Soto Mantleless Lantern

Great rugged little lantern and no mantels or glass globes to break.

I have the Brunton Liberty version which is the same Soto Mantleless. Brunton marketed this Soto lantern in the USA starting in 2005 and is now discontinued. If you can find one used they make a great backpacking and camping lantern.

True they do not produced as much light as a comparable mantle lantern, but they put out more than enough light to do everyday camp tasks such as setting up after dark, cooking, reading etc. And you never have to deal with replacing a broken mantle again.

Unpack the lantern from its soft storage case and unfold the reflectors. Screw it onto a canister of good quality iso-butane, set the air/fuel mixture, hit the pizo igniter and boom, its going. That simple. I have used mine going on 8 years and it's still going strong. Very high quality Japanese construction probably has something to do with that. This is a nicely constructed piece of camping gear.

Burn times are 6-7 hrs average per canister depending. I set mine slightly below maximum fuel flow and that seems to be the best for max light output vs fuel consumption. It does make a bit of noise when running. More so than a comparable mantle lantern but nothing too bad and certainly much less than a canister stove. Cold weather performance is decent. This lantern performs best as a 3 season.

I really like this little lantern and so have the people I have lent it too or seen it in operation. It performs as advertised and as long as you know its shortcomings going into it, then you won't be disappointed.

As far as I'm concerned, its strengths out weigh its weaknesses. It has never failed me in 7+ years and I hope to get 7 more out of it. I gave it 4 stars for the noted weaknesses.