Advice on Camper Quality & Choice

I do own couple of older campers and even they were sold as 4-seasons, you have to take it with grain of salt.
There is no way 1" walls will hold high R-value and both of my campers had lot of wind float inside before I took couple of cans of expandable foam and sealed cable compartment from living compartment and such.
One or them is Lance 1161, what seems to be well appreciated model with side entrance. Still with engineering ops, where steel reinforcement under the slide is not meeting together in corner. I had to redo it on mine.
Other camper is basement/attic Fleetwood, what is much better for insulation, but than it is taller. That one has rear entrance and frankly, I rather put with inconvenience of rear entrance for more interior space.
Each camper will have some issues.

I’ve had a bunch of older campers over the last 30 years.
I like the Alpenlite but those things tend to leak like a screen door on a submarine and I wouldn’t buy one.
The Arctic Fox is nice, 2005 I believe is when they went to aluminum frames.
It should say “Silver Fox” on it if it is.
Even that isn’t so great, because they just spot-weld those frames, they don’t do proper welds at all.
The big Lance is nice but does have the frame issue mentioned.
But - here in the PNW, everything is wet and old campers rot fast.
The main thing to look for when shopping for one is photos of it being stored under cover, preferably inside a shop. Of all the ones you mentioned, the one that was inside most of its life is the best one.

But I have to say, after dealing with these leak-prone rot buckets long enough, I won’t own anything but a Bigfoot or Northern Lite.

Check very carefully for rot, and delamination especially on the front cap and around skylights. Our 2006 AF1150 leaked in a couple places in the first year of ownership. I should have resealed the roof from day one buying it new. Big hole around the bath skylight that poured water into the camper on the first rain we had since owning it.

Also run the slide in and out a few times and make sure it operates smoothly. Ours broke right away and continued to have issues until we sold it to a used dealer at a big loss. Arctic Fox was a very good company to work with while Ron Nash was in charge. Calls for help from Alaska with our broken slide to AF were useless. Given all the issues we had how hard is it to ship me a new motor without markup at my expense? BTW, when we found a dealer that would ship one to us they wanted almost a grand. t's just a small DC motor. Ridiculous. lol.

You might consider adding Host to your list of used campers. I have been very impressed with the build quality. MY BIL has a 2 slide 2006 that he loves.

Thanks for the inputs. I am very concerned about leaks. Last camper took weeks to peal old and put down new sealant.
Open to recommendations. Wife wants slides for extra room. I don't want to spend more than $15k.

“Last camper took weeks to peal old and put down new sealant.“

Better to take weeks to peal and seal than months to repair water intrusion.

Front Windows were notorious for leaking, which would lead to a mostly destroyed front cab-over section.

burningman wrote:
. . . I have to say, after dealing with these leak-prone rot buckets long enough, I won’t own anything but a Bigfoot or Northern Lite.

Ditto. We've owned 3 travel trailers with rubber roofs. All the maintenance necessary to maintain the screws, trim, and sealant used on those endless lengths of roof/side seams was so, so tiring to deal with. Even the best preventative maintenance was no guarantee you wouldn't find a leak at some point. Any construction technique that reduces or removes the need for all these seams is absolutely a plus in my book.