With all our crazy Midwest weather my BioLite Campstove arrived on a Monday, about a week later than Fresh planned to get it to me. So I did a preliminary test under not so ideal conditions (& certainly not camping conditions). I have some photos up on my Twitter if you would like to look at them. Follow me @emalita1. First I was surprised by how light the box was, about 2 lbs, which makes it easier to pack & carry with your gear. It comes with everything you need to get started - Even a USB cable & fire starters. It is easy to set up, but you will need to charge the battery via a regular outlet for up to 6 hrs to start (or if it has been unused for over 6mos). Since I wasn't camping in the middle of the week, with two kids running to various activities, I set it up on our deck to give it a go. It was very easy to get a fire started, but you do need to constantly maintain it depending what you are trying to do/cook. For my first try I just wanted to see how fast it would bring water to a boil. With a good flame I was able to get 2 C to boil in less that five minutes. In the 45 minutes I played with the stove I was never able to get the bar at the USB port to glow green indicating that I could change my phone. I'm going to get my almost Eagle Scout son to play with it over the weekend and see how hot/long it takes to get that to work. My guess is you really need to build a good hot fire & maintain it so you can generate enough energy to power the charger. In my opinion that may be hotter, & more sustained, than you would be using to cook a meal. It mentions in to directions that you need to make sure the power module is never downwind of the flame. As a seasoned camper I'm not sure how you could do this consistently under unpredictable camping conditions. You would have to keep turning the stove if your wind was anything other than calm. However, then power module stays cool to the touch and I did notice that the perforated outer metal also stayed fairly cool to the touch. Hopefully Fresh won't "punish"me, but I am going to keep this a few more days to test it further so that I can evaluate the charging ability. Overall, I think this product has iced up to my expectations and I would easily include it with my gear when camping with my Girl Scouts. I like that it is compact, easy to use and environmentally friendly. I want to keep it, but for sure I will buy one!