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Solo Stove Lite Wood Stove Review

Solo Lite Stove Review

I’ve like using the Solo Lite Stove when I feel like having a fire at night for cooking and mood enhancement but don’t want to build one from scratch. For longer trips where you don’t have access to a resupply point, cooking with wood is an excellent fuel and expense reduction strategy provided you are allowed to burn fires where you hike and there is dry wood available. Even then you might want to pack a few  Esbit fuel tablets as an emergency backup in case it rains for a few days and dry firewood is unavailable.

Solo Lite Stove

Efficiency
Weight
Compactness
Stability
Does Not Burn Ground

Excellent

The Solo Lite Wood Stove is a compact and highly efficient wood camping and backpacking stove that lets you use small wood pieces to cook your dinner. It protects the ground from being burned while providing the cheerful light of a fire in camp.

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Leave No Trace

I also like the Solo Lite Stove because it is much easier to cook with than a campfire and much lower in terms of environmental impact. It requires astonishingly little wood to boil a pint of water, a separate windscreen is unnecessary, it’s easy to simmer with, it’s self-extinguishing when all the fuel burns up, it has a base so it doesn’t scorch the ground, and all the wood burns down completely to ash.

And while there are many other wood stoves available today, including ones made of flat panels that disassemble for easy storage, few come with a burn plate underneath that prevents your fire from scorching the ground or leaving a soot trace on a rock. That kind of thing matters to me, even if it means having to carry a slightly heavier wood stove with a closed base.

Solo Wood Stove in the Sandwich Wilderness
Solo Lite Stove in the Sandwich Wilderness

A Gasifier Stove

The Solo Lite Stove is in inverted double-wall gasifier stove, basically a can within a can with a pot stand, that burns wood and smoke more efficiently than a single-wall can with holes punched in it. Air flows up through the holes between the cans, is heated, and helps burn the smoke produced by the wood that’s burning in the inner can. It
works like this.

  • Burning wood produces smoke.
  • You get more heat/energy if you burn wood and smoke.
  • The trick is to burn the smoke before it gets away. Some gets away when you start your fire, anyway.
  • You do this by adding oxygen to it from the top down (inversion).
  • The fuel supply (dry wood) is infinite. No need to carry it.
  • The stove is dead simple. Nothing to adjust or maintain.

Integrated Pot Stand

The Solo Lite Stove has two components – the main burn chamber and a separate pot stand that drops inside it when inverted for easy storage. The pot stand is a metal ring with three feet and a gap that lets you add more fuel to the fire. Your cook pot sits flush on top of the feet. When you pile sticks in the burn chamber, you want to make sure that they don’t poke above the top of the feet.

Lighting the Wood Stove: Post Ignition
Lighting the Wood Stove: Post Ignition

Boiling Water and Simmering

You can boil water or simmer using the Solo Lite Stove, simply by feeding it more or less fuel. For example, to cook Ramen noodles, fill the Solo’s wood chamber with kindling up to the diameter of your pinky or ring finger and about the length of your thumb in length. Collecting the wood takes no time whatsoever and you should be able to find plenty of sticks on the ground that you can break to the right dimensions. You really only need about 3-4 handfuls max to cook a two pot dinner with. Light the wood – I use cotton balls smeared with vaseline as a fire starter – and off you go. This first load of wood should be enough to boil a pint of water, but if it’s not, just add more through the gap in the pot stand. Solo recommends that you start the fire on top of your pile rather than the bottom, but either way works just fine.

To simmer, simply add more wood to the burn chamber after your water has boiled: the amount of heat produced depends on how much fuel you feed into the fire. It also helps to take the cover off the pot at this stage to gauge the strength of the simmer and prevent boil overs. You can cook a proper meal on this stove in addition to boiling water – my backpacking meals almost always start with boiling water to purify it before mixing in my other ingredients.

