A Coleman F1 and an MSR titanium kettle that I've been using for 5 weighs about the same as this. Don't forget it's the unglamorous gas bottle that's the heavy bit!
In fact if you look closely at the primus site you will see that the 230 gramme canister contains that amount of gas but canister and gas combined weight 390g i.e. about twice the weight of the pot and stove combined.
By a weird coincidence, last night I weighted the following items from my two person catering set: Coleman F1 stove, MSR Ti kettle, Alpkit MytiPot, 2 x alpkit Tifoon, plastic lighter, cut down dish washing sponge, Primus Powergas 100 cartridge, small Nalgene container of cooking oil and a strap to keep the whole lot inside the Mytipot. Weight was 650g, which I think is a real world useful weight.
Tip: by the way it's good practice to weigh a totally full and a totally empty fuel bottle of the size you normally use on your kitchen scales so you have a good idea of how much you have left. It's probably more accurate than giving the canister a shake in your hand!
I have the primus express stove so does that mean I just have to get the primus pan to make up the 198g kit? Why would I buy the pan when you can get something similar for cheaper form other makes? It has no heat exchanger or windshield like the eta express so isn't it just a stove and Ti pot combination like any other?
Oh and try to get the pan and windshield for the eta express separately to go with the already owned stove. So far I have only seen the pan separately in one gear shop.
Crux looks good but I would go for the lite one as it doesn' fold. I am wary of the original crux folding stoves as I wonder if it is a weakness or a failure point. Still, I had one of the early ultra light stoves, a Coleman, and it's weakness was the support arms. they tended to go from the 90degrees cross to something closer to the saltayre when you lift the pot back on to it (that's the Scottish flag I think being just a Sassanach). Made for interesting pot balancing.
Gas stoves are certainly getting more interesting these days. Still waiting for an UL liquid stove as I have a good source of kerosene (free if you keep it quiet).
Personally I quite like the look of it and surprised its not had positive feedback instead of critisism. I've used an F1 and MSR titan kettle too for years but this does look more stable and if the whole thing does weigh what it says then it is lighter than the F1 and MSR combination as the F1 is 76g, MSR titan 123g and a lighter over 10g.
Looks good to me and its exactly what most people want, well built, lightweight well thought out kit, doesn't matter how it compares to something else if its a good bit of kit on its own merit!
Still don't get how people bend there F1 stove pot holds, beyond me, unless they walk along stamping on the thing?
I think there are some cracking little stoves out at the moment and lots of choice, some are maybe priced too high but theres lots of choice and some good bargains and out of the 40 or so on the market every single one of them will do what you need it to.
Aye the Crux stove rocks for that fold away design. No one I know of has ever seen one break I don't think and everyone I know who's used them loves them. If they were cheaper I'd have snapped one up myself years ago, but greedy companies asking too much for products will always loose out on money and future loyalty through greed.
A heat exchanger and windshield would be good with one of those Ti pots though. I do like Primus stuff, I think they are a good brand who are getting better.
Very interesting, good post here LT!
