Iwatani VA-30 Butane Stove

The best portable single burner out there! Does well in variable weather.

This Iwatani butane stove is amazing! It’s compact, lightweight, and incredibly easy to use. The flame is powerful and consistent, making it perfect for camping trips, outdoor cooking, or even emergencies at home. The build quality feels solid, and the ignition system works flawlessly every time. It heats up quickly and distributes heat evenly, which makes cooking super efficient. Cleaning is also a breeze. If you need a portable, reliable stove, this one is a winner! Highly recommend it!

The price and quality are both excellent; it's a great replacement for my old model that I've been using for a long time.

Came back from Japan and wanted to try yakiniku grilling at home. Bought this Iwatani camp stove paired with the Iwantani ABURI Grill Plate. The combination worked perfectly to grill up some American wagyu at home. The flame gets hot enough for grilling (at medium setting) and I'm confident i will do a fine job with pots and pans. Have used it 4 times and it stil looks new. Since using this, I saw a similar stove at ghe Costco Business center for less. If I were to do it again, I'd probably grab the one at Costco.

I live in a third world country where even a backup generator can go down when the grid fails. This device and a couple of spare canisters of fuel from Walmart will get me through anything without requiring mountains of space for storage. It has the power you need to cook just about anything. It wasn't super easy to use on the floor of my balcony outside, but it was doable and it's better than being without any means to boil water for coffee or cook food. I live in a very windy area and I ended up using it indoors next to a slightly open sliding glass window that blew outside when a different window was open, and that provided enough airflow to prevent the carbon monoxide detector from detecting anything.

What a game changer for outdoor cooking!!! I love everything about this burner. It lights up quickly! And, it even comes in a carrying case. At first, I was worried about the alignment of the Butane, but it was so EASY because it attaches to a magnetic piece under the cover. Definitely gonna get another one!

So happy I ordered this product to use for Korean barbecue nights for my family, not to mention camping, cooking dishes outside alongside the grill, and any other future uses I can think of. This portable stove top is easy to clean, the butane cartridges are easily replaced, and seam on average to last about 1 to 2 hours obviously depending on the intensity of the flame during use. I would recommend buying replacement cartridges at an Asian grocery store or market if you have one in your area as they tend to be much cheaper there. Despite warnings from many reviews online, I've had no issues using this inside. If weather and conditions allow, I have a nearby window cracked or open, but I don't believe this is entirely necessary as long as you don't have it on full blast for hours at a time. These are used heavily in Asian countries indoors where no one gives it a second thought.

I had read many reviews and watched YouTube videos that all pointed to Iwatani as being the best single burner butane stove. It's made in Japan and rated for commercial use indoors and personal use outdoors. I figured if it was safe enough to use indoors in the right conditions, then it would be perfect for us to use outdoors while camping. I was wrong. This stove has WAY too high of heat output for anything anyone needs to cook while camping. I tested it out at home to make a pot of macaroni and cheese and managed to boil the pot over with it turned on high. After I cleaned up that mess, I was determined to try again to finish my pot of mac n cheese, but I had to turn it all the way down to the lowest it would go. I wondered what I would do if I ever needed to cook on low if low was already being used as medium high. I really wanted to make this stove work. On first glance, it seemed nicely made, and the burner cover comes off for easy cleanup. (Thank goodness, since my pot spewed milk everywhere into the nooks and crannies!) I was not crazy about a chipped paint spot I found on my first one so I ordered a replacement and that one arrived with the front sticker having been poked into where there were holes behind the sticker. I hadn't noticed the stickers on the first one, but now I had two of them home and neither of them looked worth the $45 I had paid. And how would stickers fair outdoors when the one that was fresh out of the shrink wrap had the stickers poked through? Oh, yeah...and where does one store the can of butane when the lock-in mechanism is magnetized? It dawned on me that the folks who marketed this as a portable stove, probably never camped before. With no fuel storage, the sticker issues, and a flame hot enough to boil over milk at record speed, I decided to keep looking. I ended up with the blue Coleman single burner butane stove instead. I had passed over it earlier because I had thought the magnetic fuel lock and the removable pan...and the made in Japan credentials would make this one a better stove. Then I happened to watch a YouTube video of someone we have watched for years, who we knew always cooked his own meals on the road. He hadn't ever focused on his food at all, except he went camping in one video and the little blue Coleman is what he used! Knowing he had cooked many a meal on this stove in his travels, I decided I'd give it a try. Here's a comparison: *The Coleman can store the butane can with the lid on inside of it for storage. Everything you need can go in the storage case. The Iwatani has a nicer case, but you're going to have to find somewhere else to store the butane because it doesn't fit in the stove or the case when not in use. *The Coleman has all printed labels so if it gets wet or dirty, you can just wipe it off. The Iwatani's stickers poke through holes in the metal easily. I didn't try wiping them off to see what would happen. *The Coleman has a lower btu, allowing you to actually use it on high and low. The Iwatani has high (low) and molten lava high (high). You don't really get a low for simmering. *The Coleman doesn't come apart for cleaning, but we didn't have a need to do that because it behaved like a nice little camp stove. The Iwatani on high caused milk to spew all over, so it was a good thing it could be taken apart to clean it. *The lever locking action on the Coleman seemed more secure than the magnetic locking action on the Iwatani. I never smelled gas while locking the can in the Coleman, but I could smell gas sometimes when locking it into the Iwatani. If you're looking for a camp stove, take a look at the blue Coleman. We used it for a 6 day camping trip and it was awesome! I used it in the rain on a couple of nights and thought to myself that I was glad I didn't have to concern myself with the stickers on the Iwatani getting wet and ruined on the first outing. As for the Iwatani...it might be worth a shot for commercial use or for the bbq that others have mentioned.