$180k vs. $40k VAN SWAP (full tour of the Ekko)

We have spent almost two years traveling around the US Living out of our converted sprinter van that we bought for a little over $40,000. After what some might call a rough start.

We'Ve come to love our van, and it's taken us all around the US on some incredible adventures. But if there's one thing we've learned over the last two years, it's that any home on wheels comes with its own set of unique challenges.

The pipes froze and burst. Oh, tragic. Yeah, it's really in there. Yeah, those challenges. Encountering challenges like these has made us wonder, could life be better had we chosen a different home on wheels? So from time to time, we move out of our van and into a different vehicle to see what life might have been like had we made a different choice. Today we're trying out the Winnebago Echo, which retails for over $170,000. We're going to be moving out of our van and into the Echo for the next 48 hours. Home sweet home. We'll be giving you a full tour and doing a side by side compari of the experience so you can see just how much comfort you get for an additional $130,000. But for that additional comfort, you also have to be willing to move into something that looks a little more like an RV than a van.

We rented this van from a company called Flaxford. They're the same ones who rented us the Rebel last year. So if you need an RV in Las Vegas, definitely check them out. Sean gave us a quick tour, and after awkwardly taking possession of the Keys Gu.

Have a wonderful trip.

We drove both vans west to the middle of the desert where we made the move into the Echo. So at this point, we've gotten some driving in, cooked a meal. I love cilantro. Yes, I do. Done a little work, showered and slept in the van. Have you seen any pillows?

No. He said, no one's ever slept in this before.

Good thing we have our van with us.

So now that we've experienced what it's actually like to live in the Echo, let us give you a full tour and show you how it stacks up against our van. I did not mean to do that, but before we get started, I just wanted to say that I have been pleasantly surprised with the Echo so far. Honestly, when we were thinking about doing this video, I was concerned that this was going to end up being a lame rv. Oh, right there. That. That's an rv. But I would actually say it's closer to an Earth roamer for A third of the price you're not going to be getting the stair you would get driving the Earth Roamer down the road. But for the average person, the Echo is a lot more practical and once again, a third the price. First, let's talk about the size. When we first picked up the Echo the other day and I hadn't seen it sitting beside our van, I thought it was going to be way bigger. Then we pulled them side by side and it turns out they are the exact same length. The echo and the 170in wheelbase sprinter van are both 23ft long. I couldn't find a width measurement on the Internet, so this morning I just measured the width of both of them with my arms. Using my best guesstimation, I would say the Winnebago Echo is about a foot wider than the Sprinter van. That definitely makes it feel a little bigger while you're driving down the road. But that extra foot of width on the inside makes a massive difference. Also, our Sprinter van is nine and a half feet tall and the Echo is ten and a half feet tall. So you have an extra foot of headroom.

I'm 6 foot 7 and I can not only stand up, but go like tippy toes in here.

If he tried to do that in our van, he would have to work his neck to about a 90 degree angle to stand up straight. All that to say the Echo and our van are actually very similar in size, but somehow the Echo feels twice as big inside. Kara's going to give you a full tour of the inside so you can see the awesome layout, which includes the most genius bathroom we have ever seen. That's now your shower. Wow. First, let me show you around the outside. Starting with the retractable awning. All I have to do is lean in, push a button, out goes the awning. And then when we're ready to bring it back in, one more press retracts it straight back into the rv. Also, when it gets dark, it has some really cool LED lights.

Retractable stairs. So one massive difference between our van and the Echo is that the Echo is full of outside storage. Storage compartments. It makes it feel and look a little more like an rv, which I don't feel like is quite as cool as van life, but if we're being completely honest, these compartments are super convenient. This first one is a storage compartment. Oh, look, there is actually a little latch here that keeps it from falling on your head if you want to use that. One thing that I love. This is something that our van doesn't Have. This is an outdoor shower. It's really more like an outdoor hose pipe. I always call these outdoor showers. So you plug it in right here, and then you have both a hot and cold water tap.

Why would you do that?

Oh, that was the other thing I wanted to tell you is that there's actually an option on some of the Echoes where you can put an outdoor kitchen in here. It slides out. There's like a freezer, there's a cooktop. So if I was gonna live in the Echo, I'd definitely have one of those installed here because I love anything that encourages you to spend more time outdoors.

