Am loving this new stove from MSR. It's something of a hybrid design, without an integrated hat exchanger, but with a bespoke designed cook pot, plus the flexibility of allowing third party cookware to be used. If that's not clear let me explain further. Many camping stoves have evolved into super efficient integrated systems with the stove designed to ONLY work with its partner cooking pot with its built in heat exchanger. The difficulty with this is that you can't easily use other cooking pots. This can be especially problematic for smaller systems with low-volume cooking pots. The Switch system has a different approach. Whilst the included cooking pot is only 1 litre, the stove features three fold out supports above the burner, to allow pretty much any pot you like to be used. If you're sticking with the supplied pot then there is an integrated ring which the pot sits on. Unusually, the base of the pot is hemispherical which has a number of benefits. First and foremost it is more fuel efficient, presenting a greater surface area of the base of the pot to the heat source. Secondly it heats the contents of the pot more efficiently too as there are no cool spots in the corner between the base and side. And thirdly food doesn’t get burned and stuck in the said corner; cleaning the pot is easier. 

When stowed the whole system is neatly packaged: a small wash / dry cloth sits in the base of the pot, protecting the non-stick surface. The stove itself sits in the base of the pot, with room enough for a 100g gas cylinder to sit atop the stove. There is also a three legged stand which neatly sits around the stove in the bottom half of the pot. There's aplastic lid with a couple of strainers  / steam releases for the top, and the whole thing sits inside a 500ml plastic cup. The top half is wrapped in a thin cork insulating cover which aids in heat retention / cooking time, and there are a pair of curved, folding handles which make holding the pot a doddle. 

What was it like in use? Brilliant. Super quick to set up. Unpack. Screw on the gas cannister. Clip on the three-legged base. Fill the pot with whatever you are heating / cooing. Lid on. Place on the ring. Flip out the burner control paddle. Turn it half a turn. Press the piso ignition button. Away you go. I tend to hold onto the handles whist its heating / cooking as the system is relatively tall and narrow, so prone to tipping if knocked, especially if not on a solid, flat surface. Heating time is pretty impressive. I was out in the snow over the weekend, camping up high in temperatures around -10 Celsius, and boiled half a litre of water from snow in a couple of minutes. 

Retailing at £135 it's a decent priced stove with a lot of flexibility. Check it out on the Cascade Designs Website.