User Review: Primus EtaExpress

Primus EtaExpress
Above: The current EtaExpress, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed April 29, 2008 by ke7mbz

Rating:
Price Paid: $90

After all of the hype over this stove, I'm pretty disappointed. But I'll start with what I liked about it:

It does have a feel of quality to it, as opposed to the more mass-production feel of the Jetboil. Here’s the pros:

- Lever action piezo ignitor, that makes it easy to start without tipping it over, like the push-button variety.
- Valve opens up more than the Jetboil, giving you more control over the setting.
- The valve portion seems sturdily built overall. More so than the Jetboil.
- Titanium coating.
- Better sizing than the Jetboil. Same volume, but not so tall and deep. It will hold a 220g fuel canister.
- It has a handle, instead of a neoprene cozy.
- It has a real lid (not plastic), that doubles as a frying pan.

All sounds pretty good, but now for the test:

I didn’t carefully record the test conditions, because I was mainly comparing the difference boiling with and without wind. But here’s some approximates. The same conditions existed in both instances, except for the wind.

Air temp: ~75 deg
Altitude: 4974 ft.
Water temp: just cold tap water. Constant throughout test.
Wind velocity: 8-10 mph
Water volume: 1 Liter
Valve setting: one ¼ turn
Time to boil with no wind: 6 min.
Time to boil with wind: Don’t know. After 25 min I gave up.
I tried to boil again, without wind, with the valve on full-blast, after about six minutes I gave up. Even on the low valve setting, the 100 g fuel canister was almost empty after about 37 minutes of burn time.

Conclusion: The windscreen is nearly useless. This is partly to due to the burner being placed so far below the pot.

I don’t know what REI’s test conditions were. You might be able to boil 14 liters at low setting, but not at 2:30 per liter. It’s either speed or efficiency, but not both.

Other problems:
- Not very stable. Shaky, even in a low wind.
- It doesn’t work with any of Primus’ larger heat-exchanger pots. The pot support is too small. So if you need to boil larger volumes of water, you’ll need to buy a separate stove. The Jetboil is much more versatile.
- The carrying bag is too small, making it hard to get the unit in and out. The Jetboil idea is better. You can fit pretty much everything neatly inside the unit, plus you have a cup.
- Pot support gets very hot, and takes awhile to cool down.

I’m going back to the Jetboil. Not perfect, but it’s the best thing out there so far for my needs. For a detailed test of the Jetboil PCS and GCS, see the canister stove comparison on Trailspace.