I'm gonna have to disagree there. I think I would choose more storage every time.

Hey, thankfully there's a rubber floor in here, so if it gets wet, it's no big deal. I think. Moving back, we have two 120amp outlet, so if you need to plug anything in outside, you can do that. And then down here, I think this is like a cable plug in for a TV. I don't know. We don't really use TVs in this family. And here behind door number two, we have two regular propane tanks. What makes them special is that they're regular. If you live in a van or an RV or a camper, most of these things have these special propane tanks that have to be filled at random locations that can sometimes be hard to locate. So because these are just normal propane tanks, like the ones you would have on your grill at home, it's super easy. Once they get empty, all you have to do is take them out, switch it for a full one. All in all, much less of a headache, you have 30 gallons of propane between these two tanks, which I assume will last you forever. The propane tank in our van is 7 gallons, and we filled it up once since owning the van. Granted, we only use the propane to cook, but still, unless you're constantly running your heat, I bet you have to fill these up once a year.

Another bonus is they're stored outside instead of in your home, where there's less of a chance of getting poison while you sleep.

Okay. The back is home to my favorite feature on the Echo Real quick.

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This is the gear garage. I still cannot believe that I cannot get this unlocked. That the Echo. What in the world?

This thing is huge. So this gear garage is made to fit two bikes. And there's a few things that I especially love about this one. There are 120 volt outlets on each side of the garage. If we own this, we would definitely have two electric bikes back here. Two Super 73s would actually be my dream. The other thing that really impressed me about this gear garage, besides the fact that Karen I could sleep back here, is that there is a heater. So we just spent four weeks living in below freezing temperatures, skiing all around Colorado. And in order for us to store the skis in our van, we had to turn our shower into a ski locker which went just okay. We also couldn't use our shower for an entire month. The Echo would be the perfect ski mobile. Another great thing about this garage is that it can be open from all three sides, which Makes it super easy to slide in long, awkward things like skis and bikes. Apparently that's all I think about doing these days. Honestly, if you needed to fit an extra person in the van, you could easily put a sleeping pad back here and somebody could sleep. So instead of Dusty sleeping on our crummy floor with his face right next to the toilet, he could have his own private space back here. There's even a nightlife and nightlife into a rave back here. Before I show you down the driver's side, I wanted to point out how thick these walls are. This is the amount of insulation that you have all around the Echo. It's four season insulated, which I wouldn't have been able to appreciate except for the fact that we just spent a month living in freezing cold temperatures. In Colorado.

You could live in this van year round very comfortably. And while we're on the topic of four season usability, I wanted to point out that the Echo is all wheel drive. With that said, our two wheel drive, no problem taking us around the snowy parking lots in Colorado. Maybe just.

Don't try to take it up a very steep mountain road with several inches of fresh snow. That only happened once. So the first compartment that we come to on the back driver's side is what you could call the hydration station. This is where you manage all of your water needs. This is a gravity fed water field. Some buttons. Oh, don't know what happened there. You also have a winterization valve. So if you were going to leave your van for a long time and it was cold, you could drain off your lines. That's way easier than having to crawl underneath your back seat like I had to to turn our shower water off. We have another outdoor shower here also. This seems a little dangerous, but it looks like there's a cable and satellite hookup in case you wanted to put an outdoor TV on this side of your van. There is actually a heater to keep all of this warm in the winter. We learned how important that was in our van. Even though we shut off the water to our shower, we brought our gray water inside and we did our best to insulate the floor. And we kept the heater running for a month straight. Our water pipes still froze. It's just a little inconvenient. L giant water bottles. So the heater here is key. This black tubing down here is your gray water dump. Let's give this two extra points. Compared to our van, our current situation is we have this 7 gallon blue water tank that sits under our sink. And we literally have to struggle to pull it out and then break open an icy dump station. You sit there and you pour it in with your hands here. All you have to do is you pull over the gray water dump. You just pull this black lever, and then all of your gray water dumps exactly where it's supposed to put the cap back on, and you're ready to go. And behind this door, we have our cassette toilet. Honestly, I've been on the fence about cassette toilets for a long time. We have a composting toilet in our van, which never stinks most of the time. When we've tried living in things that have cassette toilets, there's a slight smell.

