We are shopping for a travel trailer 21-26 feet long that weighs in around 4000 lbs. because our tow vehicle is a short wheelbase pickup. At the top of my short 7 trailer list is the 200VML, or at least it was. Last week I learned it only has a 1 year warranty on both the basic trailer and the roof. Most manufacturers have a 10-12 year warranty on the roof be it fiberglass, TPO, or EPDM. I sent emails to both Sonic and parent company KZ looking for answers. Neither responded which is further cause for concern. So I started looking further.
The cut-away in the Sonic brochure at
https://www.venture-rv.com/brochures...s-Brochure.pdf deserves a little study. All the rafters are aluminum (good) except the front 4 or 5 are wood (not so good) for some reason (strength?). Next comes "construction board", an ominous term usually reserved for cheap kitchen cabinets that can mean anything from OSB to fiberboard. In any case it has to be very thin (1/4"?) and flexible to fit around the front and particularly the rear radii. Next comes the continuous sheet of fiberglass, which is a good thing in itself, were it not for the structure underneath. I don't know how it is all held together, since it can be neither vacuum bonded nor "pinched" because of the one piece construction of the front, roof, and back and because you cannot bond to "residential fiberglass insulation". As an aside, have you ever seen the soggy mess you have when such insulation gets wet?...nuf said.
So this all leads to the inevitable question of how good the roof structure is. 1 year warranty good? Most manufacturers have a roof ladder as optional and/or state somewhere in their literature that the roof is fully "walkable". Sonic does neither. I suspect if you put your foot anywhere other than on a rafter, you would poke a hole in the roof. Understand all this is conjecture, I have had no personal experience with the Sonic.
As others have noted, info and reviews on the web are few and far between on the Sonic, perhaps because it is fairly new on the market, I think. In any case, unless I can get some really good reliable warm fuzzies from somewhere, the Sonic sadly comes off the short list. The pinched sides concern me a little bit, but otherwise it appears to be a great trailer at a great price, with a long list of standard features. Ideally Sonic marketing would chip in and say the roof is warranted for 10 years, and you can walk on it anywhere you want to, but doubt that is going to happen.
Sorry this got so long, hope it helps someone other than me getting it off my chest and hoping for some answers.