The race to boil a liter of water began with the slight nudge of a fuel dial. My watch ticked as the liquid started to warm, little bubbles percolating in the pot. Underneath, a whirring flame torched metal to a red-hot glow.
It was the maiden voyage of the Helios stove, an all-in-one system from Jetboil that comes with an integrated 2-liter cooking pot and costs $150.
Jetboil (www.jetboil.com) makes big claims with the Helios, including a touted "best-in-class efficiency and boil time." A cold liter of water, the company says, can be converted to a bubbling brew within three minutes.
Two product features are credited for the stove's efficiency: 1) Jetboil's proprietary FluxRing, a corrugated metal strip on the bottom of the pot, captures and "focuses" heat; 2) The upside-down isobutene/propane cartridge and special fuel line feeds fuel in a liquid state (rather than a gas state) for consistent heat output.
While other stoves can use the same type of isobutene/propane cartridge as the Helios, the company says it has optimized the cartridge-fed fuel method by ensuring consistently high output.
In my test, a liter of water did, in fact, hop to a bubbling fit, boiling in 2.5 minutes flat -- twice as fast as many stoves I test and beating even the company's own marketed figure.
STEPHEN REGENOLD
