If you're looking at selecting a stove for use outdoors, whatever you get, don't underestimate the importance of a really good windscreen.

I may have mentioned this before on this forum, but last year my son had to do a science fair project and ended up testing backpacking stove (Whisperlite) boil times with and without the windscreen with a very light breeze. The difference was amazing - beyond my expectation.

He ran this in the back corner of our garage to remove outside sources of wind. He started with a fan at high (5.5 mph breeze as measured by my Brunton ADC Wind meter) but he couldn't get water to go above 170F, so he lowered the fan speed to low. Then he was concerned that about the definition of "boil", so he measured time to take one quart (4 cups) of water from about 50F to 190F.

Here are the results:

With Windscreen, but no lid: 6:30 (min:sec)and 8:10
Without Windscreen, but no lid: 16:45 and >22:00*
Windscreen & foil Lid (w/ thermometer poked through): 4:45

*He actually gave up after 22 minutes because he simply couldn't get the temp to go above 180F. We're not sure why he got it up to temperature once, but not twice. It was getting later into the early evening and it was getting a bit colder out. That's all we could think of. The times were captured in the order shown above.

Ken K.