Light My Fire Titanium Review
Our Verdict
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This Product
Light My Fire Titanium | |||||
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Awards | Best Overall | Best for Ultralight Backpacking | Best Bang For Your Buck | ||
Price | $24 List $23.95 at Amazon | $8.95 at Backcountry Compare at 3 sellers | $12.00 List $11.95 at Amazon | $8.95 at REI Compare at 2 sellers | $4.49 at Amazon Compare at 2 sellers |
Overall Score | |||||
Star Rating | |||||
Bottom Line | A titanium upgrade that solves the biggest issue with the plastic version of this spork | The best model for your on-the-go meal needs | This model has an exceptionally low weight and top-notch durability, making it the ideal backcountry utensil | A great option for the backcountry due to its comfortable and lightweight design | This sturdy plastic model offers the best price to performance ratio |
Rating Categories | Light My Fire Titanium | Snow Peak Titanium... | Vargo Titanium ULV | Toaks Titanium | humangear GoBites Uno |
Eating (35%) | |||||
Durability (30%) | |||||
Cooking (20%) | |||||
Cleaning (15%) | |||||
Specs | Light My Fire Titanium | Snow Peak Titanium... | Vargo Titanium ULV | Toaks Titanium | humangear GoBites Uno |
Material | Titanium | Titanium | Titanium | Titanium | High-temp nylon |
Measured weight (oz) | 0.7 oz | 0.6 oz | 0.3 oz | 0.6 oz | 0.5 oz |
Length | 6.75" | 6.5" | 6.5" | 6.625" | 6.5" |
Dishwasher safe? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes - Top rack recommended |
Our Analysis and Test Results
The double-sided design allows the user to select the tool depending on the meal at hand. The spoon and fork are highly suited to the task: the deep bowl enables you to enjoy a healthy dose of your favorite soup and the tines of the fork are sharp enough to spear a piece of meat. The cerated side of the leftmost fork tines can function as a cutting tool, but it does not replace the need for a knife as part of a camp kit.
Performance Comparison
Eating
The spork's large scooped bowl is a great soup spoon, and the larger carrying capacity also means it excels are ladling mountains of oatmeal into your mouth. The sharp tines of the fork are effective for stabbing chunks of meat and function well at the most fork-related tasks. The claim that this utensil also serves as a knife is a slight stretch of the imagination in our assessment. The serrated edges provided some slicing power against certain food items such as sausages or chicken, but this 'knife's' capabilities were not much greater than the side of a narrow spoon or fork.
For some, the iconic double-end design is the selling point of the LMF spork, while for others, it is the pitfall. Each end is well suited to specific eating tasks, but for a meal that requires both ends, you either have to compromise your hygiene or clean your spork mid-meal. You're also forced to hold the utensil in the middle, which most testers found less natural. Otherwise, you can hold this spork by the spoon bowl or the fork tines, but again, doing so is awkward.
Durability
The titanium model showed no signs of wear and tear during our testing period. In order to see if we could spot signs of decay, we even borrowed a 5-year-old model and put it under the lens for close inspection. Aside from the branding wearing down, we could see no evidence that this spork had survived over 1000 uses: this is the type of tool you may pass onto your offspring.
Cooking
The double-ended design means this tool is suitable for a wide range of cooking tasks ( frying, scrambling, stirring, labeled, whisking) even if it did feel awkward in hand. The titanium material was not kind to our Teflon pans, leaving multiple scratch marks after some vigorous stirring. On the other hand, the titanium is adept at scraping cast iron pots clean.
Cleaning
The titanium material makes this utensil conducive to the quick lick cleaning method. The indentation of graphics on the central part of the handle is prone to collecting extra grime, which is annoying since such branding is unnecessary to the spork's function.
Value
If longevity is factored into our value analysis, this spork is a reasonable purchase. It may cost significantly more than other models we tested, but we are also confident that this spork will see more meals than the non-titanium counterparts. That said, there are other titanium and aluminium alloy models we tested that we expect to stand the test of time similarly. All of them cost less than the Light My Fire Titanium.
Conclusion
Most people are willing to spend the extra money on a product that lasts as this one does. Lightweight and versatile, it would be a welcome addition to any adventurer's summit pack and would also be suitable as a day-to-day lunch tool for heavy-handed utilitarians.