The Outdoor Gear Review: You Should Avoid this Stove – Large Esbit Stove

The One You Should Avoid!

As you may know, Esbit offers a number of their small foldable stoves with each one varying in size.  This is the Largest one and it is worse in just about every single way.

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Esbit Large Size Solid Pocket Stove 

What it is : Over the last couple of months, I have been testing out and reviewing Esbit’s line of Solid Fuel stoves; there are 3, a small, regular and large size and what has surprised me the most is the differences between them all.

In this episode I will be focusing on my thoughts of the large size stove.

Price : $31 – this includes the stove and 12 14g Hexamine tablets 

Weight : 6.1oz for the stove; the stove and 12 fuel fuel cubes is 12.4oz

Materials : 

Stove is made from Galvanized steel

Fuel Tablets are Hexamine which is toxic to breathe in.

With the larger size Esbit stove, one can use this as a wood stove but because the size of the stove is so small, you will be limited to burning very small pieces of wood.  It can get it to work in a pinch but a dedicate wood burning stove is going to give you a much better overall experience than this will for that purpose.

Size : about 3” x 5 x 1.5” thick 

Three cooking positions 

Review Pros :

Plain and simple to use

Easy to setup, easy to break down.

The fuel is easy to ignite in calm conditions; it requires a few seconds of steady flame to burn.

14g fuel tablets offer excellent burn times; the company claims 12 minutes but over 15 is common.  With the larger 25g tablets, they will burn for over 20 minutes easy.

Also, Hexamine works great at high elevations and in sub-zero conditions. 

Good quality 

Lightweight

Can be used with other fuels not just those from Esbit – also multiple sizes.  

Can hold multiple fuel tablets – easy a few days worth of fuel

Because the walls are retractable, you can use this with a variety of pots, cups and pans…..but not all.

Review Cons : 

The large size stove in my opinion is a bit of a step backward when compared to the other models; yes it is larger but that doesn’t mean that it is going to perform better or even as good as the two small size stoves.

Expensive – the smaller version of this stove in my opinion offer a great value for the money – with this stove, I feel that this metric is beginning to go in the opposite direction – this is flat out expensive for a galvanized steel stove considering what it does and its overall performance.

There is no wind screen and this does have a negative impact on overall performance.  Because of this, you have to either bring a windscreen or make one.

Talking about the fuel, it can be hard to ignite in windy conditions 

Because the stove is larger, it won’t work with some cups and pots whereas the smaller stoves will work with just about any size cup, pot or pan.

My 750ml pot doesn’t work well with this stove – at the smallest level it doesn’t sit well; you can make it work but it’s not very stable.  The second stage positioning doesn’t work at all. At the 3rd stage which has the pot supports completely vertical, it doesn’t work at all.

Fuel – it’s toxic to breathe in when it is burning and it absolutely stinks.  Smells like shrimp even though the package. When I’m out with this type of stove and fuel, I will double bag it….for my protection! Lol 

Because of the larger stove, you can use more than one fuel tablet at a time and that does assist with better boil times than the smaller stoves.

Summary :

When it comes to the general design of this stove, it is one that is tried and true; used by outdoorsman, military forces and even rescue organizations around the world.

That is true with the smaller sizes; that isn’t the case with the larger size stove and that’s because it tends to be more of a specific situation stove instead of a use any time for any purpose solution. 

If you have a specific need to use solid fuel in conjunction with larger pots/pans/cups, this is an option but doesn’t feel like a product that is the best that it can be. The simple fact is that with this you will find limitations whereas with the smaller version those limitations aren’t present.

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