Jetboil Stove (Jetboil Personal Cooking System) REVIEW

The Jetboil Personal Cooking System ("Jetboil Stove") has the potential to revolutionize backcountry cooking. The MSR XG-K white gas stove and Alpine XPD Cook Set / Heat Exchanger brought a new level of lightweight fuel efficiency to backcountry cooking in the 1970s. Can the Jetboil Stove do the same for ultralight canister stove enthusiasts in the 21st century? The innovative engineering of the Jetboil Stove provides the foundation for one of the most fuel efficient canister stove setups we’ve tested. The Jetboil Stove excels in cold and windy conditions where its integrated cooking cup/burner and increased fuel efficiency extends a canister’s useful burn life. In addition to increases in fuel efficiency, the thoughtful design of the Jetboil Stove adds many functional improvements to the backcountry kitchen. At $79, the Jetboil Personal Cooking System is an attractive price for a complete cooking setup. On the downside, the Jetboil Stove is still a quarter-to-half pound heavier than the lightest canister stove and titanium pot/cup cooking setups. For shorter trips (the length of which depends on your cooking style), the increased fuel efficiency of the Jetboil Stove will not save enough fuel to make up for the additional weight of its components. Although the system's cooking cup has a one liter capacity, the manufacturer recommends a maximum boiling capacity of only two cups. This makes it useful only as a solo cooking system. In comparison, a competing canister system with a 1.3 liter pot is several ounces lighter and can easily handle the cooking for two. In this comprehensive Jetboil Stove review, we’ll cover the strengths and weaknesses of the Jetboil Stove as we put it head to head with more conventional stove and pot setups (based on systems using the Snow Peak Giga Power Stove and the Brunton Crux Stove). This review includes summary data from approximately 600 individual boil tests (both lab and field). In reading it, you’ll learn a lot about canister stove performance that is independent of the products offered by Jetboil, Brunton, and Snow Peak. In particular, we assess in detail, the performance of the Jetboil Stove in cold and windy conditions, and evaluate its weight and efficiency relative to other canister stove cooking setups, offering some valuable data for the hiker considering making the switch to a Jetboil Personal Cooking System.