Did Bullet just crack the code on 25ft Couple's Camping? 2026 Keystone 208MKS Travel Trailer

This new Keystone Bullet layout right here takes an intensely popular half-ton couples camper and addresses nearly every concern I've ever heard voiced about it all at once. Hey everybody, Josh here, RV Nerd, Abish's RV down here at Keystone today catching my first look at the new 208 MKS. This just might make you say yes. Now, I'm kind of going through it about half-live. I've only kind of glanced at it so we're going to kind of be doing this together today but I am very encouraged by what I've seen. I'm not saying this is the best version ever of this layout and you should never consider anything else. There's some other very good versions out there that have some very good features like the Rockwood, the Delta, the name another brand that has another layout like this. They all have a couple cool things but pound for pound, dollar for dollar, Bullet's doing some sweet stuff here starting right at the ground level. Goodyear tires with a torsion suspension package. That is an awesome one-two punch ride and handling combo. Heated belly extended season package. 220 watt solar with an MPPT charge controller. Don't know what that means basically. Better hardware. They put the biggest awning on it that they could. That's nice. Little enclosed docking center. Wonderful. Walk-on roof. All good news but when we get inside, the way that they did the big pantry and the bathroom a little bit differently. Most builders, not all, but most builders of this layout historically have done a radius corner shower where you constantly bang your elbows on this thing. They found a way to give us a rectangular shower that doesn't eat into the living area significantly. Then they did stuff like instead of a little level change for a miniature dining bar, they just gave us a huge countertop that you could use as a dining bar if you are so inclined or have actual like laptop space if you want it. True queen bed with solid storage around. Not like wow but solid, you know, it for an RV this size. I think it's reasonable. They also have, I call it a full kitchen plus with a convection air fryer microwave and propane oven. A lot of other really good features. There's a couple little doodads and odds and ends. I would personally tweak on this but a lot of those are things that can be done after market that we're going to talk about as we go. I think this is a sharp layout and I'm really curious to hear what you have to say. So let's get into it here. Again, this is a layout that is very similar to a lot of other things that you'll see a lot of other builders make stuff like this. By the way, we're looking at a bullet today. If you're, I don't know that Vicious RV has Passport within their lineup right now but Passport makes the exact same thing to what we're looking at today. I think they call it a 2080 instead of a 208 but it is the exact same RV in case you were ever curious. Bullet and Passport are sisters and there are a lot of instances in which they they're very similar but not identical. This is one of those cases where they are essentially identical. I don't believe this is 50 amp and second air capable but I'm not using a wide angle lens. This is a barreled ceiling. That's why those lights have that funny little bend about them right there. We also have a 60 by 80 true queen bed up front. I always try to to share positives and negatives or at least things to consider. This doesn't bother me but I know some people really dislike the fact that it does not have a privacy curtain for the bed. The way that I rationalize this to me is no different than like if I'm in a hotel room, my bed is just open into the room and I have a door blocking me off from everybody else. In my head, this is the exact same. Not everyone feels that way though and that's okay. I'm not saying they're wrong and I'm right. I'm just that's how I think about it. If you think about it differently, that's fine. That's cool but maybe some food for thought. The side stands here you can see very side sleeper friendly if you like to sling your arm off the bed at night or something like that. Not to mention your power outlets up there in the headboard are excellent and as I get up here, you do have some kind of elevated headboard power pockets up here and there is a little hole down inside there where if you wanted to run a phone charger up in there so that if you ever have friends or family that have no respect for the fact that you're trying to sleep at night and they're up late texting and sending you links off Instagram or whatever, you don't want your phone flashing waking you up at night, you can kind of blot all that out. Backing up just a touch here, I think the storage above the bed has been executed extremely well. I like how those overhead doors hold themselves open. There's also lighting in there so that you can see what you're grabbing very handy at certain hours of the day. The one thing I will say is those hanging closets that won't hang down, they do got some sharp corners on them so be aware and as we lift that up you can see how it is actually aluminum framed under that bed. Sometimes people see the framework under the bed and they think that has something to do with the structure of the