Biolite2 stove hands-on review
Prepper’s stove 2.0
Charge your iPhone while watching the world coming to an end!
At least, that’s the idea. There is a heat-to-energy converter: you can charge your phone while cooking dinner. And yes, it’s amazing.
After years of using my SoloStove Titan (check out my long term review!), I finally decided to treat myself with a BioLite2 stove! For those who don’t know about the Solo stove… let’s just say that’s my all-time favourite stove! I used it over 500 times in the last four years. It is the ultimate stove. Here, this is what a solo stove looks like in action:
Solostove Titan
Why upgrading? Well, when I decided to bug out back to North America due to COVID19, I had to leave the Jeep behind (in Argentina). I didn’t want to bring back all of my camping gear in my suitcase. So I just packed the essential and flew to NA. I knew that I needed a solostove for life in North America. But the price difference between the two stoves was negligible… and so I took the Biolite2 path. And so far, zero regrets! It’s actually amazing!
Here, making my morning coffee!
It’s a pretty stove, that’s for sure.
The Biolite 2 gets hotter than the Solostove. Much hotter. There is a fan that kicks in whenever there is a fire getting started in the stove. It recirculates the air and burns much of the smoke.
There are three settings: low, normal and high. At the highest setting, it burns wood extremely quickly. It does, however, generate so much heat that your coffee gets ready much quicker than a fanless wood stove. It’s extraordinary how little effort it takes… no more blowing into the stove to get it started or to get it burning!
It gets better: the orange battery pack also delivers enough power (when the stove is heating) to charge an iPad Pro! It’s amazing. You can charge your phone while making your coffee. I thought it was going to be gimmicky… But after using it a dozen times in the last three weeks… It’s actually an underrated stove.
It’s around $100 USD when it gets on sale… at that price, it’s a no-brainer!
This is a shorter review than usual. I need to go camping and to use it a bit more to make a decent review. It will come.
It works better with wood pellets than tinder and sticks: it burns so quick that you’ll be feeding it every 5 minutes. It is less relaxing than a solostove, where you can just let it do its thing and come back fifteen minutes later. I will experiment with charcoal tomorrow and see how long it can last without refeeding.
Come back this weekend on the blog… I’ll add maybe more pictures and a new review.
Cheers,
JP