Summary
The new version of the Biolite CampStove 2 is a huge upgrade from the previous version. It’s now a highly recommended camping stove that is a great alternate to more traditional stoves with additional features. Charging, fire starting, and cooking are all very easy with fuel found easily around a campsite.
Overview
Biolite has recently released a new version of the world famous Biolite stove. It can cook your food, boil your water, charge your phone and other electronics all from a little portable camp stove you can carry around with you in a backpack and fuel with things you can find laying around your yard. The upgrades to the CampStove 2 defiantly made it a more useful tool in the outdoors for relying on cooking and power.

One of our favorite upgrades to the CampStove 2 was the LED indicator lights
Construction of the CampStove
The new BioLite 2 Stove is constructed very similar to the original. It has a metal container with a heat shield around the outside to calm down the inferno that ignites inside. The lighted legs of the stove fold up under the stove for compact storage. The fan port and heat sink port remain in about the same location. While the previous version of the power unit will loosely fit in the new metal stove, the new unit will not fit in the old because of the larger heat port.
The power unit was a huge upgraded, with indicator lights, a battery, double sized heat sync. All without adding too much weight, and still remains an viable option for a backpacking stove. The built in fan is more powerful that the previous version and makes it a lot easier to start the fire. There was not a significant weight increase of for the added features.
Overall the build quality is very durable while keeping the weight down making it still a viable option for backpacking.

The power unit is noticeably larger, but packed with many more features.

New lights on the front of the unit indicate how much power the fire is giving off, fan speed, and battery charge.

To produce double the charging power, Biolite basically doubled the size of the heat sync.

Not much noticeable difference between the original CampStove (Right) vs. the new stove on the left side other than the removed cross links on the legs.

Not much changed other than a larger hole for the heat sync and the position of the fan port changed slightly.
Biolite CampStove 1 vs 2 Weight
Weight of the CampStove 1 and 2 are always a great discussion. Some argue that because you are not caring fuel the the increased weight of the BioLite CampStove over a smaller lighter weight stove are nullable. I suppose it is a personal preference or may depend on the location and availability of fuel. For the first version of the CampStove, we usually would opt for a traditional camping stove like a JetBoil or MSR stove. However, with the updates to the CampStove 2 we find it in out pack most often.

The original Biolite CampStove Power Unit weighs 415 grams

The new BioLite CampStove 2 power unit weighs 462 grams, just slightly more than the CampStove 1, not bad for a large battery, LED lights, and more powerful fan.

BioLite managed to shave a little weight off the fire bucket. 21 grams lighter than the previous version, weighing just 500 grams.

Biolite CampStove 1 container weighs 521 grams

The total weight of the CampStove 2 is 962 grams, just 24 grams more than the CampStove 1.

The original CampStove 1 weighs 936 grams
Biolite CampStove 1 vs 2 Power Output
The first version of the CampStove was really unusable as a charger. We always though of it as in the case of an extreme emergency we could use it to possibly charge your phone enough to make an emergency call. The updates to the CampStove 2 have changed our frame of thinking. Now we may leave our solar panel back if we know we will be using the stove. The build in battery made a huge change to the stove as well. I never liked having my phone tethered to anything on fire. With the CampStove 2, you can just go about your cooking and slowly charge the on board battery, then charge your phone from that later.

With the battery and larger heat probe it was pretty easy to get to 1A output
The stove will put out power at a lower heat output, however for a full 1 amp charge you really need to stoke the fire. BioLite advertises that you can get up to 3 A output from the stove. During our testing burning twigs and branches from around the yard, we never got much more than 1 A output using the Ampeg android app. I find it hard to believe one could get 3 A output even under perfect conditions with this type of fuel.

Keeping the CampStove 2 output at 1A for very long was a chore of contently adding fuel to the fire
It needs to be pointed out that while it’s really cool that you can charge your phone from fire, it requires a lot of fuel to keep it charging at a realistic rate. We stuffed full the fuel container and let it burn, we got 1A output for about 5 min. or so before we had to add additional fuel. If you were truly trying to charge a phone from 5% to 100% it would take a lot of fuel. But for bumping up a charge while you are boiling some water it makes a really easy way of doing this.

Even with the fire raging, the fire LED indicating full output, it was still up and down charging. Here we were only measuring about .25A output

Just because the fire was burning didn’t mean you were getting full power output. The new Fire output indicator is really helpful when compared to the previous version.
You can see that just because the flame looks full, the fire LED shows it’s only outputting about half power. This was one of the best additions to the stove. There was a lot of guessing going on with the CampStove 1. Now you can monitor when you need to add fuel more carefully.

As we mentioned in our first review of the CampStove 1, charging a phone was always an issue. Here we had a strong fire going but still couldn’t create a positive power input
A huge improvement for a charging over the previous CampStove. As you can see we have a hot fire going and still are not charging the phone with the CampStove 1.

We couldn’t even generate enough power to get the light to turn on

These stoves are really cool to watch when the fan is going, the amount of burn power is incredible

Just because the BioLite CampStove is marketed as “smoke free” doesn’t mean they never smoke, just keep the flame going to avoid this problem

The CampStove 1 internal temperature averaged around 700 degrees Fahrenheit after a hot burn

The CampStove 1 outside temperature averaged around 150 degrees Fahrenheit after a hot burn

The CampStove 2 seemed to burn a bit hotter, I think due to the fan improvements

The outside also seemed to stay cooler, we tested this a few times and always seemed to be cooler than the CampStove 1
CampStove Charging

It was easy to get a positive charge from the stove

Charging the onboard battery and phone at the same time

Love the LED indicator lights
Biolite Campstove 2 Accessories
The new Campstove 2 comes with a USB light which is great for checking water or food at night. There is now on or off button, just plug it in and it turns on if the stove is generating enough output. The goose neck it not super helpful because it’s just tall enough to reach the top of the grill, and not tall enough to see inside the kettle.
The kettle and grill from the previous version work well with the new CampStove. In fact the new CampStove boils water a little quicker according to our test than the previous version.
Conclusion
If you own the CampStove 1 and have been frustrated with the charging capabilities then the BioLite 2 is a huge improvement over the previous. If you have been thinking about buying the CampStove now is the time. The included light is a nice to have, but don’t place too much value in it. The biggest benefit is having a stove that can boil water is just a few minutes from things found just about anywhere. It’s more expensive that some smaller lighter stoves. However, it can charge your phone or USB devices. You also don’t have to buy additional fuel cells, you can justify the additional cost by not having to buy fuel.
It takes up a lot more room in a pack than a traditional stove. If you are packing the kettle (which the stove fits inside of) it takes up a lot more room. Overall, I feel like the features and benefits out weight the downsides of the stove and would not hesitate to recommend the stove to someone as their only stove.
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