Nomophobic campers take notice!
You like camping. Equipment. Electronics. Gadgets.
Cooking over a flame.
Maybe you’re just a tailgater.
Or you’re the zombie-apocalypse-is-imminent-type and are concerned about how you’ll play candy crush on your phone during the end times.
You probably still like the same stuff.
Just like us.
So check this out:
It’s a grill that uses the heat from a fire not only to cook your food but also charge your device.
BioLite BaseCamp Review
This is the BioLite BaseCamp. It comes with everything you need to burn stuff, cook food, charge your device and even see in the dark (via a small LED light.)
The stove is easy to carry and setup with the nice big handle at the top. Two attachments allow you to support logs feeding in to the fire and an ash pan for cleanup. It has retractable legs like a UFO.
If the BaseCamp was a mullet, this would be the business end of the coiffed mane—a 5v USB port to charge your devices (and power the included LED lamp) as well as some LED indicators for battery charge and heat of your fire.
So I’m starting with a piece of the included firestarter (left), then some stuff scrounged up from my backyard, various sticks, bark and then a small log from the firewood pile.
Pete and I have started many fires in our lifetime. From a flaming tennis ball to mountain of wood palettes—this one was no different. I threw in a few bamboo leaves to help get this sucker going.
The fire quickly took off and I was feeding 1” diameter sticks and small pieces of firewood form the log pile into it.
So, give it about 10 minutes and the LED status panel kicked on. Like a UFO. Or zombie eyes. Uhh…The battery indicator tells you how much charge is kickin’—which powers a small fan that helps to fuel the fire and charges your device. The little flame icon tells you how hot the fire is.
So I got the fire to level 2 of 4. It was enough to kick on the fan I described and I plugged in my phone to charge…
It took about 15 minutes to charge my iPhone 6 from under 10% charge to 44%. My math is shifty, so I can’t tell you what it’ll take to charge to 100% but Biolite says you’ll get 30 minutes of charging time, based on a strong fire, from the onboard battery.
While I wasn’t prepared to cook a full-on meal, the twins got some marshmallow roasting done on the BaseCamp.
BaseCamp is a lot of bang for the buck. The cooktop can fit about 8-10 burgers and has an adjustable lever to concentrate heat if your perkin’ up some post-apocalyptic coffee. It’s stainless steel construction ensures this grill is in it for the long haul. I’d buy this grill just for the grill—charging your device is the bonus.
So check out the BioLite BaseCamp grill. It’s available at Lowe’s nationwide. Learn more at BioLite.
Disclosure: Dadand was supplied product to post about the BioLite BaseCamp. Despite that, the opinions expressed by Dadand are our own. To provide as much transparency as possible, Dadand makes every reasonable effort to disclose the source of all products and services reviewed.
3 Comments
Mary Jane
This sounds like a great new toy. Would like to know what else you cooked on it. I thought you had to use charcoal to grill if not using gas but then I’m not the camper in the family. I leave that to the hubs :-) I absolutely love reading your narrative, btw.
Kristy Jones
We often go on camping with my family. And I think it would be great to bring along Biolite next time. Grilled foods are perfect to be served outdoor.
Lee Davis
I purchased the BaseCamp stove right off of the BioLite website.
first off, all over their website it says FREE SHIPPING on ORDERS OVER $75. I was charged $20 for shipping, so I emailed them. 3 emails and 4 days later they tell me there is a $20 surcharge on this item because of its size 9no mention of a surcharge anywhere on the website).
Next, a few days later I get the unit and it was too cold to test drive it here in Michigan at the time. 10 days later we are having a 45° day so I get it out, load it with wood and keep a nice fire just coming out of the top waiting for the LED’s and fan to kick in. After 40 minutes of this the LED’s come on, the fan kicks in and it starts burning really nice. This lasted all of 90 seconds when the fan shut off and the LED’s go out. Tried for another 20 minutes and never got the fan or LED’s to come on again. Seems like a defective unit to me so I shoot support an email, next day I message them on their FaceBook page, today is day three and I am still waiting for some sort of a response from them. I am really hoping they are going to make this right, it was $200 after all and beside that, it it worked as advertised I would be one happy camper.