Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Vargo Triad Multi-Fuel Stove is ideal for someone who wants an ultralight, ultra-durable alcohol stove with integrated legs and pot supports. Design-wise you will not find a more robustly built, uber-minimalist stove with integrated supports that neatly hold any 3.75" or LARGER diameter pot at exactly the right height for heating. (Pots less than 3.75" diameter, especially those with a rounded bottom, will not seat properly on the supports and become a hazard. Something like my beloved Toaks 550 mL titanium pot is the smallest diameter pot you can use worry-free.) A GRAVE DISAPPOINTMENT -- BUT ONE TRICK MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE! If you buy this stove and light it up right out of the package, you're going to be very disappointed. As alcohol stoves go, this is probably the most finnicky and frustrating stove out there. That's because it's designed to be filled to the brim with approximately 1.3 fl. oz. of alcohol--enough so that it not only fills the stove, but creates an open puddle of alcohol in the upper funnel-shaped mouth. This helps to heat the stove enough to vaporize the alcohol and allow the stove to bloom, creating a nice blue flame that will subsequently burn for approximately 20 minutes. This design feature presents two problems: (1) Even if you fill it all the way as described, the stove will still regularly take 2-3 minutes to bloom, sometimes longer, even at room temperature. Compare that with a Trangia, Evernew, or average pop can stove, all of which bloom in as little as 10-30 seconds because their non-titanium construction absorbs heat faster and thus, vaporizes alcohol faster to get the fuel jets running properly. (2) If you prefer to measure out a smaller amount of fuel to suit your exact burn-time needs, the stove often will NEVER bloom. Both of those facts suck, so why isn't this a 1-star review? Because you can alleviate both issues with a primer pan. To make mine, I simply cut off the bottom of an aluminum soda can. The concave bottom of the can makes a perfect primer pan. (Others use a bottle cap, but I find a soda can bottom is easier to use because it is larger, yet just as light.) Trimmed down, my DIY primer pan weighs only 2g and nests securely against the top or bottom of the stove (the folded legs hold it in place) when traveling. To use the primer pan, I put the desired amount of fuel in the stove, then drizzle 5-7 drops of alcohol into the primer pan. Light the primer pan and tuck it under the stove. Very quickly the fuel inside the stove will begin to vaporize. Often, it will ignite itself from the primer flame, but otherwise I light the stove as soon as I hear a soft hiss. Using a primer pan, the Triad will BLOOM IN ONLY 10-15 SECONDS, regardless of how much fuel you put in the stove! If you use only 5-7 drops of fuel in the primer pan, the primer flame will go out shortly after the bloom, which is ideal for efficiency (if the primer flame keeps going, it will vaporize the lit fuel too quickly, causing an unnecessarily high bloom that wastes fuel). Don't waste your time trying to mod this stove. The primer pan solution is simple, cheap, and VERY effective. If you burn solid fuel on your stove, you can also use the primer pan as a fuel dish to keep the solid fuel gunk off the Triad. WITHOUT a primer pan, this stove will frustrate you like no other--enough that it's weight savings won't feel worth the extra hassles of operation. If for some reason you don't want to use a primer pan, you'd be better off building a pop can stove or going with something like a Trangia (which is considerably heavier, of course). You may be wondering based on some of my comments: Why choose it over a DIY popcan stove? Because this stove is also a fuel miser. Although you will generally get a faster, easier bloom and hotter burn out of many of the better popcan designs out there, this stove seems consistently more efficient than many of the popcan stoves I've built. On a full reservoir, it easily ticks along at 20 - 23 minutes of burn time, whereas the same amount of fuel in some of my other stoves seems to burn up faster and generate more heat than I really need. Given the adequacy of the Triad's flame, I prefer its longer, more efficient cook time for a given amount of fuel. DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS OVER THE OLDER MODEL TRIAD Compared with the older model Triad, this version has a much larger filling hole (hooray!), beefier folding