Mr. Heater BUDDY FLEX & COOKER - FULL REVIEW

hello youtubers alaska prepper here i've been wanting to get a hold of one of these mr heater buddy flex systems for a while i finally got a hold of the heating element in addition to the side cooking element that you see here on your screen so today i'm going to go ahead and unpack these i'm going to go ahead and let you know what these guys are all about and we're going to go ahead and test it and even maybe cook some eggs on the cooker because it's breakfast time here and it's about time for breakfast now as far as the heater flex goes i wanted to go over some specifications for you as you can see here right on the box it says that it's safe for indoor use however ladies and gentlemen make sure that you read the instructions i do believe that as long as you have nine square inches of outside air coming into your room it is safe to use however this unit also comes with an oxygen sensor that will allow it to automatically turn off if it detects that the oxygen level in the room is getting low another thing that i like about this unit is that it has a knockover sensor just like the big buddy or the regular buddy system where if you knock it over it will shut down and we will test that on this video it says that it has omnidirectional 180 degree heat which means that instead of the heat going straight forward you're going to have 180 degree of coverage as far as the heat that's being distributed from the unit it's wind resistant it has it has a quick connect for the gas to the appliance that we're going to be reviewing as well which is nice and it has an output of between 8000 and 11 000 btu so we'll go over the output of the btu when we review it as well so let me show you what this comes with when you unpack it this is the buddyflex as you can see what they meant by 180 degree radius is that the heating element comes all the way from this edge to the other edge giving 180 degree disbursement of heat the old buddies used to only have a forward heating element meaning that the heating elements that were placed in it which were ceramic or our ceramic would only project heat forward it also came with an instruction manual that brings a aaa battery now ladies and gentlemen i've read this instruction manual it's very important that you read this now in the instruction manual it says that it is safe for you to use this indoors however they have stipulations on what you can and should not do so make sure that you read it this is not my first go-to and i would not recommend something like this as your first go-to in an emergency this is really a backup to my backup to my backup to my backup all right but i wanted to go ahead and get this and review it for you guys because i think it's a very nice little system so far just from looking at it we're going to go ahead and turn it on and see how it radiates heat and how hot it actually gets when it radiates heat alright so as you can see this is the front this is the side and it has a compartment where you have a quick connect that can connect to your appliance to your cooker and it also has another compartment where you can go ahead and put in your battery so you can put in your battery here and on this part of the compartment it looks like you can put spare batteries in there as well the back of the unit has your working knob it has your igniter and it also has the regulator that accepts your one pound propane tank the working knob up here has two sides one of them is for the heating unit and one of them is for your accessory your cooktop unit the other side has a compartment for whatever you want to put in there or whatever you can fit in there i would assume that this compartment would probably be good to put a hose for example when we open up the cooker element that's going to have a hose that connects to this unit that's probably what this was made for but we'll find out here in a minute there's a nice little handle up here that makes it pretty convenient to carry it's not very heavy if i had to say probably weighs about 15 pounds or so now as i stated before this is something that i would use in a last case scenario where i've lost all of the ability to heat my home and only have this left where you can at least heat one room and you and your family can stay warm but i cannot stress enough ladies and gentlemen i cannot stress enough make sure that you read the owner's manual and that you understand everything before you decide to use this i'm going to do now is i'm going to go ahead and put the battery in this i'm going to go ahead and attach the propane canister i have a one pound propane canister attach it and we'll see how it works okay so i found something that i don't like i put my canister on my propane canister on and i realized that the front of the unit is on the opposite side as the starting instrumentation which kind of makes it difficult because when you want to see the pilot light you have to actually either get to know this area pretty well which is not difficult to do just by feel so that you can see if the pilot light is turning on or not now i did purge the line to make sure that there's propane in it i was able to smell it on the other side so our line is purged of air and is full of propane however you're going to have to remember what you're doing back here if you want to be able to keep an eye on the front to see if your light is actually lit so the way that you turn this on is you take this knob you bring it to where it says ignition pilot and as you're pressing down on the knob while it's on the ignition pilot position you have to press down on the ignite button as well until your pilot light turns on once your pilot light turns on you continue to press down on this for about 30 seconds then you can lift it up and your pilot light will be on after which you can go ahead and control your knob or adjust it to wherever you want it to low or high or in between so let's go ahead and turn this around i'm going to go ahead and do what i just explained