While it wasn’t the best in any of our tested categories, it holds its own and performs consistently. If your camp cheffing needs are simple, or you are searching for a car camping stove that won’t break the bank, this is a good model to explore. For the jaw-dropping price ($470) of the Snow Peak GigaPower Double Burner Stove, it should be the best camping stove you can buy, or at least the most versatile. Although it’s made from excellent materials and built to the standards that Snow Peak is famous for, this stove misses the mark. It requires two separate Isopro bottles to work; running it from a single larger tank, even with conversion valves, is difficult.
Especially if you cook complex meals with lots of ingredients or like to cook with larger pans, the Stanspor’s three-burner design is a great addition to your camping gear. I would also say that it is not for small groups of 2-3 people who aren’t planning a lot of major cooking during their camping trip. There are lots of other great smaller camping stoves that are perfect for these people. The top cooking grate is removable to allow full access to the drip tray underneath.
We counted how many times the temperature went over or under as well as how many times the stove went out. We wanted to know how fast each stove could bring one liter of water to a boil (203 degrees F at around 4,500′). For stoves with two burners, we also measured the time to bring one liter of water to a boil with both burners on high.
It’s portable enough to be taken on both short and long trips and its simple setup and tear-down keep us using it on every trip. To measure boil times, we head to our windless “lab,” aka our garage, at 5,000 feet and do two boil tests. For the first test, we boil 1 liter of 58°F water in the presence of 2-4 mph of “wind” generated by a box fan. For the second test, we boil 1 liter of water in the absence of wind. For the windy test, the Classic boiled water in 6 minutes 15 seconds, and in the wind-less test, it boiled water in 4 minutes 45 seconds. Part of why it did well in the windy boil test is due to the innovative design of the windscreen.
The clamshell design keeps the burners protected when closed and the wind out when opened. When packed away, the Coleman Classic is thin enough to not take up a huge amount of real estate. While the Classic is pretty much the same as many coleman propane stove other table top stoves, the fuel adaptor is noticeably easier to attach to the stove body than many of our other tested models. We also like the windscreen setup, which involves slotting bobby pin-shaped connectors into the stove body.
It wasn’t a major long-term issue, but it was definitely an unpleasant surprise the first couple times we fired up the stove. The amount of control that you have with the temperature knobs is incredible. Plus, you can open or shut the air vents to control the heat and quality of the flame, dialing it back to a concentrated and hot blue flame or up to a more dispersed yellow flame.
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The Cascade case is easier to carry thanks to its included handle. However, we did like how much easier the butane canister was to attach than twist-on propane canisters. All you have to do is set the canister in its slot and flip the fuel lock switch to latch it in place — it was by far the easiest setup of all the stoves we tested. We also liked that this was slightly more compact than the other two-burner stoves we tested, with a slim and streamlined design. The Coleman Classic finished toward the bottom in our tests, though. The two 10,000 BTU burners boiled water in 5 and a half minutes — nearly the slowest of the seven stoves we tested.
If you have a space where you can safely store a propane tank, you could also consider refillable alternatives. If you’re car camping and don’t mind the extra weight, 5-pound propane tanks and adapter hoses are available; they can hook up directly to these stoves. Not only are the 5-pound tanks refillable, but over time it’s also cheaper to refill a reservoir with gas than to constantly buy new disposable bottles. The Coleman’s Two-burner Propane Stove with InstaStart Technology is pretty much as easy as it gets and should happily satisfy most any portable-cooking needs.