legs/supports, and an indentation to allow for more secure use of solid fuel tablets. As long as you have a bottle that pours smoothly, the generously enlarged filling hole makes it very easy to pour in the alcohol without spilling. The stove sucks it down as quickly as you can pour. This is a vast improvement over the tiny filling hole on the older model, which drained so slowly that it frequently caused alcohol to pile up and run everywhere. The legs also feel sightly sturdier. On soft ground, you can press the lower legs into the earth to provide additional support; however, I find that the tripod arrangement and modest outward flare of the legs is plenty sturdy even when standing freely atop harder surfaces. On the other side of the burner, there is now an indentation to help contain solid fuel tablets in the middle. This is a nice, but non-essential refinement over the perfectly flat surface on the bottom of the older model. While the beefier legs and newly added indentation for fuel tablets are nice, they're not good enough reasons to upgrade. If you have an older Triad, the real reason to upgrade is for the enlarged filling hole. It makes filling the stove much, MUCH more user-friendly. FINAL NOTES Of course, like ANY alcohol stove, you really need to use a windscreen. I seem to get the best results from a windscreen that wraps closely around the pot and stove--probably because it helps with the fuel vaporization by reflecting heat back into the titanium stove. I use the aluminum skin of a soda can. It weighs only 4g and wraps about three-fourths of the way around my Toaks 550 mL pot, leaving an open gap for the stove to breathe. I cut it just tall enough to pass under the handle of the pot, so it keeps the flames from licking the handle and making it too hot to touch. And it can also stow against the outside of my pot when not in use, where it takes up no room. Get yourself an alcohol bottle with a pour spout or a syringe. It makes it so much easier to measure out a desired amount of fuel. Spend a few sessions learning how to prime your stove and cook on it before you go into the backcountry. Use a stopwatch to see how much burn time you get per mL or fl. oz. of fuel and I guarantee that, in conjunction with the primer pan trick, you will be able to stretch your fuel consumption quite a bit further. For example, I find that 10mL of Yellow Heet is *just* enough to bring 1 cup of water to the verge of a boil before the flame goes out. That's perfect for a morning cup of coffee, and way better than filling the stove with 3-4 times that amount just to light it as designed without a primer pan (and then trying to pour the leftover fuel back into a container afterward). ALWAYS ENSURE THE STOVE/FLAMES ARE EXTINGUISHED before attempting to refill the stove. Alcohol can burn INVISIBLY, so even if it looks like it's extinguished, always check carefully with your hand and also blow HARD down onto the burner to make sure it's out. If there is still a small flame when you try to refill it, you basically can create a bomb of burning, flaming alcohol that blasts everywhere, potentially setting your surroundings on fire and injuring you. Don't assume, VERIFY that it is out before you pour more fuel onto the burner. NEVER try to refill it while it is still flaming/running! Titanium cools down quicker than brass, so compared with a Trangia, this stove will be cool to the touch much sooner after use than the Trangia (by a couple of minutes). Likewise, it doesn't seem prone to the "runaway" effect that can happen with some brass or aluminum stoves which, once they get really hot, can over-vaporize the fuel and bloom too large for practical use (and possibly present a safety hazard unless snuffed out and re-lit after cooling a little). THE VERDICT Without a primer pan, this stove sucks. Vargo should include one. With a primer pan, this stove shines and should be an ultralight hiker's dream. The stove weighs 30g. Add in a plastic fuel bottle (~25g), primer pan (2g), a thin aluminum windscreen made from a soda can (~4g), and maybe a small 10mL syringe like the kind used to give oral medicine to children (~9g) and you're still at only 70 grams, excluding the weight of fuel! Compare that to a Trangia stove which, by itself (with screwcap and snuffer/simmer cap), weighs 115 grams! All in all, I like it. I almost gave it four stars because Vargo really should include a primer pan and/or at least recommend a primer pan in their instructions. It makes the stove work SO MUCH BETTER.