RV. Those are actually two very separate topics but some people like the idea of an aluminum frame bed. It can be very much stronger certainly as compared to the common, I've heard it described as matchstick construction that you sometimes find in certain aspects of this industry. Now the TV is, I think, executed pretty well. They gave it, that's a 12 volt TV if I'm not mistaken looking at it. Oh hey, this is one of the reasons I like to sit down sometimes. We got some power outlets under that overhead cabinet area there so that could be maybe handy for some phone charging or laptop running in a pinch or whatever you need to do there. But anyway, it's not a massive TV. This is not a sit inside the camper and watch TV all day kind of camper. I don't think they're doing it or going to do it but what would you say if instead of boxing that TV in, if there was just like say a big 40-incher just mounted flat on the wall right there that could swing either way. Is that, I don't know. I like, I'm not mad at what it is, you know, considering what this RV is. It's not a Montana or an Alpine mega giant keystone luxury fifth wheel. I'm okay with what I'm looking at but I wonder if that wouldn't work. And with the TV's current setup, I'm going to actually slide back here in bed a little bit to simulate that. It doesn't face directly at the TV. Very few builders with a layout like this, their, will their TV actually directly face that. Actually, now they say that I'm not exactly aware of one but it's not bad. It's, it's enough to, to, to get you through. Now down here, there's a lot of builders who do an L-shaped countertop like this but a lot of times they have an elevated breakfast bar and Bullitt didn't do that. They just gave you one big flat hunk of countertop space. I personally think that is just way more useful. You know, where you can just really spread stuff out here and because of the location, a little outdoor mini camp kitchen thing, this side, that countertop's a little more shallow but if you're Johnny Longlegs like me, that side over there would be fine or if you don't care, you can just get rid of the stools or replace them and like that, I could see that being a really good spot for like pet dishes, little stuff like that. I don't know, just, just thinking, working our way around here. Before I forget, there's two types of cable slides. This is the exact slide system, in case you're curious. I have whole videos educating you on the different common slide systems in the towable business and hopefully that, you know, if you're curious, drop me a note and I can leave you a link to that. The, the, the thing, I don't think they offer a hide-a-bed or anything here due to the fact that, you know, you've got that peninsula style kitchen counter. One thing I did want to do though is I wanted to fully recline one of those chairs so you can see you can still walk around there. Now, if you've got really long legs like mine, you might be in the way of people. You're gonna have to kind of, you know, consider one another in this thing and I nearly dinged them for not giving me any sort of phone charge solution but as I got here closing the sofa up, I realized they actually do have some USB plugs and on the opposite side of the slide, they have the same thing, a type A and a type C, so you have two sets of chargers. Now, there's also, this is interesting to me, the little mini profile electric heater. That is the same BTUs as the big ones you see in the luxury fifth wheels. It just occupies a lot less space. I'm shocked the industry hasn't adopted these much, much sooner. I think it's a very smart way to go because you don't have to eat up valuable storage space. Now, this, wall right here, these shallow little pockets, I kind of think it would have been nice if maybe they had some kind of, I don't know, cargo netting or something to hold things in place but that's just sort of a why not wall. They had a little area there above the space heater. They said, we don't want to waste it. Let's do something with it. I get it. Around here though, this is a big, very functional space. You see that you've got these adjustable and or removable shelves here and this is also where their converter fuse box is located. What I kind of like about this is, first of all, the fuse box is out of the way but readily accessible in the events that you need it but the left side over here, not necessarily being completely blocked off, means depending on what you put in this, like if you have like a little folding broom or a Swiffer, you can still have pantry space and you can have a place for like a broom and whatnot. We will get to that bathroom in just a second. I think for now, what I want to do is actually crack open all of our kitchen storage and whatnot. Starting back here, 12 volt compressor fridge, that looks, I believe that's a 10 cubic foot variety. I am curious. I'm wondering what's under the fridge. There's just a flat panel right there. I'm hoping that's not wasted space. This RV is new enough that I can't ask the audience existing owners to peek in there and Bish's RV doesn't own this specific copy of this RV so I don't feel right unscrewing stuff but hey, there you go. Now, this is a three-in-one electric oven, air fryer, convection, microwave and as we get down