I think I left that open too long.

But the benefit to a cassette toilet is how easy it is to empty. All you have to do is grab. Well, that's embarrassing. Oh, here we go. All you have to do is lift up on this little blue tab, pull out. And now I am holding all of our waste in my hands. This is your dump tube. And that just twist out. Then you unscrew this cap. You could dump it in the toilet. You could dump it at a dump station. You never have to see your waste, which is really nice because we have this. This slightly opaque.

Yeah, for lack of a better word, pee bucket. And every time we need to empty our toilet, we have to carry it through the van. There's always risk of spillage. Carry my pee bucket across the campground. And don't even get me started on emptying the solids portion the of up the toilet.

As a rental company, we do a lot of black tank cleanouts, and we would do a hundred of these versus one traditional class C. The chance that you have to aggressively wash your hands doing a cassette toilet are almost zero. And so it is preferred kind of across the board.

So that just slides back in. This is really exciting. This compartment houses the lithium ion batteries and the inverter. This model has not one, but two 320amp batteries, for a total of 640amps. Our van has 200. I have been super impressed with how well these batteries have held up because we have really put them to the test. Cara dried her hair this morning, but she would never do an hour van. We made two pots of coffee. Anytime in our van, we're doing anything that requires heat because heat pulls a lot of electricity. We always turn our van on. So the alternator charger is running, so it's charging up the batteries at the same time we're pulling that power in the echo. We didn't have to worry about that at all. In the Rebel that we rented last year, you had to be driving in order to recharge the batteries. Here, if you're sitting still as long as you just turn the car on, they start to recharge. I didn't understand this alternator charger thing when we got ours put in, and I'm pretty sure the guy who hooked it up just hooked it up off of our car alternator, which means that eventually that's going to go out and we're probably going to be stuck on the side of the road.

No regrets.

Last but not least, if I bring you up to the top of the van, you can see not one, but three solar panels for a total of 455 watts of solar. This is why the echo was charging up so quickly this morning. We also have three solar panels on top of our van. However, they only pull 300 watts of solar. Also up top, there is an air conditioner and I believe a satellite that was not getting strong enough signal to play the Olymp Picks last night. But we are in the middle of the desert. Oh, yeah. And there's a Max Air fan. That wraps up the tour of the outside. Now we're gonna head inside and let Kara show you the incredibly spacious interior.

Okay. We will start in the front and make our way to the back. The cab is beautiful. It's not that different from our van, but it's seven years newer, so everything is just a little prettier. You know how much I love storage. And there are so many little compartments to put things and so many cup holders. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. It's also gas instead of diesel. I don't really know which one is better, but I do know if it's gas, you don't have to do death fluid, which is super annoying. And then once you're parked, the driver's seat swivels into a living room chair. So it just.

Probably. User error. That's it. To be fair, I can't do this in our van either. Now, this one swivels, too, which is very exciting.

Okay. I am obsessed with this layout. Our van has a big wall right here, so we only have one swivel seat. But once you get parked, you can turn both of these around. You immediately have four places to sit. Our least favorite thing about our van is in order to have a place to sit or a place to work or a place to eat, we have to convert our bed into a table, which never, ever happens. And Here. It's so easy. Watch how quickly I can set this table.

No problem.

The kind of weird thing about this is the cab sits a bit lower than the rest of the van, but they've included two of these cushions. They go in these front two seats, and then you're at a much better height, too. Do whatever you need at the table. So this is where we ate dinner last night. I keep slurping chilies down my throat. We ate my delicious soup, watched the Olympics, looked into each other's eyes. It was lovely. But then we had some work to do, and we discovered a second workspace. Ow. First head bump this man. So this is slightly more inconvenient, but not too bad. All you have to do to set up this second table is. Boop. And I have my very own desk. Do you know how much this means to me? This is a digital nomad's dream. I would consider buying this van just to have this desk. Moving on. Slide it back here. Above the cab is the television, which we are actually really excited about because the Olympics are on right now. But unfortunately, like Nate said, the satellite doesn't reach out here in the desert. But we were able to watch on our computer and use the Bluetooth speaker. In these giant storage holes on either side of the tv, we have all the window covers. Most importantly, this. This giant, soft, insulated blanket. The front of the cab is the only part of the van that isn't insulated. So this was a pretty big deal last night. It got really cold, so Nate snapped it in. And it's nice and snug, so no air escapes.