for to you to do is very simple even if you don't know how to do it it's got instructions right here all right so let's go ahead and turn it around and see if we can turn it on successfully all right so hopefully you guys have a good view of the element that's going to heat up so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to turn my knob to the pilot setting i've got to turn to the pilot setting now at the same time that we turn it on that we push down on the knob we're going to go ahead and push on the ignition button i'm not sure if you can see that but i can hear the gas coming out and the pilot i can see the pilot lighting now i'm going to lay off of the pilot button and hopefully you can see that the pilot is lit so i am still pressing down on the control knob that's on the pilot setting to make sure that the gas is flowing in there well enough for about 30 seconds or so and then i'm gonna let go of that knob and then prepare to adjust it so that the element can turn on and there you go i just let go of the knob so now you can see the pilot right there is still lit so now all you have to do is press down on the knob just a little bit and you're going to go ahead and be able to light up this entire element and right now i'm putting it on low as you can see it's light up lighting up on low so that right there is just a little bit higher than low this is medium and i can feel the heat coming off of it it's very nice actually and here we have it on high so right here we're drawing 11 000 btu now ladies and gentlemen just to give you an idea of how long that one pound propane canister will last operating at 11 000 btu one pound of propane has just shy of 22 000 btu which means that that one pound canister of propane will power this on high for a couple of hours so this is definitely something that i would use for an emergency so so far this is generating a really nice amount of heat i mean i'm standing about four feet away from it and i can feel the heat coming this way one of the things that i like about this is that if you knock it over that it will turn off but also you have to remember to read the instructions in the owner's manual because there are some places where you do not want to place this for example you don't want to put this on the floor if you have a carpeted floor okay even though it has a knock over shut off i would not want to put this on the floor on a carpeted floor another thing to remember is that whenever you are using this act like this is a candle make sure that if you are using this in a room in your home that you do not leave it unattended for any reason whatsoever and always ladies and gentlemen public safety announcement keep a fire extinguisher handy at all times so now what we're going to do ladies and gentlemen is we're going to go ahead and unpack the burner the cooker and see how it works ladies and gentlemen this is what the cooker appliance looks like that hooks up to the buddy flex it comes with the appliance itself and an owner's manual and also a triple a battery that i already took out all right now i'm kind of disappointed in this where the box on the buddy flex says that it can be used indoors this specifically states on this card that you do not want to cook indoors with it so we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and put our battery in real quick anyways this is what it looks like as you can see it's got a knob just like the buddy flex does and it's got a nice radiant cooking top on it so we're going to go ahead and move this off so we can turn it around i'll show you guys what it looks like on the other side and here is our hose that we take out to attach it to the flux as you can see the hose has a way to get out without being crimped so that's how that would go our battery goes in this little compartment right here you'll need a screwdriver in order to remove it so we'll take that out it's as easy as just putting your battery in there i would recommend that if you're gonna have something like this in storage like for example when i'm done with this i'm going to put it back in the box and i'm going to put it away in my trailer and keep it there in case i need to break glass in case of emergency i would recommend that you take the batteries out of the units that way they don't corrode it's got some nice little sturdy legs i kind of like the light that it's got on there we're going to go ahead and put this around and then we're going to go ahead and switch our big buddy to this side since the hose comes out of this side i did forget to show you guys the knockdown on the flex so before we're done with this video i am going to turn it back on knock it over to see if it shuts off okay so standby buddy flex has the quick connect all you need to do is take this hose and connect it to the body flex so now all we have to do is we have to turn this knob to the low position right there press in and then hit our pilot spark right here to turn it on let's see how it works if it works quickly or not so we're pressing in and there you can see i hope you guys can see that the pilot turned on so now i'm going to go ahead and hold this knob down for about 30 seconds or so just to make sure that that thermocouple is hot enough to tell the system that it has a flame i believe it's a thermocouple or the thermal pile it's it's one of those two names that lets the system know that yes it's hot enough to detect a flame running and what happens is if it is not hot enough it will automatically shut down your flame or automatically shut down your gas feed that way you're not just having gas going in okay i've been holding it for about good 30 seconds 45 seconds down let's see if it'll stay on there we go so that right there is on high i think it's going to work out pretty good because that is generating a good amount of heat however ladies and gentlemen i'll say again that the instructions say that you should not be using that burner indoors not sure exactly why when you can use a propane indoors like i