here, you see that you have your three burner stovetop and propane oven. Now, it is a small propane oven. Let's be very real about this. I'm not trying to, like it's half covered up by these drawers but I like, like we have four drawers in here. I kind of, I was a little surprised when I opened these up. I'm used to seeing all just plain wood. Just the little decorative touch they put in that I think is awful nice. Now, down here again was just some why not space. They didn't want to waste that by any means and there's a little bit better look at that oven. Oh, there we go. Sometimes, RV manufacturers make it a little bit difficult to see their plumbing connections but we have a great look at some right here and I think you'll be generally pleased with what you see. We're not seeing flexible hoses crimped onto PEX connections. Now, you can see a little bit of a cross-section of the floor there where they have to run that plumbing. This is what they call hypercore flooring. They've been using this since like 2015, 2016. It's an all-composite floor, basically a wood-free floor. It's not Asdel. It's some stuff made by I think the company's Tecmodo, if I'm not mistaken. Seems to be performing very well. I don't know. Anybody who's had good experiences or bad experiences with a bullet, a passport, and a lot of Cougar travel trailers made in that time range, you know, could probably attest to it or not. I don't know. I'd love to hear from the audience. Overall, I am very generally happy with this bathroom. You can see the toilet space is great. Now, I want to be extremely fair about this. I am excited to see that they put in a rectangular shower. However, this is a smaller rectangular shower like you might find on something like a small camper like an R-Pod. So, I think it's only like 28 inches wide. You'll have to kind of turn sideways and face your belly toward the sidewall but you will not, I think, have a lot of headroom issues in here unless you're a couple inches bigger than me. I'm about six foot, a couple inches over six foot as it displays on camera here and because of that mega skylight they have up there, I do not have headroom challenges in this thing. Now, something I'm curious about looking at this, I have a sneaking suspicion that when we close up the slide, it's going to come a little too close to that peninsula to be able to slip through the bed at a travel stop but let's verify. Yeah, I should have thought about that when I went running my mouth when this video began. That is a major point of concern that a lot of people have with a layout like this. So, that is, it looks like one major Achilles heel that this floor plan may have. Other than that though, our kitchen functions, our bathroom readily accessible and somebody might ask, yeah, but can't I just like pop the slide a little bit open if I need to? Not recommended. This is an exact slide system, not an accu-slide, not a rack and pinion. The reason I mentioned those other systems specifically is those other two systems allow slides to be partially open or closed and not gummed up. Because of the way this one works and multiple motors sync together, you should not do that. Another thing you should do with an exact slide system, same as a Schwintek, is keep your finger mashed on the open or closed button until it completely stops making any and all noise. When it touches the wall, a lot of people want to stop right away because they're afraid they're going to burn the motor up. The motor checks this. There's actually motors on the left and right sides and it will go through a self-adjustment phase to make sure the left and right sides are equally open or closed. Now, if you don't do that enough times, you can start to get the RV slide a little bit wonky and causing problems. So just keep your finger mashed on the button and it'll go and then quit. That's when you let go. The more you know. Hopefully that's helpful for you. Now for towing, I think this could be very safely described as generally half-ton towable. Will every half-ton in every situation handle it? No. But will most in most scenarios? Yes. So please understand the difference there. We have a crazy amount of lighting off the front of this thing. That's a great way to cheese off the neighbors at the campground, but it does look really cool. This does ride on a little bit different chassis. This is a Norco chassis system versus your traditional I-beam frame. You can see the slam latch baggage doors with the magnet holdbacks. I still want to point out little stuff like that that not necessarily everybody does. I also really like how they don't just throw the cranks in here. They just give them a nice little dedicated place. It takes five seconds to do that and I appreciate that consideration factor. Now a little widget in the middle, that's something that you can attach to like a power drill and you can NASCAR pit crew your stabilizer jacks if you need to. The funny part about that is that these are power stabilizers, but that little drill bit costs next to nothing. So why not include it I guess is the concept. God forbid you need a manual override that will save you some elbow grease. They pretty much put the biggest power awning on this they could. They practically put the speakers on the roof, which isn't my favorite