With a claimed 80% fuel efficiency, how does the Primus EtaExpress fare in practise?
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Price:
£59
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Weight: 418g
(excluding gas)
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Features: Heat-exchanger hard anodised aluminium one litre pot with handles, frying pan / pan lid with folding handle, non-stick surface, wind shield, burner with piezo igniter, stuff sac for burner, net sac to hold everything, dimensions 115 x 140mm.
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What's It
For?
The EtaExpress falls in the same bracket as the Jetboil and MSR Reactor – it's a one-man gas stove for lightweight backpacking. It packs down small, it includes a pan and frying pan, so you don't need any extras, and – most importantly – it's designed to make each gram of fuel go a long way.
Fast-cooking, fuel-efficient, and light – that's basically the idea.
The Techy
Bits
'Eta' apparently stands for Efficiency Rate, so unsurprisingly the techy bits on this stove concentrate on making life as fuel efficient as possible.
The stove saves on fuel in two ways. One is the 'heat exchanger' system which is common to all the stoves in the Eta family. It's basically a device on the bottom of the pot which increases its surface area so the pan – and hence your pasta carbonara – can absorb more heat, more quickly.
The second innovation isn't entirely new to the world of camp cooking – it's a wind shield that lets the stove get on with the important business of heating up your dinner without the interference of gusts of mountain air. This time though, the windshield only extends part way round the pot – about a third of the way round, to be precise – so you have to move it, depending which direction the wind's blowing from. At the same time, you're only carrying a third of the wind-breaking weight.
The high-tech world of the millimetre ruler has been well used here too! Everything fits neatly together, so the burner, and a 230g gas canister, all pack down inside the cooking pot, with the frying pan as a lid. No more rummaging through your pack to rescue the fuel from one place, the stove from another, and the pans from a third ...
How It
Performs
We'll start with the basics. We once had a one-man stove in with a pan that would hold enough food to feed you after an afternoon in front of the TV, but nowhere near enough for a mountaineer. Primus, you'll be relieved to know, understand the calorie count of someone who's spent the day in the hills, and you get a nice big pot to cook your dinner in. It sounds simple, but what could be more important?:-)
Secondly, we like the fact that the EtaExpress packs all the features you could want into a straightforward set-up – assembly is idiot-proof in this case – and keeps them together in one place. Grams may be at a minimum, but you still get numerous faff-saving devices. There's an igniter – no more fiddling around with damp matches or cigarette lighters; the pans both have attached folding handles – so you don't have to find your pan handle to lift the pans precariously off the heat; and there's even a little lip on the main pan, so you don't slosh the boiled water everywhere except your mug when you're trying to pour the tea. They're all little features, but they make life much easier.
So far so good with the small details, but on the technical side of things, does the heat transfer system do everthing it claims to do? Well, Primus reckons this stove is 80% energy efficient – which is bonkers high for a camping stove. We didn't do the maths, but we wouldn't be the ones to say they're wrong. It's certainly as efficient as anything we've used before. Not only does that mean you save on gas, but just as importantly, it saves on weight. As Primus point out, there's no point having a stove that weighs less than your dinner if it goes through fuel like a jet-liner. As the EtaExpress is light on fuel and light in body, you get the best of both worlds here.
Stability was our one area of concern when we first saw the stove, as the pot is of the tall, thin variety. In practise, we never had a problem though. Primus do a good job of saving weight without impeding functionality, and hence they don't cut off a few grams by, for example, shaving a few centimetres off the three prongs that the pan rests on. They're wide enough to keep the stove stable and so we managed to avoid any wobbly moments – while cooking our dinner at least. Our climbing's another matter ...
Back to the stove though, the price is pretty reasonable for what you get, the weight's suitably low and, as we said, you've got all the features you want, where you want them. Just one tip though – make sure you weigh down the little piece of material that protects the inside of the pan from the gas canister when you pack it all away. Non-stick pans and a good scratching from a gas canister don't go well together, and one gust of wind could be all that stands between your stove and that very scenario. You've been warned:-)
Finally, adaptability. The whole stove fits into a net sasck, but there's also a small stuffsac for the burner, so you can carry it separately if you want. If a different type or size of fuel canister is on the agenda, or a different pan, then using the burner itself is still an option. All well and good.
The Eta Power, which is the big brother of the Eta Express stove, and which shares the same technology, didn't win a Silver Outdoor Industry Award for nothing. There are some genuinely good innovations here, which keep your pack light. Not only does the stove itself dispense with any unnecessary grams, but it's also efficient enough to spare you from carrying any more fuel than you need to.
The price is comparable to competitors like the Jetboil, so there's no financial reason why you'd steer clear of the Eta Express, and it's a neat design that gives you all the features you want in one place. The name's appropriate too – it's a pretty express cup of tea we're talking about!
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 Fast and efficient.
 Gas isn't ideal for really cold conditions, and beware of scratching the pot!
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