(4.8 / 5)
The Vango Compact Canister Stove is a clone of the original MSR Pocket Rocket. This stove is great value, and at the price you can’t ask for much more.
The Bottom line
- Compact
- Almost exact copy of an MSR Pocket Rocket 1
- Not too great in wind
- High heat output
- Great value
Purchasing
You can buy this Vango canister stove for about £10-15 on amazon and various other websites. This makes it one of the cheapest canister stoves on the market.
Performance
Ease of use:
Being a canister stove, this stove is about as easy to use as it gets. You just screw it onto the top of your gas, turn it on and light it. Having said this, it does suffer from the same issue that most canister stoves have; that of instability. I would highly recommend investing in a gas canister stand. They cost almost nothing, weigh almost nothing, and make a huge difference.
Cook Time:
This stove puts out an astonishing amount of heat for its size. I’ve never measured how long it takes to boil water, but when you turn it up fully, it just roars away. So when we cooked on our gold DofE, we were consistently done a good 3 mins before the Trangias everyone else was using.
Efficiency:
This is where the stove slightly falls down, as unlike a lot of enclosed systems, it is fairly exposed, and as a result its efficiency suffers. However, this is not enough to make a huge difference unless you plan on using this for quite some time.
Bad Weather:
For a canister stove, this is fairly good in the wind, thanks to the three ‘vanes’ on the burner head. As a result, it wont go out in most breezes, however, it doesn’t put out as much heat in the wind. This isn’t anything a tactically placed bag won’t remedy, so for that reason, this isn’t a big deal.
General Comments
I would highly recommend this stove to anyone in the market for a good middle of the road canister stove. It is bombproof. It offers a great balance of price, performance, weight and bulk. Because of this, you can easily pick up a pot and pan set which can fit the stove, the gas canister, and a lighter. This gives you a cook system that takes up little space, yet will still boil water as if you’re cooking on an actual hob.