Field review: Jetboil PCS stove

Recently the Jetboil personal cooking system accompanied me on 2 hiking trips. It was a good test to see what the stove is like in a real situation. How did it go and is it worth all the hype that it's getting?

Jetboil stove overview
Jetboil has created a new category in hiking stoves - the high efficiency canister stove. These stoves waste almost no energy and use far less gas to boil your water, in fact as little as half as much. They are also fast. The reason is the FluxRing™ technology which evenly distributes the heat to the whole pot.

The good - what we liked

• We get 12 boils of one canister, very efficient
• We liked the package and how it packed together
• While variable, the boil times were quite low compared to many other stoves

The not so good - what we didn't like

• On the second night the piezo ignition system failed. The stove got only a little bit wet from light rain. This has continued to fail more often that not. Very disappointing.
• Significant loss of performance in wind. I look forward to testing the MSR Reactor stove soon.
• We found the pot to be a little too small. You can boil only 600ml of water in it. Fine for 1 person but not enough for two. The unit it a little too heavy for just one person and is best shared.
• Attaching or removing the pot can be difficult, especially with the stove already lit, which is necessary due the broken ignition.

The final verdict
I like the stove, it's good for a couple of hikers. I was planning on buying one but after this I have changed my order to the more expensive MSR Reactor.

Always take a second source of fire so you can light it when the ignition fails.

You may need to use a windscreen if it's blowing more than 5 mph.

We did one boil on MSR isobutane mix and noticed a significant increase in boil time, so only use jet boil fuel.

It's also worth noting that while efficient it's not the lightest stove for the ultralight crowd.

Rating: Recommended