Found a $20 camping stove that boiled water faster than my $80 one

I grabbed a random butane stove from a discount bin in Denver before a trip last month, expecting it to be junk. Set it up next to my fancy MSR PocketRocket 2 and timed both boiling a liter of water. The cheap one beat it by 45 seconds, and the fuel canisters are half the price. Anyone else had a no-name piece of gear surprise them?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendy7219d ago

45 seconds faster? That's honestly hard to believe. I've had a PocketRocket for years and it's been pretty reliable for me. But you're saying a no-name burner from a discount bin actually outperformed it on boil time and fuel cost? I'd be curious to know if it held up over multiple trips or if it crapped out after a few uses.

morgan_butler19d ago

Forty five seconds on a boil time is barely a blip anyway, not exactly a game changer for most trips unless you're racing an egg timer. A cheap burner might get the water hot a little faster once, but I've seen too many of those things flame out or start leaking after a few meals to trust them for a week in the backcountry. Seems like a lot of fuss over a marginal difference that probably doesn't matter much in the real world.