That was pretty painless.

And it has a big zipper down the middle, so if you needed to get in the front, you could just easily slide through. One thing I forgot to point out about the office slash dining room area is the amount of windows up here. You pretty much have 180 beautiful views of the mountain. And I'm pretty sure these windows are the exact same as the Earth Roamer. They're super nice because they open up.

Why isn't it. There we go. Ours, you can just crack a little bit. We have this permanent screen. I love how you can just have open air if you want to, but if you have bugs, you can very conveniently pull down the bug screen. And if you want some privacy or if you want to keep out the heat or the cold, boom. Instant window covers. These are such a big deal because ours one are super annoying to take on and off, but also they're really annoying to store once you Take them off. You aren't using them. You have to put them somewhere and these just disappear. Thankfully, the table is just as easy to put down as it was to put up. All you do lift it up, boop. And you're ready to go. Plus, these seats double as passenger seats with seat belts. We have never, ever, ever driven with our friends in the back without seatbelts on. So it would be really, really nice to be able to legally drive our friends around. Although I'm not sure where they would sleep. Oh, yeah, in the trunk. We are pretty sure that Winnebago held a focus group whenever they were building the Echo. And they were like, what do you people want? And the people said, we want outlets. And boy, did they give them outlets. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14. Don't look in here yet. This is the grand finale of the bathroom. 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28. Places to charge whatever you want. Like a traveling YouTubers dream. Moving on into the kitchen area, we'll start with some storage. This cabinet is gigantic. If we lived in here full time, this would probably be our pantry. Also, all of the cabinets here have these really strong magnets, so it's not gonna fall on your head. Cabinet number is quite a bit smaller. Over here they have our coffee making stuff. Plates, bowls, cups.

Underneath the sink we have this itty bitty drawer because there's a bunch of pipes behind it. So we just have some cleaning stuff here. We would probably put all of our cutlery in this drawer. In this big drawer we put like plates and bowls and other big tools. Underneath the stove we have this giant storage area that has a trash can and some cleaning supplies. I used this kitchen to make us dinner last night, and I have some mixed feelings. When this is up and I'm using the sink, there is zero counter space. I do like this sink setup where they've made this custom board that when you're not using the sink, it's counter space. You can also flip it over and it becomes a cutting board.

You can also use it to hide your dirty dishes.

Yeah, the propane, it's a two burner stove. I love that they're next to each other and not not stack one in front of the other. And it has this nice little lighter. You just press this button.

I just lost all my arm hangers.

Are you okay? If this was our van, I would definitely get rid of the microwave. We don't ever use microwaves. I don't really feel like you need them. I don't think they're very healthy. And how much could you store here? I guess you could just, like, put stuff in here. So I guess if we had to have this van, if we had to have this van, if we lived in this van, I would just probably put stuff in there. Oh, more storage. There is another little pantry. Oh, my gosh. They pull out. I don't think they're supposed to. Oh, gosh. Let's talk about the control panel. On this touch screen, we can turn our water pump on and off. With just one click, we can look at our battery levels and most importantly, our tank levels. In order to see how much fresh water we have left, we have to turn our bed back into a table, and then we have to lift up the cushion and lift up the wooden thing and then look at our tank and see how much is left. We've been living in here for over 24 hours. We've both taken a normal length hot shower, and. And I did dishes last night without really thinking about water. And we still have 64% left. This box is for all things solar. That I don't understand. We have some more controls down here. This is all of the lights in the back. And then this is the button that Nate was pressing to move the awning in and out. This is the awning light. This button's pretty cool, and I just accidentally pushed it, and it basically turns off all the power in the back. So if you wanted to conserve power or you were leaving it for a while, you could just hit that and you'd be good to go. In our van, we literally have to pull out each individual fuse. Last but not least, in the kitchen, we have this beautiful refrigerator and a pretty good size freezer. I'm gonna save the bathroom as the grand finale, so follow me into the bedroom. Kind of like that. There are stairs. That's kind of fun. But I have mixed feelings about the bed setup. I absolutely love that. It's pretty much a fixed bed. You don't have to do much converting, so I wouldn't change that, but. But it's definitely unique. When I did this last night, I wasn't fully convinced that it was gonna work, but it actually did. So all you do is shove this cushion, and you have a bed. Plenty of room for the two of us. However, this middle bit is a little short. So the way this is, this is.