Evernew Titanium Pasta Pot
Evernew Titanium Pasta Pot

Best Pot/Stove Combination

You can use just about any pot with the Solo Lite Stove, although you will experience a bit more instability with a very large, wide pot, especially if the stove is resting on an uneven surface like the ground. My preference is to use the Evernew Titanium Pasta Pot because the Solo Stove and pot stand drop into it without rattling too much, making the entire system easy to transport inside my backpack. When packing up, I put the cover on to the pot and wrap the entire stove/pot system in a mesh bag to keep soot from the outside of the pot from rubbing onto the rest of my gear. I also make a point to wash the outside of my pot before I put it away, by scraping it against the sand and rocks in the nearest stream bed. This scouring action helps remove most of the soot buildup if performed regularly after each meal.

Complete Solo Stove and Pot System Stored in a Mesh Bag
Complete Solo Stove and Pot System Stored in a Mesh Bag

Multi-fuel Utility

When I take the Solo on trips, I also bring Esbit fuel tablets along in case the wood supply is wet or it’s raining so hard that I need to cook under my tarp. Under such circumstances, it’s possible to use the Solo Stove as a windscreen and stand for Esbit fuel tablets, obviating the need to carry a second stove system. Here are a couple of pointers worth noting:

  • Don’t use the Solo Stove pot stand when burning an Esbit tablet in the stove because it does not provide enough protection against the wind, wastes too much heat, and distances the Esbit tablet too far away from the bottom of your cook pot to provide efficient heat transfer.
  • Esbit fuel tablets will fall through the metal grate inside the stove when they burn up and get progressively smaller. To prevent this, you need to place the Esbit fuel tablet on a small piece of metal or tin foil on top before you light it so it will burn completely on top of the inner grate.
  • Don’t place the Esbit fuel tablet in the center of the stove grate but closer to one side. Position your pot so it sits on top of the stove rim, but doesn’t completely close off air to the stove’s fuel chamber. The
    air gap can be quite narrow and still be effective. Your pot will remain stable as long as you have a small diameter pot, like the Evernew Titanium Pasta Pot I recommend above.

Comparable Backpacking Wood Stoves

Make / ModelTypeWeight
Bushbuddy Stainless StoveCan6.4 oz
Toaks Titanium Wood Stove (Small)Can5.4 oz
Toaks Titanium Wood Stove (Large)Can7.9 oz
Solo Stove Lite StoveCan9.0 oz
QiWiz Titanium Firefly ULFolding2.8 oz
Emberlit Titanium FireantFolding2.8 oz
Vargo Titanium HexagonFolding4.1 oz
Firebox Nano G2 StainlessFolding6.0 oz
Firebox Nano G2 TitaniumFolding4.0 oz

Recommendation

If the thought of having a small campfire at night appeals to you but you don’t want the hassle of building one, or you want to minimize the amount of fuel you carry on a long trip, the Solo Lite Wood Stove provides an economical way to use the fuel around you for cooking and backcountry entertainment. While there are slightly less expensive and lighter weight wood stoves available, the Solo Lite Stove is one of a very few commercial wood stoves that comes with an integrated heat shield that prevents the ground from being burnt or scorched under the stove. If you camp in wilderness locations, this is a must-have in order to keep your campsites pristine and Leave No Trace.

Disclaimer: Solo Stove provided Philip Werner (SectionHiker.com) with a stove for this review.

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5 comments

  1. Thank you very much for these reviews. I’m a newbie to camping and I’m learning a lot from these reviews as I don’t want to leave any trace when I leave my camp.

  2. Solostove also has a windscreen and burner that can use multiple fuels to burn I use denatured alcohol. Works like a champ. They also have a cookpot that the stove slides into. Great integration I recommend to all my camping buddies!

  3. Can you use the stove without the pot stand for just a fire? Is there an efficiency issue without the pot stand?

    Thanks to much,

    • Chances are you’ll smother the fire since it can’t get any air.

    • I’ve used mine without the pot stand when I just want to have something to keep me entertained under the tarp in the rain (their larger firepits are basically an oversized Lite without a pot stand). It’s not very relaxing as you’re feeding it constantly but the pot stand being absent doesn’t make a difference. Throwing a pot on without the stand will smother it.

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