Cook and charge your phone while camping with the BioLite

Forget massive extra batteries or inefficient solar chargers for keeping your gadgets powered while camping. Real men use fire, courtesy of the brilliant BioLite camp stove.

The BioLite is a small, wood powered stove which weighs 900 grams and folds down to just 21 x 13cm for transportation. Because it’s wood powered, you don’t need to carry around any fuel, while your meals will also benefit from that lovely barbecue smoke flavour.

But what makes the BioLite truly exceptional is that it can harness the heat from the fire within to create electricity, which can be used to charge your gadgets via USB. It also powers a small fan, which blows back into the fire to reduce smoke and improve the fire’s cooking efficiency.

It’s not exactly clear how much power the BioLite can produce to charge your phone, but it reportedly works at about the same rate as a regular laptop USB port. Because it’s USB, the plug can be used to charge just about anything, from your phone, to a GPS to a USB-powered torch.

Set to go on sale in the US the next few months, the company has also used the same technology to create a larger version for the 50 per cent of the world’s population who still cook on an open fire.

Price: $US129
Web: BioLite
Via: GearPatrol