here. In this article, we will give you our honest review of how our Cirrus Truck Camper held up over the last 2 years. We’re going to break it down into 5 Pros and 5 Cons and share our final thoughts about it. Let’s start with the cons.
Cons Of Our nuCamp Cirrus Truck Camper:
5. Broken stuff
The first thing that became an issue was our bathroom doorknob. After the first year or so the door handle started to catch open. When we would get ready to leave, we would shut the door, not realizing that it wasn’t fully latched. So the door would slam back and forth as we drove. I took it apart and was able to fix it myself. However, when we brought it to nuCamp, they just replaced it and also gave us a spare for the future.
Our bathroom door’s hinges have continued to squeak. I’ve lubricated them, which helps for a short time, but soon after they start squeaking again. They’re probably starting to wear out, so we might need to replace them.
The screws securing our kitchen cabinet door hinge loosened up and stripped out of the wood frame and the door became floppy. I tried to fix it several times, it would be fine for a few weeks and then it would loosen up again. When we brought our camper to nuCamp for the warranty work, they fixed that and it’s been solid ever since.
The strings that guide our screen door wore out and broke. The string that sits in channel at the bottom wore out and snapped. We can restring the door, and put it back together. I’ve read that it’s actually a difficult project, but much less expensive than a replacement door.
One of our window tabs broke, which is fairly common. We use our windows all the time, so it didn’t surprise me that the tab broke off. It keeps our windows shut and even without the tab our windows shut fine, but we will replace it eventually.
We had a water pump failure, which we wouldn’t consider nuCamp’s fault. It’s a Shurflo pump and the pressure switch wore out and melted. I replaced it and made a video about it. The next thing was that we had a problem with was our Alde 3020 Hydronic heating system, the water tank in it cracked. Later I found out that it was most likely our own fault. I had been using chlorine bleach to sterilize our system and that’s a big no-no. We also made a series about the adventure of getting it replaced, you can watch it here.
4. Delamination
Those were the little details, but one bigger issue was some sidewall delamination. When we were in Texas for about a month we had our camper off the truck and sitting in the blazing hot sun. There was a bubble forming where the cabover meets the main body of the camper. We contacted nuCamp and sent them a bunch of information along with all of the pictures we could gather up. Fortunately for us, they said they would cover it under warranty. Once we figured out the warranty coverage, we found out that they were going to replace the entire side. While replacing the sides, they also replaced the fridge cover, freshwater fill hatch and power inlet. That was a really nice touch, it kept everything looking clean and fresh! Now we have new sides and no more bubbles.
Now let’s talk about the things that we simply don’t like.
3. Hamper Cover
The way our hamper is designed contributes to one of our daily annoyances. It’s slightly above our mattress, but when we make our bed, it becomes the same height. This means that every time we use our hamper, our blankets or pillows get stuck in it. We don’t have a solution to this, however, we wish that the hamper was a little taller or further away. But for now, we make sure that everything is tucked away when we make our bed.
2. Moisture Build Up
It’s very common in most campers that when it’s cold outside, you get condensation build-up inside. We usually see moisture in the outside corners and along the aluminum frame on the walls and underneath the mattress. We try to stay on top of it and use a little fan that we stick underneath the mattress. It helps to circulate the air and get rid the condensation.
We take our blower fan and put it under the mattress. Since we have our Froli sleep system, there’s a nice big gap under our mattress. So the air from the fan blows under the entire mattress and keeps it nice and dry. On cool days in the morning, we will throw it under there while getting ready. And by the time we’re ready to hit the road, it’s nice and dry and we don’t have to worry about the moisture.
When it’s really cold out and we’re having a lot of condensation in the cabinets’, we will open all of the cabinets and leave the fan blowing throughout the day. Another thing that really helps with our moisture build-up is to crack our bathroom fan. At night, when it’s cold out we crack it just a tiny bit, maybe a quarter of an inch. This helps reduce moisture buildup for the night, even though it wastes a little bit of heat.
1. Slow heat
This is more of an annoyance than a problem. While we do love our Alde heating system, it takes quite a while to heat up. We’ve been in situations where it’s been very warm at a low elevation, but cold at higher elevations. We often forget to turn it on in these situations and only remember when we enter our cold camper. Once we turn it on, we’ll wait a good hour or two before our camper warms up. Another issue is as the camper heats up, most of that heat is coming up through the wall. This makes the thermostat turn off sooner than it should. So the air in the main space is still cold, while the air at the thermostat is nice and warm. The way we’ve gotten around that is by using a fan that we can plug in. It circulates the air keeping the thermostat at the same temperature as the air and gives us a nice even temperature. The solution to this would be mounting the thermostat in a central location, away from the walls.
That’s it for our list of annoyances and things that broke. Now let’s talk about things that we still love, even after two years of living in our nuCamp Cirrus 920
Pros Of Our nuCamp Cirrus Truck Camper:
5. Looks Good
After living in our nuCamp Cirrus 920 truck camper for two years we still find it very attractive! We get a lot of comments on how good it looks. This isn’t a critical aspect. However, it was important to us that we like the aesthetics of our home. It seems that most RVs look outdated and we wanted something more modern.
4. Plenty of storage
We have a sufficient amount of storage. It took us some time to figure out how to organize everything in a small space, but so far it’s been working great. And we still love our slide out!
3. Build quality
RVs don’t have the best reputation for build quality. I’m sure you’ve heard the nightmare stories about them falling apart. We didn’t want that to happen to us, especially because it was going be our home. One of the most important factors that we were looking for during our research process was finding a company that had good build quality and good customer support. Now that we’ve lived in our truck camper for a year and a half, we’re still very happy with the build quality of it overall. The cabinets, the framing, and everything else seems pretty well built, especially in comparison to other campers out there. Everything held together very well even though it’s subjected to daily earthquakes and hurricane winds.
2. Quiet
The solid construction and double pane windows really help keep it quite inside. And since we’re not always camped in a quiet location, that’s one of our favorite aspects of the camper.
1. Alde 3020 Hydronic Heating System
Our Alde system has been, and still is our #1 favorite feature in our nuCamp Cirrus 920. It’s reliable, quiet and it keeps us warm! We think it’s the biggest feature that sets the Cirrus camper line apart from the other truck campers out there. However, I have seen that some other truck campers are coming out with the Truma system. I’m really looking forward to seeing where that goes in the future.
Final Thoughts
We’ve lived in this camper for a year and a half and we’ve owned it for two years. Buying this camper as our full-time home was a huge decision for us and we did a lot of research. We spent many days at truck camper dealers, hanging out in different campers and seeing what we liked, disliked and what felt good to us. The nuCamp Cirrus 920 kept rising to the top. Those little tabs and knobs are not that big of a deal. We travel all over the place through some rough terrain, so we expect things to break and rattle loose. Campers aren’t designed to live in full time, they’re intended for weekend use, and this is an extreme use case. We use it all day every day, we live and work here all the time. We’ve had other RVs and we’ve expected it to break more than it has so far. While we hope nothing major breaks, we are certain there will always be a short list of repairs that need to be done. Overall, we love the quality, features and aesthetics of our camper and we love living in our nuCamp Cirrus 920.
We’re hoping this article was helpful! If you have any questions, please contact us and we’d be happy to chat. We also made a full video about this review and you can watch it below.