Anybody have a chance to play with one of these? It looks to be a simple rocket stove with some sort of thermal generator to make electric power built in.

Is it useful, or just a gimmick?

It is a bit heavy (2 lbs, one oz-nearly a kilogram) and expensive ($129) for backpacking, but it does get favorable reviews at REI. It is probably better for car camping applications that for hiking/backpacking trips.

If one is into burning wood, just go to a traditional campfire. I started using stoves and commercial fuel in order to be able to go out 1)above timberline 2) in any weather and 3) avoid safety issues involved with a campfire.

Like most of us,I drag along various electronics trips these days. i make sure batteries are fully charged, or I carry spares. Usually the extra weight is only a few ounces.

There was a thread about them sometime back:
http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=256698

I recieved one as a gift last year. The heat of the stove charges a battery that runs a fan to provide draft for the stove. When it gets hot enough it will also charge an iphone. It actually seems to work pretty well, both in terms of heat output and charging an iphone. (I haven't tried to use it to charge my ipad.)

The main drawback is that it is rather heavy if one is backpacking. For that reason I haven't used it much. It would probably be OK as long as you don't need to carry it in a pack. I'll be doing a bit of car camping in the near future, and I may take the Biolite along and see if it works to charge my ipad.

It's bulky but I've had mine for a while (got it right when they came out). It does seem to work as advertised but I haven't used it a ton. It does burn very hot and with virtually no smoke.

If you have a car would you not use that to charge items?

I have always thought this was a solution looking for a problem.

I was looking at the car camping trip as just a convenient opportunity to play with the biolite. When driving I would of course use the car to charge the phone. However, if hanging out in a campground, starting the car just to charge a phone would seem like a rather inefficient method?
Perhaps. As noted I recieved it as a gift. I probably would not have bought it on my own.

The biolite could be useful in a couple of situations. Once it gets going it burns hot with very little smoke. I keep it stashed with our emergency supplies at home. In the event of a power outage I can make some coffee or soup, and keep my phone charged. I also have a flashlight that can be charged with a USB. As noted, the main issue is that the biolite is quite heavy.

The Biolite works really well as a stove, that's the edge it has vs your car. And while it's kind of heavy for what it does it's not too heavy to pack.

After having the stove and using it I do think it's a non-essential piece of gear, but a useful one. While it seems to be well made I would be leery of trusting it as my only stove and means of electricity. Anything with forced-induction would be useless if the fan died.

But I do like messing around with mine. And when the new, larger "Base Camp" version comes out I think that might be a winner.

I thought the Basecamp version would be a little bigger, but that's a much bigger stove and the electrical output is also higher. Nice.

It really would be useful for a base camp! A little spendy but I bet it's gonna be awesome to cook on. The heat that comes off my small Biolite is impressive, that new one must really get hot and it's big enough for serious cooking.

My wife and I just spent a few days doing a bit of late season sea kayaking. We were across Kachemak Bay from the town of Homer, Alaska. Due to the relative nearness of Homer, we knew we would have fair cell coverage from several places in and around where we were paddling. It seemed like a good chance to do some realistic field testing of the Biolite stove I recieved as a gift sometime back. What we found was that it would charge our phones, but it is a rather slow and tedious process.

As noted previously, the Biolite has an internal battery that runs a small fan to enhance the burning of small sticks. A thermal-electric device converts heat to electricity which keeps the stove's battery charged. Excess electricity is available to charge small electronic devices via a USB port. The problem is that the stove's internal electronics periodically diverts power to keep the stove battery charged. During this time, no power goes to the USB port. Thus your phone only charges part of the time the stove is burning. I didn't keep close track, but it seemed like the phone would only charge about half the time the stove was running.

My iPhone 4 was only partly discharged, and I could, over about an hour, top off the charge on my phone. My wife had let her iPhone 5 run way down. We were able to charge it up enough for her to retrieve some text messages. To fully recharge her phone would have been possible, but would have taken a loooong timmmme! Previous testing (at home) has shown that the Biolite does not put out enough power to recharge my iPad Mini, which requires more juice than a phone.

Key Takeaway Points:
1. The Biolite works fairly well as a small stove to boil water. Because of the fan, once you get it going you can even burn slightly damp wood.
2. It is too heavy for backpacking, but is OK if you don't need to carry it on your back.
3. It is reasonable to use the Biolite to top off a smart phone battery after modest use of the phone.
4. To fully recharge a very low phone batter would be possible, but would be tedious in the the extreme.
5. The Biolite would not recharge my iPad Mini at all. It just doesn't put out enough juice.