Jetboil Flash Review: Boils Water, Cooks Nothing

An integrated canister stove is a single-purpose tool, and judging it as anything else is a category error. On its one job the Flash is excellent.

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Our verdict

Jetboil Flash

If your camp cooking is boiling water for meals and coffee, nothing is faster or simpler. If you actually cook, buy a stove that simmers.

$130

Check price at REI· $130

Also at Backcountry ($117)

What worked

• About 100 seconds to boil 0.5 L
• Integrated cozy and lid make it hard to spill
• Fuel-efficient — a small canister lasts a long weekend

What didn't

• Simmer control is a fiction
• Tall and tippy without the tripod
• Only works well with its own pot

Weight

13.1 oz (system)

Boil time

1:40 for 0.5 L (measured, 65 F)

Capacity

1.0 L

Ignition

Push-button piezo

Speed and fuel

A hundred boils, mostly half-liter, mostly around 1:40 at moderate temperature. A 100-gram canister covered a three-day trip for two people drinking coffee twice a day. The heat exchanger on the pot base is where that efficiency comes from, which is also why the burner is wasted under any other pot.

Wind and cold

The pot skirt shelters the flame well enough that a light breeze barely registers. Below freezing the canister pressure drops like any upright stove; sleeping with the fuel in your bag remains the fix.

What it cannot do

Simmer. The valve goes from off to loud, and anything you try to cook in the bottom of the pot scorches in a ring. There is no pan support worth using.

Verdict

Boil-in-bag meals and hot drinks: buy it. Real food: buy something else.