Comprehensive Solo Stove Review: How To Pick The Right Solo Stove Fire Pit For You

Solo Stove is a wood-burning fire pit that produces very little smoke thanks to its patented design and strategically placed vent holes.

Smokeless fire pits may sound like an oxymoron, but they're growing in popularity as well as availability, with competitors like Breeo, Tiki, Blue Sky, BioLite, and even Pit Boss offering their designs.

The Solo Stove company has designed a smokeless fire pit that not only lives up to its claim of clean-burning but is beautiful to look at and can host a blazing fire in as little as about five minutes.

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How the Solo Stove Works

One of the first things that you'll notice about Solo Stove's fire pits, besides the sleek stainless steel, is the pattern of holes along the bottom and the interior of the burn chamber. While they do give these fire pits an interesting look, they carry a significant function. It's their signature 360° Airflow Design™ which features a double-wall structure that promotes excellent airflow, minimizing smoke.

Air gets pulled in through the bottom vent holes and serves two purposes. Some of the air fuels the fire right at the base while some of the air rises as it's heated within the double walls. The vent holes around the top allow the rising hot air and preheated oxygen to fuel the flame, giving us a secondary burn that is truly mesmerizing to watch.

The fire ring helps keep the fire centered and even, creating somewhat of a vortex of flame and heat above the pit.

Safety

The outside of your Stove will get VERY hot during use. Anything or anyone that brushes against the outside will get burned in the process. It's important to warn your guests who may not be familiar with this type of fire feature of its danger before someone tries to warm their feet, melting their shoes to the side of your wood burning fire pit. We've seen many reports of melted shoes, chairs, burned articles of loose clothing, not to mention burned skin.

If you're concerned that verbal warnings might not be enough protection, Solo Stove offers a fire pit surround to create a barrier between the stove and its users. 

Portability

Solo Stove makes 4 different sizes of fire pits and naturally, each stove's portability is in direct proportion to its size.

Solo Stove Smoke Free Fire Pit FAQs

How do you clean the Solo Stove?

The success of these fire pits depends on the ability of air to circulate through all the vent holes the way it was designed. For that reason, it is very important to clean out the interior of your stove between each use; typically the next morning following a burn.

2.0 Fire Pit Models

If you've purchased your fire pit in the last year or so, you likely have the 2.0 version and are in luck because cleaning the ash out of your wood burning fire pit is a ton easier with the newer models! With a gloved hand or small shovel, brush the remaining ash around, allowing it to fall through the holes into the ash pan below. Then insert your fingers into the two larger holes to lift the grate up and out, dumping larger pieces as you go. Then simply pick up the ash pan and dump the cool ash in your compost or trash.

1.0 Fire Pit Models

The original Solo Stove models did not have a removable ash pan and the only way to remove the ash was to pick the whole thing up and pour the ash out. Inevitably ash would also get trapped within the double walls, so we would always set our fire pit on its side in the grass and roll it around. More debris would fall out of the holes from the ash pan as we did so. (Some people even use a leaf blower to help that process along.)

Can you use a Solo Stove on a deck?

While this backyard fire pit does get very hot to the touch as a fire burns, the Solo Stove stand raises up the fire pit to allow cooler air to flow underneath making it safe to use on heat sensitive surfaces like a wood or Trex deck.

Sometimes Solo Stove includes the stand with your fire pit purchase and sometimes you have to purchase separately, so if you see a sale for the stand included you might want to take advantage of that!

Is Solo Stove really smokeless?

We have had one fire that was a little smokey and all the other fires were smokeless. Here's what we learned: When we used a softer variety of firewood that wasn't fully seasoned, the fire tended to smoke more. However, when we followed Solo Stove's recommendations for building a hotter fire with less smoke, and we used hard, dry, seasoned wood, our bonfires were smokeless every single time.

What's the best type of wood to burn?

We have found that hard woods like maple, oak, birch, and most fruit trees are the best for burning in our Solo Stove. The Yukon is a big fire pit and can go through a lot of firewood in one night. But it will easily consume twice as many splits of a softer variety of wood.

It's also important to only use well seasoned, dry wood. We got a rick and a half of cherry wood last summer that has been seasoning on our Woodhaven wood rack all through the winter. I love that it has a short cover that keeps the top rows of wood nice and dry and ready for our next Solo Stove bonfire.

Is a Solo Stove Worth It?

Quite honestly, our Yukon is the best fire pit we've ever owned. We loved it so much that we have since added the Solo Stove Bonfire and Canyon to our collection (along with just about every Solo Stove accessory and pizza oven they have in their product lineup).

Smokeless? Yes.

Visually stunning? Yes.

Worth it? Heck yes.