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Lunar Lexon 560
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Key Features

Model Year 2012
Class Single Axle
Price From (£) 17,895
Internal Length (m) 5.79
Shipping Length (m) 7.36
MRO (kg) 1270
MTPLM (kg) 1,430
Max Width (m) 2.28
External Height (m) 2.65
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At a glance

Buy this if you don’t like living in your bedroom!

Full review

The Lexon 560’s layout creates three very separate areas. The lounge, kitchen and bedroom are distinct rooms. This is achieved by aligning the island bed across the caravan, at the rear, with the shower room on the offside, opposite the kitchen. You could draw a line straight across the caravan where the bedroom ends and the kitchen and shower room area begins, and then another line where the lounge begins. The result is that the 560 looks and feels a much larger caravan than its 5.76m body length. Viewed from the lounge, the bedroom looks a long way away. Ingenious though this layout its, it sacrifices the convenience of having the shower room adjacent to the bedroom.

At 1.6m long and 76cm wide, the shower room is small by comparison with shower rooms that span the whole width of the caravan. Yet the shower, at 64cm x 73cm, is plenty large enough. The wheel arch intrudes into the shower tray shape but the upside is that this creates a shelf for shampoo bottles. Lunar thoughtfully puts in a rail across the top of the shower; it’s useful for towels, or drying clothes. Another feature we like is the water-saving shower head. There’s an air intake aperture at the base of the handle; when you turn on the shower, air and water mix, which creates a stronger water pressure. At the same time, it reduces the amount of water used; Lunar tells us these shower heads use 20 per cent less water. We have the same shower head in our long-term test Bailey Unicorn Barcelona and can vouch for its effectiveness in delivering increased water pressure, although we haven’t yet found a method of accurately measuring the amount of water we use. Sometimes caravan testing could get too deep! The Lexon 560’s washbasin is small; best described as a wash-hand basin rather than somewhere to wash your face. That’s because the high-arch tap drops water just forward of the centre of the basin, with the result that when you wash your face you could splash water over your feet, too. Best make for the shower, then! The mirror is delightfully large, with a pretty row of LED lights above it. There’s a triple-shelf unit alongside the mirror and a small cabinet under the washbasin. We think this cabinet is too small to contain all the showering requisites you need – but there’s no shortage of storage space in the bedroom, so some items would find their way there…

The 560’s bedroom is quite simply a superb environment. You can walk along three sides of the bed. There are two wardrobe units, each with a drawer and a shoe cupboard. And a dressing table spans the whole 1.92m length of the bedroom. By comparison with many island beds, this one is slightly shorter, at 1.83m (6 feet). But it’s full standard domestic bed width, at 1.34m. The mattress is deep, sprung and feels firmly comfortable. Interestingly, when you raise the bed base to access the storage area beneath, you realise that the bed box is 30cm shorter than the bed base, with the result that there is 30cm of floor space under the foot of the bed. That makes it easier to walk past the edge of the bed. The dressing table is symmetrical, with cabinets and shelves on each end and a slightly curved shelf area connecting the two. The top of each cabinet hinges up to reveal a small recess – a very neat alternative to a drawer, which would have to be pulled out into the walk-space. The best bit about this bedroom is that it feels so separate from the rest of the caravan, so cosy and complete. You can watch television in the bedroom if you wish; there’s a wall bracket near the dressing table and aerial and power sockets nearby.

Even though the under-bed storage area is 30cm shorter than the amount of space under a bed without the cut-away section, there’s still a huge space under here. Access is compromised slightly by a strengthening bar that runs across mid-way. Nonetheless, we found that lifting our high-back, aluminium-framed folding chairs into here was no problem. Usually, island beds back onto the rear of the caravan, so you can’t have an exterior access hatch. The 560’s transverse bed, though, backs onto the nearside wall, so Lunar has been able to create access from the outside. The more we examined this caravan, the more we were impressed by all sorts of features that add up to a great package. The storage boxes under the lounge seating are accessed via drop-down doors, each with two handles. Eye-level storage is plentiful; two lockers above the bed and four more surrounding the lounge. The side lockers each have shelves, which are removable for storing tall items. We think we’d remove them anyway, because they are made of very lightweight, thin wood and they tend to flex under even small loads.

With a length of 1.5m, the settees are long enough for relaxing with your feet up, even though they’re not long enough to create single beds. Bolsters at each end are squashy enough to sink into and two cushions are provided to ensure you can get cosy here. But there’s a slight puzzle in the lounging arena. The obvious place for a television is on the dresser that incorporates the Truma heater, on the offside. There’s a mains socket here – but no aerial socket. The only aerial socket in the lounge is at floor level near to the front of the chest of drawers. That means putting your television on the front table – which is fine unless you habitually want to use this space for eating (at the pull-out table) or coffee or drinks or your book…

The table slides into a section inside the kitchen cupboard. It’s very light to handle, which is nice. But its folding leg unit is made of lightweight metal. As a result, when you apply knife-and-fork pressure to a plate, the table wobbles very slightly. In a caravan whose principal appeal is to couples, we don’t see this as too detrimental, because most meals would be taken at the pull-out table that extends from the front central chest of drawers.

A 40cm-wide food preparation surface to the left of the sink is plenty large enough to make meals for two without juggling plates and chopping boards. When you place the large circular cover over the sink you increase the usable surface to a width of 94cm, stretching all the way to the hob. Although the sink cover is raised above the level of the surface, it’s a very workable and practical arrangement. The hob is dual fuel (three burners plus an electric hotplate). Short people might say the microwave is too high, and may have to take extra care when lifting hot items at top-locker height. How much this matters to you depends not just on your stature but on how often you use a microwave. If you’re a habitual microwave cook, we’d suggest you don’t let this put you off the caravan – just buy a small microwave and use it in your awning. Or you could order your caravan without a microwave; in its place Lunar will put a cabinet – and it will cost you nothing extra. Shelf depths in the lower cabinet are 40cm and 34cm. That’s enough for tall cereal packets and two-litre soft drinks bottles. The cabinet is 25cm wide, which means you have enough space for the food needs of two and more here. The cutlery drawer at the top of this cabinet is divided into four sections and is just about large enough to contain utensils as well as place settings. If you need more drawer space, for kitchen stuff, you can use the drawer above the heater in the dresser opposite. Lighting is a feature of Lunar kitchens this year. A strip of bright LEDs runs the entire width of the kitchen, under the edge of the top lockers. This isn’t just pretty lighting – these are large LEDs that give good illumination on the worktop, exactly where you need it.

Build 8/10 Lunar manages to achieve lightness of weight at the same time as creating furniture that is solidly constructed and robust. There’s nothing plastic (except the attractive white frosted inserts on the top kitchen cupboards). All the furniture has nicely rounded edges.

Towing 9/10 There’s something really special about the 560. This is not just a well-balanced caravan that passed its tow test with flying colours, zipping along at 60 stably. The special bit is about field of vision. With a tall tow vehicle, the driver can see through the 560, and get a useful view of following traffic through the bedroom window. We find caravans with this asset make for more relaxed towing, because the more you can see, the more towing becomes just like driving solo; we all tend to take rear-view mirror vision for granted. And when it came to arrival at our test site, Little Orchard Caravan Park, I used the through-view to assess distance to the back of the pitch as I reversed into it. Easy!
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Our verdict

A great layout with lots of features that make this model different – and practical

Advantages

The driver’s view through the caravan!
The lovely, large dressing table
The way the bed is tucked away from the living area

Disadvantages

The table that wobbles slightly when you apply pressure to cut food
The small washbasin

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