Review on Compact And Durable: Stansport Hard Anodized Aluminum Cook Set For Solo Camping by Terry Murphy

I purchased this cookset from Big 5 Sporting Goods, and my version did not come with the rather cheap-looking spoon shown in the pictures. My mother bought it for me out of fear that I would kill myself trying to build more efficient alcohol stoves, and thus my version comes with a cheap and slightly overweight Pocket Rocket stove clone. I will not review the stove and instead focus on the pots.Let's start with the net drawstring sack. It's oversized, and doesn't firmly hold the pots together. It's of sturdy construction. Unlike the Optimus Terra cookset Stansport blatantly ripped off with this product, the mesh sack does not stretch to conform to the pots, and frankly, it's a little irritating, although not anything worth getting too mad about.As for what we find when we open the sack, we find a 0.7 liter cup and a 0.9 liter pot. I refuse to call the "pan" a pan because I don't need a pan and don't know of many backpackers or campers who really do. You couldn't fry fish in this pan because the pan isn't wide enough and its sides are too high. At roughly 3 cups, it's rather large to be a coffee cup yet too small to be a legitimate pot. The 0.9 liter pot, on the other hand, is much more useful. It's big enough to make some Mountain House meals and just the pot alone is large enough to fit a small canister fuel container and a Pocket Rocket. If the drawstring sack were stretchy and I thought I could get away with it, I'd probably take the 0.7 liter "pan" out of the kit. Weight of the 0.9 liter pot is 4.8 oz; the smaller pan is 3.3 oz.There's yet more reasons to throw out the pan. While the pot feels sturdy enough, with well-built handles and nice metric measuring marks, the pan's handles are very wobbly and feel to be of poor construction. Both pieces of cookware have handles riveted to the sides, producing non-anodized aluminum protrusions on the inside that threaten to collect bacteria or even leaks later on down the line. I guess I can't blame it on Stansport since that's a hallmark of Optimus' design (well, and aluminum construction--ya just can't weld aluminum).Don't get me wrong: I like this kit. It's just that the pan and the drawstring sack are both lacking. I'd like better quality out of both. Better yet, what I'd really like is to have a bigger pot--say, a liter size, that could fit more water and more cooking stuff, no pan, and a simple lid to hold it all together. And that's why I recommend the Olicamp Vector with XTS Stove Combo over this Ebay cookset and the Stansport cookset from Big 5 (which are the same, spare the stove missing from one and the ladle missing from the other). The Vector stove is much lighter than the Stansport stove I got, by 2 ounces, and the XTS pot is bigger and better, with a simple lid and it's lighter weight than the combined weight of the pot and pan in this set.You don't think a couple ounce difference in stove weight or pot weight makes a difference, till you're shaving pounds off a backpack's weight by cutting an ounce apiece off of 16 different small items. The XTS and Vector stove combo weigh 9.7 oz for a stove and pot. That's total. The kit I bought weighs a total of nearly 13 ounces. Looking back, I'd rather have the XTS' lightweight lid to the Stansport's heavy and useless pan. The Vector stove is a great touch and it all works better.Both the Olicamp and Stansport products are knockoffs, but I think the Olicamp is probably the better knockoff on paper. Read the reviews of the Olicamp (I don't own one, but they look decent enough) and decide for yourself.