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Comment by SamWhited | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently on the Appalachian Trail and have seen a few of these... They're neat, but dont work very well. Maybe for a weekend trip. Not for serious distance hikers.

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For a few days, you can just bring a battery. They are much cheaper and more convenient.

It is an interesting novelty, but it is just so heavy, bulky, and slow that I am having trouble understanding who this would work for.

I could see this being handy on larger group camps.

I'm a Scout leader and for a weekend camp will take a battery pack that will keep all our leader's phones charged for the weekend, but if it were any longer or wanted to give the neighbouring camps a charge, would need something solar or fuelled. From what I've seen of the solar stuff out there, most can't keep up with constant charging.

All the reviews I have seen seem to agree that it takes around 4 hours to for the BioLite fully charge an iPhone. For the same amount of weight you could carry 3 Anker 12,000 mAh batteries, which I believe would provide on the order of 15 charges, at a cost of $150.

Unless you have scouts tending the BioLite constantly, I think it is definitely not a solution for groups.

Fortunately scout labour is free :)

But can the batteries cook your dinner?

Well, it only boils water. For that purpose some competitors would be: - Backcountry Boiler, which is also wood-fueled and 1/4 the weight. - Jetboil Sol, half the weight including fuel canister. canister good for 20+ boils - alcohol or esbit burner + titanium cup and fuel - less than 1/3 the weight including fuel

The only scenario I can think of where the BioLite makes sense is if you have no access to electricity for weeks at a time. Even then I think solar panels make more sense.

On the AT up to a few weeks ago. A few hundred miles in a weekend hiker with one of these at a shelter let everyone recharge their devices and they were a modern Prometheus to us. If weight (33 oz + pot + utensil) were not such a crucial consideration to one's happiness when long distance hiking it would definitely be in my pack. It has worked very well for me when testing at home (boils 1 liter of water in ~4 minutes using a handful of wood fuel) and charges devices (subjectively) as fast as my wall outlet.

I plan on winter hiking thru some areas with re-supply locations > 7 days apart and may use the biolite in place of my solar external battery (9.4 oz) since it will also serve for melting snow. I did not cook anything while on the AT (just soylent and mainstay bars) but I anticipate that warm meals will make winter hiking more enjoyable.

Why not a solar panel?

It's primarily a stove, and does a relatively good job at boiling water or cooking food. As a nice bonus for us, we used it to shave some crank time off a hand-crank/USB-chargeable lantern, deep enough in the woods that a solar panel probably wouldn't have done a whole lot.

(FWIW, I generally agree that it's probably not great for serious backpacking, but I had a lot of fun using while camping.)

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