Campingaz 400 ST Review – A wind resistant stove?

The Campingaz 400 ST stove incorporates the new Xcelerate burner technology, designed to reduce the effects of breeze. We put it to the test to find out…

We’ve long been a user of just a simple single-hob gas canister stove. We do a lot of cooking over the campfire, so the stove is mainly to just boil the kettle.

However, you are limited with just a single hob, especially if you end up camping somewhere that doesn’t allow campfires or BBQs.

Even if you do have access to cooking over a campfire or BBQ, just knocking up a quick pasta dish is a lot easier with a bigger stove.

Campingaz Stoves

Campingaz stoves have been a popular choice with campers for years.

Their Chef range has been a good choice for families, with its two burners and a small grill.

The design is tried and tested, but, as with all gas stoves when camping, suffers from one problem…

Wind

Any form of breeze is a real problem when using a gas stove outside.

A breeze can blow the heat away from the pan, which then takes longer to cook, and therefore uses more fuel.

Putting windshields around your stove can reduce time to boil, and save a lot on fuel.

Xcelerate Technology

Campingaz has come up with a solution for this problem, and that’s their new Xcelerate technology.

Essentially they put lots of tiny little windshields built into each hob itself.

Here’s a video from Campingaz.

Campingaz 400 ST, put to the test

The Xcelerate Technology on the Campingaz 400 ST

The Campingaz 400 ST stove takes the popular two-burner-with-grill Campingaz Chef stove and updates it with the Xcelerate technology.

The stove opens up from its built-in carry case, with the case forming the bottom and back of the stove. This also means it’s quick to cover up again, which you may want to do when not cooking.

There is plenty of room for big pans on the Campingaz 400 ST

When putting it to the test we found that the hobs were wide enough apart to hold a family sized pot and frying pan (which was perfect for cooking spag. bol. at the campsite). I have heard of some other brands having a problem with there not actually being enough space to fit two pans side by side.

We placed the 400 ST on top of our kitchen unit, without the normal windshield, and the stove boiled water in about the same time you would expect at home. Considering this was outside, we thought that was quite good.

However, we’ve also used the stove when it got very windy (windy enough for basic tent pegs to get pulled out), and then the wind did present a challenge. This was easily solved with putting a windshield around the front of the stove so it was protected on all four sides. To be fair, the wind was gusting lot, and is was to be expected that cooking times would be reduced in those conditions.

Gas and the Campingaz 400 ST

The Campingaz R907 Cylinder

The 400 ST is flexible in that you can use it with either Butane or Propane cylinders.

Of course it works well with the Campingaz R904 and R907 Cylinders, which can easily be found in camping stores and many campsites in the UK and across Europe.

Fitting the regulator is easy: it just screws into the top of the cylinder.

We used the larger Campingaz R907 cylinder, and despite already doing a lot of camping and cooking with it, we’ve not had to do a refill exchange yet. For the amount of gas we have used, I would estimate we could have got through at least 8 to 10 cartridges on our old stove. So despite the ‘hire cost’ of the Campingaz Cylinders (which can be a bit more expensive than some other brands), we’ve felt getting the larger cylinder has paid for itself.

The Campingaz Gas Hose and Regulator Kit

We also bought the Campingaz ‘connection kit’ which contains cylinder and hose, which fits the R904 or R907 cylinders, and has everything you need in this convenient package. Though a slightly longer hose would have been better. (You can find this kit here on Amazon).

How do we rate the Campingaz 400 ST

This has been a good stove, and we think the new Xcelerate technology has saved us a lot of gas compared to using a normal stove.

There are a few niggles. Despite having a tough metal case, the handle is plastic and sticks out (so could easily get damaged when transporting your camping gear), and the grill is only really big enough to toast one slice of bread at a time. However, that doesn’t detract that this is proving to be a good stove for family camping, updated with the latest technology, and gets a thumbs up from us.

Disclaimer: Thanks to Campingaz for supplying us the 400 ST so that we could review their new Xcelerate technology. All opinions are our own.