Definitely going on one of those foot websites. Ew.

But, like, I wasn't gonna sleep over Here and Nate over here. So I ended up sleeping in this middle part with my feet hanging off. So that makes the sheet situation a little tricky too. There's not really a way to put a sheet on whole thing because then you would lose this access to, like, a weird ghost sheet area. But I do love that when you're not using it as a bed, you just simply fold this up and it doubles as like an armrest slash drink holder. Above each side of the bed, we have our own cabinet that holds sheets and some towels.

Plus, I love the two giant windows on both sides. Now, beneath the bed is where things get really exciting. I think the reason this bed is so comfortable is because you have about 6 inches of memory foam. But beneath that, you have these weird squishy things that I think are kind of meant to be the replacement of a box spring under a mattress. Like, it just gives you a little extra give. I've never seen that before. But what really blew my mind is if you lift this up.

What? There is lots of storage underneath the bed. And I remember from our time in the Revel thinking it wasn't really a full time setup. It was a lot more of like a weekend adventure mobile. But here we actually have a place to put all of our clothes and stuff. There's also another secret compartment back here where you could store a bunch of stuff. I picture putting, like, I don't know, like, papers and documents here, which, surprisingly, it's hard to find a place to put that stuff when you live in a van. Then you have this giant cabinet which you can access from the front or once again, above. By the way, this is on both sides. I don't know if I made that clear. We have never been in a van that had enough power to sustain an AC unit without being plugged in. And since we camp off the grid 99 of the time, that doesn't really do much for us. But this one can run for 20 minutes just off of the battery. There's nothing worse than falling asleep. So sweating not that bad.

No, not when you spread out like.

This for the maximum cooling. And now for the grand finale of the Winnebago Echo. The bathroom. When Sean was giving us a tour, he really hyped up the bathroom.

He said, so without a doubt, the best bathroom configuration that I've ever seen in the RV industry.

So my expectations were pretty high. And then he opened the door and he was like, this is it. And I must say, I was a little underwhelmed. I mean, it's a Great bathroom, but just wait for it. Okay, so first we have plenty of space. I really like how there is a curtain and or a door. So total privacy, which Nate really appreciates. There's also a window in here, so when you do have to go number two, you can crack that window. And I think it makes a pretty big difference. We have a cassette toilet like Nate mentioned. If you're unfamiliar with them, quick lesson. You pretty much use it exactly, exactly like a regular toilet. Everything goes to one place and then instead of flushing, you open this lever and everything falls. You run a little water to flush and then you close it back up. In our experience, cassette toilets have a bit more of a smell than composting toilets, but they are very convenient because you don't have to worry about where your liquids and solids are going. You don't have to aim. And then you just have one thing to dump. We have a cute little sink, a nice mirror, got a bit of storage space. But where is the shower? Here's where things get really fun. Ready? You just move this magic door. Tada. We now have a full size shower. There is great water pressure and it, yeah, just worked like a normal shower. But my favorite part is this wall, like contains all of the water. So when you're done and you go back to a regular restroom, the only thing that's wet is the floor. All this stuff stayed dry, including the toilet in our shower, every inch of the walls are wet. I even left my toiletry bag right here. So even if they're stuffed somehow, it all still fits when you move the wall over. So pretty amazing. And I have to agree with Sean. It's the best setup I've seen. Are we done? Is that everything?

So that is the full tour of the Winnebago Echo. Let the point show that it is much nicer than our van, but it also costs an extra $130,000. But you could also look at it as it costs $480,000 less than the Earth Roamer. And I think the Echo is actually a much better comparison to the Earth Roamer than it is to our van. I feel like during these tours we're always a little negative towards our van, but the truth is we know it's not the best, but after living in it for two years, it's just home. So tomorrow we're moving back into our home and we are continuing the next section of this 3,000 mile road trip for Vegas to LA.