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See why.Backpacking Stoves
Lightweight and easy to assemble, backpacking stoves are designed to make trailside cooking stress-free. We found two that perform well and are easy to use.
By Grace KellyPublished Oct. 27, 2021
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What You Need To Know
We tested a variety of backpacking stoves, examining their ability to not only boil water but also sauté and simmer backcountry fare. Our winners, the Soto WindMaster Stove with 4Flex and the Jetboil MightyMo, were incredibly lightweight and easy to assemble; both stoves allowed us to cook everything from boil-and-eat backpacking meals to scrambled eggs with precision and ease. If you want maximum stability and wind resistance, go for the stove from Soto. If you’re after precise heat control, opt for the model from Jetboil.
What You Need to Know
The sun is shining, the birds are twittering, and you’ve decided to go off the grid and take a backpacking trip in the great outdoors. While a good tent, backpack, and sleeping bag are essential, so is a lightweight stove to cook your meals (nobody’s hauling a heavy car camping stove on the Appalachian Trail!). Enter backpacking stoves, aka the tiniest, lightest stoves you’ve probably ever set eyes on.
This type of stove is most often used by backpackers to boil water to rehydrate shelf-stable, freeze-dried backpacking food. For our testing, we selected stoves that claimed to have precise heat control so that we could perform some simmering and gentle sautéing tasks (e.g., cooking items such as instant rice and beans or rehydrated chili) as well as boil water. Other important qualities on our list included having a stable cooking surface and performing well even in windy conditions.
Fuel compatibility is another important feature to consider when choosing a backpacking stove. There are two popular options: liquid fuel–compatible stoves and gas canister–compatible stoves. Liquid fuel stoves come with empty fuel bottles that can be filled with a variety of liquid fuels, including white gas, kerosene, and gasoline. Gas canister stoves rely on nonrefillable gas fuel canisters that contain a blend of isobutane and propane. We chose to limit this testing’s lineup to stoves that are compatible with gas fuel canisters, because these canisters weigh less than liquid fuel canisters (important when backpacking) and are easier to connect to the stove. The one exception was the MSR WhisperLite Universal stove, which is designed to use either fuel type, though we tested it with only an isobutane-propane gas canister.
What to Look For
- Refined Heat Control: Stoves that claim to have good heat control offer the ability to not only rapidly boil water but also gently simmer and sauté. Many of the stoves we tested performed these tasks well, but one stove, the Jetboil MightyMo, stood out. Its heat adjustability was super-refined; we could clearly see the flame subtly changing size ...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Heat Control: 2 stars out of 3.
- Stability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
Weighing less than a deck of cards, this model is small but mighty. The highly serrated 4Flex four-armed pot support ensured that our backpacking pots and pans sat securely on the stove—no slipping or sliding. Plus, the pot support is removable and collapsible, making this backpacking stove ultracompact. The Soto also lived up to its “windmaster” claim, boiling water in an astonishingly fast 4 minutes and 19 seconds when set near a fan blowing 8-mile-per-hour wind. Heat control was the only feature that the Soto struggled with; to raise and lower the heat, we had to turn the fuel-adjuster knob around and around before the flame grew or shrunk. However, we were still able to gently sauté onions and scramble eggs like pros and simmer grocery-store backpacker Alfredo without a hitch.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Heat Control: 3 stars out of 3.
- Stability: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 2 stars out of 3.
Our favorite aspect of the Jetboil MightyMo stove was its fuel-adjuster knob, which provided nuanced and even heat control, going from low to medium to high heat smoothly. It made delicately scrambling eggs and simmering a pot of grocery-store backpacker Alfredo an easy and refined experience. The built-in piezo igniter was another great feature; to get the stove started, we just opened the fuel-adjuster valve and pressed the igniter. On the downside, we had some difficulty extending and folding the pot supports after multiple uses—the metal seemed to warp slightly and catch on the bottom of the burner. Also, when faced with steady wind, the stove took more than 10 minutes to boil 2 cups of water. The pot supports were also slightly less grippy than those of other stoves, so some cookware slid around. However, Jetboil sells a pot and a skillet separately that promise to solve these issues. We tested both and found that the skillet sat very stably on the stove, and the pot did decrease the time to boil water against wind, boiling in 4 minutes and 33 seconds. This was slightly slower than the Soto model, but not by much. Overall, we recommend buying Jetboil cookware for your Jetboil stove for the best results.
Recommended with reservations
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Heat Control: 2 stars out of 3.
- Stability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
A classic among backpacking stoves, this model is especially loved by globe-trotting backpackers since it is compatible with both isobutane-propane gas canisters and liquid fuels. So if you travel to a place where they have only jet fuel (yes, you can power this stove with jet fuel), you can still make a meal. However, this fuel adaptability also means that it is a bit larger and more unwieldy than the other stoves we tested, with a dangling fuel line that made screwing in the fuel canister challenging. On the plus side, this model’s larger size meant that pots and pans sat securely on its pot supports, and its included windscreen and heat reflector significantly reduced the time it took for water to come to a boil in windy conditions. We found its heat-adjustment capability a little finicky, with the stove making a sputtering sound when we set it to high heat and threatening to go out a few times when we turned it to ultralow. However, once we dialed in on a heat level, it did a decent job of simmering the grocery-store backpacker Alfredo.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
- Heat Control: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Stability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
With its squat shape and four pot supports, this model was very stable. That said, assembling it was a challenging process that involved screwing on a valve unit to connect the fuel canister to the burner—lose this section, and you won’t eat! It failed miserably when faced with wind; we gave up after waiting nearly 15 minutes for the water to boil. As for its heat control, there seemed to be two settings: low and high, though if you fiddled enough you might be able to set the flame level somewhere in between the two. But even with this lack of nuance, we were able to simmer grocery-store backpacker Alfredo and sauté onions without any burning. Overall, it was a good enough stove, but it wasn’t as easy to use as the others.
Not Recommended
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
- Heat Control: 1 stars out of 3.
- Stability: 1 stars out of 3.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
This little stove was easy to screw onto the fuel canister, but whatever points it earned for ease of use and its tiny size were negated by the poor performance of its other features. The squat burner sat too close to cookware, and the fuel-adjuster knob got too hot to handle. This stove made a sputtering sound when we adjusted the heat to a very low level. Coupled with slippery pot supports that resulted in near spills on more than one occasion, we found this little stove too risky to use comfortably.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
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