The GSI Stainless Steel Cup is an excellent addition to your gear. I use this cup nested with a Guyot Designs Stainless Steel Water Bottle The Backpacker placed inside of a Maxpedition Bottle Holder. This is a great and convenient system to carry a cup, water bottle, and water along with some extra gear.
The GSI Stainless Steel Cup holds 18 fl. oz., is relatively lightweight and very durable. The cup is great to boil water for tea or hot chocolate on those cold days hiking or camping. One bit of caution is that the handle will get hot so you will need to use something to protect your fingers from burning or give it time to cool down before touching.
I use this cup on a regular basis and am very happy with this product. I recommend the GSI Stainless Steel Cup as a great addition to your gear.
If you are using a 32oz Nalgene bottle, then this cup is a must have item. It is big enough to nest on the bottom or top of any standard size water bottle. It''s the perfect size to boil water in for dehydrated meals or to just make some hot chocolate on a winter hike. The only thing about this cup that I would change would be to make the handles able to lock in the open position. I''ve used a military canteen and canteen cup for years and never thought that I would use anything different. Now that I''ve tried using the 38oz standard size Guyot Designs water bottle and the GSI cup, they have become my new standard.
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Of all my backpacking gear, one of the things that give me the most fits is the lowly cup. I just can''t seem to find the perfect cup, or even one that comes close enough for me to be happy and give up the search. Plastic cups/mugs have cracked and don''t do temperature extremes well; single-wall stainless steel cups are versatile and tough but in the cold will take your coffee from scalding to tepid in about 4 seconds flat; titanium cups are nice, save you a gram or two over stainless, and cost about as much as your kid''s braces. So, I gave this GSI single-wall stainless cup (see above) a try...
Size and Shape: are good. As described, a 32 oz. Nalgene bottle will nest nicely into this cup. That''s a potential space saver, but only if you carry your bottle in your pack (probably not) or if you can fit the cup at the bottom of your bottle holder. The cup easily holds 16 fl. oz. with about 1/2 inch of space left at the top. That''s pretty good capacity, to me, and allows for small ramen noodle meals on the go as well as extra large sizes of morning java or evening hot cocoa. The size also means a decent bottom, which is slightly indented, that will fit on most backpack or camp-stove burners. (I would have preferred a perfectly flat bottom without indent, but this is a nit-pick) So, this cup can double as a tiny pot, too, and that''s nice.
Handles: Meh. It comes with curved handles that do a pretty good job of hugging the cup when stored and can be folded out to hold when the cup''s too hot. They are not spring loaded, which I suppose is fine, but when folded out they do not meet cleanly or ''lock'' together, so when you are holding the cup, the two sides of the handle are constantly shifting in your grip. While it doesn''t make the cup unusable, it is certainly annoying. Every time. It puzzles me that GSI, maker of such well-designed campware, could put their name on such clumsy and ill-conceived handles.
Quality and Construction: The cup is bright and smooth on the outside and has a brushed finish on the inside. The lip is curled over and smooth. Weight and thickness are typical of a stainless camp cup and this one is plenty strong. Going back to the handles: Each curved handle is basically bent wire, hooked into a bracket that is tack welded onto the cup. I tend to prefer rivets over tack welds even though I know in my heart that I''m more likely to win the lottery than have my cup fail due to tack welds. Still. If you really, truly, hate the handles as I do you can simply spread them apart and take them out of the brackets.
So would I recommend this cup? Well, I''m not sure. I really like the size and shape of it, but I HATE the handles. Honestly, I like it a lot better after I''ve taken the handles off, though now I''ve got to use gloves, or a multitool, or a pot-grabber to deal with the thing when it''s hot. Also, it''s still single wall stainless steel, making it problematic when it''s cold. I think I''ll put a neoprene sleeve over it, salvaged from my Nalgene bottle holder when it gives out Cool Stuff Neoprene Carrier 32oz, which would make it better still. Really this is between three and four stars, for me, for a product that has potential but ultimately misses the mark.
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Not the greatest quality or performance but at approx 10 dollars it is a nice backup. To help others figure out its size, it fits loosely (1-2 mm gap all around) over the bottom of a 40-ounce Klean Kanteen stainless water bottle and I measured the inside diameter of the cup at 3.7 inches and height at 3.4 inches. Being a relatively "square" dimension the cup is not going to tip easily which is nice when it is sitting on top of a camp stove. It is also a good diameter for most small camp stoves to put a lot of flame under it (although when I turned up the flames on my Coleman exponent multi-fuel stove, a lot of the blue flame wrapped around the cup --not as efficient). The stainless steel does not attract a rare earth magnet at all so it is an alloy with less of the ferrous/iron content.
As for performance, aluminum conducts heat better so it takes longer to heat water in this stainless cup than an aluminum cup. I poured exactly 16 oz of water into this cup and an anodized aluminum cup of almost exactly the same dimensions and the same capacity and tried to keep all conditions the same to perform a credible side-by-side comparison. In the stainless cup it took 7:50 (min:sec) to bring 16 ounces of water to a rolling boil, while it took 6:30 in the anodized aluminum cup. This was with minimum wind and significant blue flame wrapping around the cups.
For the purposes of conserving fuel so you do not have to carry as much, a stainless cup is not a good primary cooking/boiling cup. I relegated these cheap cups to some kits I keep in the vehicles with some cheap (Lifeline Green brand) stainless 40-ounce stainless water bottles (hopefully I will never need them).
Pros
+ The sticker on the side peeled off very easy and left no residue; bottom sticker came off easily and left some residue easily removed with alcohol (big pet peeve).
+ Polished stainless steel so cup is super easy to clean.
+ Fits 40-ounce bottles well (1-2 mm gap all around).
+ Relatively tip resistant dimensions.
Cons:
Folding handles bow out from the body significantly when folded making the cup''s profile much wider. I had to carefully bend the handles on both cups which is a time-consuming annoyance, and worse for someone who does not have the strong little clamps that can hold the wire handles close to the hinge and have an experienced enough hand to bend it at the right places and without over-doing it and weakening the handles... the factory really could have done a much better job with this and this is what is holding me back from rating this at four stars.
Cooking/boiling is slower in stainless steel.
Edit later added: Not stamped with ounces/milliliters on the side... that would have been very useful, esp. if readable from inside.
Tight fit in most water bottle holders (see my reply to comments below).
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this is ALMOST a fantastic product. It nests with my nalgene bottles, taking up almost no room in my bag, it is the exact size of the burner, so it is much more efficient and boils water much more quickly than a GI canteen cup. (the GI cup is oblong, so about a third of your burner just shoots up around the sides)
The only problem is the skinny little handle. the GI cup has a great big wire handle that allows you to hold it by the vertical piece of wire. because this is so skinny, the only way to hold is by wrapping your hand around the entire handle. the handle on my GI cup will get fairly warm by the time i boil a cup of water, but this thing gets so hot it seared my skin the first time i tried to use it. It''s a shame, because it''s otherwise such a great product, but if I can''t boil water in it, well, then it''s really just a plain cup. Hopefully I can devise some sort of insulated handle that I can attach to it or grip the wire handle with.
this cup is also the exact same size as a jetboil coffee press, which will then break down and nest inside the cup. $15 turns this into a french press coffee maker and you don''t even need the rest of the jetboil system. :D
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I like to hike a lot and I find these convenient to hold a small water bottle. I clip one to each side of my day pack. I''ve used them many times and never have had an issue. I suspect like most rubber products, the rubber part may deteriorate if you leave them in the sun for an extended period of time. So far, I''ve found them very useful and if they do break down, I would buy them again. For less than $7 they work great!