thing, but I'm sure the aliens flying overhead will appreciate that. The black ops helicopters that are in whisper mode that we can't hear. Under the L-shaped extra large counter, they had a pocket of space that was just kind of tricky to get to. So instead of making it hard to get to inside, they made it easy to get to outside and be useful, which I think is kind of smart. Dad's medicine cabinet out here above behind the little griddle station. Now what we're looking at down here, this is actually, this represents a big chunk of the money on a bullet. They could probably offer these for like $1,500 to $2,000 less if they weren't running the nicer Goodyear tires and the torsion suspension package. A lot of times people go, well why doesn't every builder use those if they're so much nicer? Because it's a chunk of change, dude. But the fact is those are better sneakers and that's a better suspension package than the vast majority of travel trailers in the marketplace today. If you're looking to do some serious travel and you want some easy peace of mind, that's a great place to start. Now your underbelly is enclosed and forced air heated. They call that an extended season package, which I think is a good descriptor. If you're going to camp earlier in spring, later in fall, you're mostly going to be okay here. Now a shorter floor plan like this, if you look at the location of that water heater, your on-demand water heater is right next to the bathroom, right next to the kitchen. That's the best place for it. And they're kind of doing an and instead of or. We have a bumper and the cargo receiver hitch instead of a bumper or a cargo receiver hitch. They do have a walkable roof. They don't give us a ladder. Wish they did. They don't. That's one of the very few changes I would personally like to see in this model. Basically the ladder and a rack and pinion slide are about the only two things I would personally like to see different on this. I would still camp in it as it is. It wouldn't give me a lot of heartache by any stretch of the imagination. Those are just little preferential items. It is also a singular sewer outlet back here. So you don't have to do the scoop boogie shuffling everything around and hauling things around different areas of the camper. Working our way up front here. The enclosed docking center. This is something Bullet did I don't know five six years ago and kind of glad to see it's a basic docking center. Just you know your water hookups and stuff like that. You can your part cable hookup a little convenience hookup center. Now real quick let's talk solar on this because they're doing a couple things slightly different here that if you don't know the difference you don't understand why there's a couple more bucks represented into it and what that means for you. So to begin with up top on the roof you have a 220 watt solar panel. That's 10 percent bigger than most things that have some level of standard factory solar. It is also paired up with an MPPT charge controller instead of a PWM. If this alphabet soup means nothing to you. Long story short it is a more efficient charging system. It's like 10 percent more efficient. So this RV has I don't do the math like a 21 percent more effective charging system than most things out there by default. Now you want to add a second 220 watt panel you can do that. We're prepped for up to a 2000 watt inverter and over by the docking center down in the black skirting section of the RV there is a plug for portable side mount solar panel. So if you wanted to get this thing up to about 600 watts of solar with a 2000 watt inverter that would not be invasive at all. That would be extremely easy to do. Actually now that I think about it it's been a while since I talked about this. Keystone is one of the only manufacturers I've seen. They sell a kit of Keystone parts that Keystone dealers can do this. If you want to upgrade to a 440 package they sell a kit that dealers can do to do that and not affect any warranty things whatsoever. They say if the dealer uses our parts and installs them the way that we say we will make sure that anything they do is covered under our warranty. That's crazy rare in this business. So I've gone through it. I've tried to be as fair as I could. Point out good with the bad. Let me know what you think about it and in the meantime I'll drop you several links in the video description. The first will get you to our website where you can double check pricing and availability of course, but also I will try to remember to look up some other builders who have a similar layout to this and I mean man there is no shortage of them. You got your Rockwoods, your Deltas, your Heritage Glen Hemispheres, you got your Surveyors, you got all of them. I mean there's a lot of builders of a layout like this. They all have a couple cool things about them. If you're willing, I'd love it if you took a look at one or two of those other videos and on this video or that one or any of those other things, leave me a note. Let me know if it was your money on the line. Which one would you go with and why? Where did they do good here and where could they do better? That would be really cool to hear if you're willing to share, but until then, take care, stay safe, have fun, and happy camping everyone!