MSR PocketRocket 2

There isn’t much drama to write about a stove that simply does its job every single time, which is precisely the point and precisely why it’s stayed in our kit for three full seasons without us ever considering a replacement. The PocketRocket 2 weighs next to nothing, folds down smaller than a matchbox, and lights on the first click of the igniter — except it doesn’t have a built-in igniter, so that’s the first click of whatever lighter you’re carrying, which is the one real omission on an otherwise complete little tool.

What impresses over repeated use isn’t any single spec but the consistency. It holds a flame in a stiff breeze noticeably better than its tiny burner head suggests it should, and brings half a litre of water to a rolling boil in the time it takes to finish staking out a tent — we’ve timed this more than once out of curiosity rather than doubt. The regulator handles a half-empty canister in cold weather better than most stoves in this weight class, where flame output usually drops off a cliff as the canister cools and the pressure inside falls.

Pot support is the other compromise: three thin folding arms that hold a standard 1-litre pot rock steady but start to feel underconfident under anything wide, like a large frying pan or a shared group pot. For solo or two-person cooking, which is what this stove is built for, it’s a non-issue. For group cooking with wide cookware, you’ll want something with a broader, more planted base.

None of this reads as a complaint so much as a scope note: this is a minimalist, ultralight canister stove doing exactly what it’s designed to do, and doing it with a reliability that’s easy to take for granted until you use a cheaper stove that gutters out in a breeze. At this weight and this price, it’s difficult to find a genuine reason to look elsewhere unless your cooking setup specifically calls for wide-pot stability.