Thanks to their built-in piezo lighters, both Jetboil stoves are easy to light under windy conditions, while firing up the Reactor requires keeping a match or lighter going in the wind. The Jetboil GCS performed poorly in the wind, needing 18:26 to boil a liter, and burning more than twice as much fuel to do so as in calm conditions. 3:22) to boil its smaller half-liter cup. The Jetboil PCS didn’t fair as well, taking a full minute longer (4:22 vs. In an 8 mph wind the Reactor boiled a liter of water in 3:16, just several seconds longer (and using no more fuel) than in calm conditions. But the Reactor is the only design that completely encloses the burner. But even a small breeze can have a big impact on a stove’s performance, sapping heat away from the pot and into the passing air, so we also conducted tests in an 8 mph wind.Īll three stoves’ heat exchangers help to shelter their burners from the wind, giving them a distinct advantage over traditional canister stove designs. Most stove tests are conducted under controlled laboratory conditions – conditions you’ll probably never replicate in the backcountry. No worries about singeing your hands while stirring these pots. The trade-off for this level of efficiency is in boil times (see above).īecause of their efficient use of energy, all three stoves put off very little residual heat. That translates to 22 and 24 liters per 220-gram canister. This design makes the Jetboil stoves very fuel-efficient: in our tests the PCS and GCS averaged 10 grams and 9 grams of fuel, respectively, per liter boiled. Instead of blasting the pot with as much thermal energy as possible – and losing much of it up the sides – the Jetboil burner is calibrated so that the heat exchanger captures the stove’s energy before it escapes up the sides of the pot. They feature burners that sip fuel at a decidedly slower rate than most canister stoves. The Jetboil stoves were designed with efficiency foremost in mind. The stoves were fueled with an 80/20 Isobutane/Propane mix from 220-gram canisters and operated at maximum output. The GCS averaged 6:51 per liter boiled and the PCS averaged 6:44 per liter boiled (3:22 for its half-liter capacity), achieving low times of 6:20 and 6:37 per liter on a full canister, respectively.Ībout the tests: All of our tests were performed using 69° F air and water temperatures. The Jetboil stoves didn’t live up to the speedy performance that their name implies. The Jetboil GCS is more oriented toward actual cooking, while retaining boil times similar to the PCS. That’s great if your backcountry diet consists mainly of dehydrated meal packets, but if you’re interested in creating culinary delights, these stoves are probably not for you. The Jetboil PCS and the MSR Reactor feature deep, narrow pots that are designed primarily for boiling water quickly and efficiently. While the pot will hold a liter of water, Jetboil cautions that the maximum safe boiling capacity is only 2 cups (approximately half a liter). It’s essentially a 1-liter insulted aluminum mug that attaches to a burner via Jetboil’s FluxRing heat exchanger – a ring of aluminum fins that conduct heat from the PCS’s burner into the pot. In 2003, the Jetboil Personal Cooking System (PCS) was the first integrated canister stove to hit the market. Jetboil Personal Cooking System (PCS), and.the Jetboil Group Cooking System (GCS),.How do they stack up? We put three integrated canister stove systems to the test in an Integrated Canister Stove Showdown: These stoves promise faster boil times, increased fuel efficiency, and greater convenience than their forebears. Today the cutting edge of backcountry cooking technology is the integrated canister stove: cooking systems that mate a compressed-fuel burner with a specially designed pot and high-efficiency heat exchanger. In the beginning there was the humble campfire.
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