do on my range but that is what the owner's manual states i decided to just heat up some water instead for my coffee because if i bring eggs in here and fry it it might get grease and stuff all over my clean table and i don't want to do that so right now it's 8 30 almost to the second there's about a cup and a half of water in here let's go ahead and place that up there and i'm going to show you guys the watch again once that comes to a boil as you can see ladies and gentlemen it is come to a boil and it is 8 35 so it took roughly just shy of five minutes for it to come to a boil because it was already doing this before i turned the camera back on so let me go ahead and turn this off and then we'll wrap it up and i'll tell you what i think the unit is on high and now we're gonna go ahead and knock this thing over to see if it turns off i'm just gonna pull it towards me this way as you can see it worked it turned off as soon as it detected that it was a certain number of degrees off to the side and turned off i really like that safety function on this unit and the big buddy and little buddy as well so what do i think about this unit ladies and gentlemen let me go ahead and break them down one by one the buddy flex i think it's a nice unit however i have a couple of problems with this one of the problems is the price it's priced at about 160 or so give or take depending where you get it right and what you have to pay for shipping and all that kind of stuff you can get a big buddy unit that doesn't have the 180 degree radiancy but it puts out a lot more btu than the buddyflex if i remember correctly the big buddy puts out i believe 18 000 btu and the big buddy is the one that takes two one pound canisters and can also hook up to a 20 pound cylinder so for the same amount a ralph around the same amount you can get a big buddy for about the same price that you can get the buddy flex for about the same amount you're getting an additional 8 000 or so btu of heat out of the unit that's the first thing that i don't like about this unit i do like that it has the 180 degree radian but i don't like that you're getting such a small btu capacity for the price you're paying when you can buy something else that comes from the same manufacturer that performs better as far as putting out heat and that's what these machines are meant to do is to put out heat i like that it has a compact size with a nice handle on it and it doesn't weigh that much do i recommend it for people to get it depends on what you need it for if you're an outdoors person and you know the big buddy is too big for you and you're looking for something that's a little bit smaller that radiates heat throughout a larger um angle then sure go for it but me personally i would not purchase this so the cooker first off the price is too much i don't think it's very efficient it took about five minutes or so to bring a cup and a half of water up to a boil so that five minutes may not sound like a lot but when you're only dealing with one pound canisters that tells me that it's going to take one pound of propane for you to be able to heat that amount of water maybe 20 times and you'll be out of fuel which isn't really that much i believe that a butane stove for emergency cooking would serve me better than this if i had to do it over again i would not purchase this again because i don't think it's very efficient it's only made to use outdoors if you're going to be outdoors you could probably carry something to heat your water or cook your foods that's a little bit smaller than this and if you're only going to need something to cook outdoors with without the buddy flex you cannot operate this machine so you would have to take your buddy flex with you as well so if it's the middle of summer time and you want to bring something with you to cook outdoors you're going to have to take the buddy flex with you as well as this in order to be able to use this so that's another reason why i would not purchase this again had i you know known better but i'm doing this because i want to show you guys what this is how it worked overall the entire system worked well it worked as advertised i just don't think that the money that you're paying for it is worth what the system allows you to do all right ladies and gentlemen let me show you how this goes together real quick just for those of you that are curious and then we'll call it good so as you can see here there's a little gate or a little rack that you can lift up and down right there so the purpose for that is so that you can take your buddy flex and put it like this right on top of it you kind of like have to put it backwards so the back of your body flex is towards the front of the cooker then you go ahead and take this and as you can see right here there's a couple of little racks or wires that you can hook these onto you lift this up as you lift it up you press this lever up until it engages with that little rag there and you pull down on it it holds it on there and you have to do that on both sides so you'll see here the same thing you lift this up and now it's locked into one unit see that so that's pretty cool but like i said ladies and gentlemen if it's summertime and you're wanting an outside cooking appliance you would have to take this entire thing with you just to use this i won't be listing this in my amazon storefront because i only list things in my amazon storefront that i really really like and i think are of good quality and value as well having said that i hope you got something out of this remember to be good to each other when good people do good things good things happen remember to reach one teach one and repeat if we all did this the world would be a better place and you know that it will be a better place many blessings to all union families this last prepper i'm out

Channel: Alaska Prepper

Views: 15,735

Rating: 4.9125476 out of 5

Keywords: #buddyflex, #flexcooker, #heater

Id: rZv2sRm4yvw

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020