This could bring a bit of luxury to your next camping trip
The Primus Tupike is one of those camping stoves that’s best suited to car camping and/or for short any short excursions from your basecamp or car. It’s not portable in the sense that you can stick it in your backpack but in the sense that it can be carried short distances. It’s the thing to turn to when you want to have a good picnic down on the beach with a group of friends but can only get as close as the National Trust car park on the cliff tops.
How We’ve Tested It
We called this in for our Outdoor 100 Test Team weekend in the Black Mountains where we were hosting 14 of our gear reviewers, and were responsible for keeping them fed, watered, and alive.
I also recently took it up to Scotland for a week’s holiday with my girlfriend where we were both living out of my car as we drove around the north-west coast.
Features
The Primus Tupike has two burners, each of equal size and power. These are housed within a folding stainless steel casing which is finished with oak laths and brass details. It has two folding metal legs and windscreens, a carry handle, piezo spark ignition, two regulator valve controls and it also comes with a handy mini griddle plate.
Performance
This is a thing of beauty, I must say. All of the materials, the oak details in particular, give this a very sleek, aesthetically pleasing look. But what about its functionality? In short, I’ve been impressed.
At 4,250g, carrying it like a briefcase is fine for short-ish walks, and when it’s all packed up it’s a conveniently small and compact size for keeping out of the way in your car boot or your pokey London flat.
Set up is quick and easy. You lift the handle and then open it up, fold the legs and windshields out, and then screw your gas canister onto a hose at the base. I’ve only used this with small camping gas canisters but it comes with adapters so it can fit onto those big ones as well though. To light the burners, you turn one or both of the knobs and spark up the gas using the piezo ignition.
“You can cook the messiest of meals and then have this back to looking good as new…”
The output is 3000W and according to Primus it takes 4.33 mins to boil a litre. I used it in cold weather a couple of times in Scotland and it took a minute or so longer than that. Still, when we used it to boil up litres and litres of water at our Test Team event, it proved to be as convenient a thing as you can get.
It does get through gas very quickly. If you’ve got the two burners going and are cooking for say 15 minutes then your 100g canister is more than likely not going to last you. You’ll want to have a couple of spares with you, or just start out with a 400g canister (or bigger). For just boiling a 1-litre pan of water with one burner, a full 100g canister will do the job and last a few more runs.
My favourite thing about this is the griddle. It’s quite small but you can still just about fit two 8oz steaks onto it, it cooks things very nicely, and it’s very easy to clean and to keep clean. In fact, I like this so much I’ve actually transferred it to my kitchen and use it all the time.
Cleaning
It usually doesn’t take long for your nice and shiny camping stoves to look grimy – especially after a few greasy burgers and a trip to a sandy beach – and this came looking so lovely out of the box I almost didn’t want to spoil it.
The good thing is that you can cook the messiest of meals and then have this back to looking good as new without much faff at all. This is thanks to the easy removability of the baseplate and the pot stands, and also the fact that all of the stainless metal wipes clean easily. There are a couple of little nooks and crannies in-between joints to watch out for, but by and large, the cleaning process is as easy as I wanted it to be.
Photo: Chris Johnson
Verdict
The folding legs are a tad flimsy, the windshields tend to move in the wind a bit, it’ll swallow your gas like there’s no tomorrow, and yes, it has a hefty price tag (for something far cheaper, see the Vango Diner Cooker) but overall, this is a very nice product that is very convenient and enjoyable to use. Despite the wobbly legs, I can see it lasting well also.
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