Vargo Titanium Ti-lite Mug (750 ml)

Summary

A good solo cooking pot/mug combo. Lightweight, tough, and plays well with others.

I like it.  It holds water, it boils water over fire.

Not detailed enough? Right.

When you decide to walk the path of simplicity, you look for ways for gear to do double or triple duty. The first redundancies I noticed were in my cook kit. Cup, bowl, plate, cook pot, pot grabber. I whittled all those items down into one: Vargo's Ti-Lite 750.

Yes, it means I may no longer plan for fresh-cut fried potatoes in the morning. Yes, I really made fresh-cut breakfast potatoes on backpacking trips. Those were heavy, heavy packs. I have adjusted my menu to solely DIY freezer-bag meals, but have not thereby suffered a single sad meal. I also don't spend 45 minutes each morning cleaning up the breakfast mess.

It fits well in a minimalist whole cooking system. It's the right size for nesting a small fuel canister and a SnowPeak GigaPower stove (sans shell), even better for an Esbit Ti-Wing and some fuel tabs. The folding handles do their work then get out of the way. With stoves and fuel options (e.g. the aforementioned Esbit) this pot/mug at 5 oz. can help a weekend whole cooking system come under 12 oz. That's how heavy my remote fuel canister alone used to be.

Picking nits: The lid fits very loosely, which is mainly annoying when trying to keep everything together in tow (I prefer not to carry the included mesh stuff sack — a single-use item? puh-leeze). Although the lid contains straining holes, the loose fit renders the lid useless as a strainer. But I've never wanted to use it as a strainer. So, no issue for my use.

There seem to also be some production consistency issues. We have two of the Ti-Lite 750s, and the two lids and two folding handles fit very differently. One set of handles is tightly hinged, the other is very loosely hinged. One lid fits like lock-and key, the other sits slightly askew on the pot. The funny thing is I don't prefer one over the other: these differences don't affect my use.

Mine are three years old. I can't say whether these issues have been addressed in recent editions.

Overall, I would recommended this to friends who want to pursue the lightweight/minimalist way of walking. It's an integral part of my system, and I'm not looking to change it any time soon.

POST SCRIPT: A friend pointed out that technically, in my specific instance, the freezer-bags are what replaced my bowl and plate, not a new cookpot. True.