Mr. Heater Buddy vs Buddy Flex (UPGRADE or Save Your MONEY?)

so for you as a camper is it worth upgrading your traditional buddy heater to the new buddy flex heater besides this being better for families with the omnidirectional heat to heat more than one person at a time are there benefits to this older heater and are there drawbacks that's what we're going to find out today this video is sponsored by squarespace the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business thank you squarespace hey welcome to playing with stixx my name is drew our family takes out small camper trailers throughout the state of alaska just sharing with you tips and tricks along the way to help you have a more simple and gratifying camping experience that sounds like you make sure you subscribe below so what these share in common is they both have swiveling regulators which allow you to twist in that propane without getting your fingers all caught and everything they both have tip over features so when they tip over it turns off the stove and they both have oxygen sensors to turn off the stove as well if it senses low oxygen in the area you're using it other than that they both have the swiveling handles which makes it nice for storage and then easy for transport but the rest of the features are slightly different from this one to this one before starting with the obvious of why you may want to pick up one of these buddy flex heaters for your small camper trailer or your campsite i want to talk about the things that surprised me when trying this out so this is 8 000 to 11 000 btu this one is 4 000 to 9000 btu so the first thing that stuck out to me was the new btu output of this new heater was higher than the older heaters for those of you with a small camper trailer like us like a teardrop even 4000 is almost too much so this running at 8 000 it's double the heat coming out at its low setting so it's going to be too powerful for many small spaces now it's going to work for those of you in an ice fishing shelter or out camping in a tent but for those of you who have a smaller enclosed space the older buddy might be better for you in that aspect you can regulate it it actually throttles up and down it's a variable control so for those of you with a larger camper i think it will be nice because you'll be able to just dial it into the right setting it's not eight thousand only or eleven thousand you can go anywhere in between i don't know if you can see the color changing [Music] another issue because it doesn't get as low in terms of output it only runs three and a half hours on low where the other buddy heater runs five hours on low so it nicely sips that propane if you want it to go for long periods of time in the field and i'm talking time on a one pound cylinder you can hook these up to a 20 pound cylinder as well and get a lot longer run times and then on the high end i'm not quite sure it must lose some efficiency because it's omni-directional at 11 000 btus this can only run two hours and this at 9000 btu can run two hours so they run about the same runtime at high heat setting so many people's frustration with the buddy heater is just getting that pilot light to light or stay lit because of wind so how many of you guys are used to this awful sound so again today my buddy heater is struggling to start and it's because i got some snow on the pilot light and the same thing happens in windy conditions and that's where they did a great job on the flex heater they actually put in a screen over the ignition or over the pilot light so that when you're lighting it wind isn't affecting it and when it's running it's not impacted as well i've heard in reviews it does still blow out on high winds we've tested it with a fan and had no issues but you can tell there's a pretty big difference and like today these both went through the snow this one lit this one didn't so i'm a little bummed because i wanted this one to run while i'm showing you this but you just see the benefit right there [Music] at first i didn't think i needed it but i'm loving the flex heaters battery operated ignition switch so for lighting this it's just pushing down this button holding it in the pilot light section holding down the pilot and then looking back here to see if the pilot lit and the pilot is lit and so now i hold this down for 30 to 60 seconds while this guy gets going now that was pretty cool i don't know if you noticed that but it didn't turn itself off so the tip over feature isn't so sensitive that you can't slightly move this around which i really like all right so now she is fired up she's putting off some nice heat so the regular buddy heater has a piezo style you know just a little button that ignites it and those of you who've had a buddy heater you're constantly popping that thing trying to get it to light and it's just a struggle with the batteries i've had no struggle at all holding it down it just lights up right away and then if your battery were to run out in the field i found you are still able to get this in here to light it even with the windscreen now it's a little more difficult than lighting this traditional buddy heater so i think you would definitely need a longer match a wooden match or something like this because it did it was a little hard to get back there but you can make it especially those butane the curve that'd be perfect for this [Music] the original buddy heater worked great for filling a space but if it was about directly heating your hands or feet after getting back from an activity at camp like after skiing and all our hands were freezing and our feet were freezing only one person at a time were allowed to get in front of that heater well this one you can have somebody over here somebody over here and someone in the front and we're all getting heat together which is nice because then everybody isn't fighting over that heat and what i like about this design is it's not losing a lot of heat going up and it's not throwing heat back because what we've been using lately is this guy i don't know if you can see it so it's throwing out heat 360 and a bit up and it was nice because our whole family was able to get around this but it's wasting a lot of heat going 360 degrees and a ton of heat is coming out of the top of it so the new flex heater because of its higher btu it's able to heat up 275 square feet in comparison to the smaller buddy heaters 225 square feet both pretty adequate for heating a small space [Music] huge thank you to the sponsor of this video and that is squarespace.com so how many of you have wanted to share your outdoor hobbies and pursuits with others online and my question for you is what is stopping you from doing it if it is those critics out there ready to pounce on every word you say or letter you type there is an easy way around this by building a website you have the ability to create your own community outside the noise and the judgment you have your own commenting system with threaded replies comments and likes just like you see here on youtube and other community platforms but the beauty of creating your own website is you are attracting like-minded people from within your own tribe this means your comment section will actually be filled with beautiful and positive remarks giving you the ability to inspire others without putting yourself too far out there squarespace is that one stop shop to get your domain build your website even start a store and promote those items within your site if you have something to sell if this resonates with you in the tiniest bit i suggest you go to squarespace.com and sign up for your free trial and when you're ready to share that website with your small community go to squarespace.com backslash playing with sticks for 10 off your first purchase of a domain or website if you've been researching this flex heater you're probably aware that it also connects to a stove so you can buy a cook stove for this and as you can see here on the side they have a connection here it's a quick connection and what's neat about that is that camp stove quickly connects and that's really nice because many of us are using these buddy heaters when ice fishing and doing cold weather activities so having a quick connect when wearing large gloves is a great feature i don't have the camp stove i've read reviews says it takes about seven minutes to boil some water on it people seem pretty satisfied about it what i like is that the camp stove hooks to the base of this directly so when you're walking you're not carrying two items it actually latches on here with a latch and then you just pick up this handle and you just walk off with the two of them and you guys see this how i can just move this around and it keeps going that's one of the things that drives me nuts about the original buddies they're so sensitive this definitely not sensitive it's not going to kick off until a true tip over i'm not sure what it's for but there is a side little two little storage compartments in there for storing little items may be nice for putting your lighters um backup matches fire starter things like that um but it's so small i really am not sure what you what it's designed to fit oh and i shouldn't forget to mention they both can be connected to an accessory hose and filter for connecting them to 20-pound propane cylinders or like us our 10-pound manchesters or the 5-pound little stubby propanes that many of the teardrop owners take out if you haven't seen our mr buddy hack video you might want to check that one out great hacks to make your buddy heaters work much better in the field and then we have a playlist here of all the ways we heat our small camper trailers and our campsite thanks guys for sticking around have safe travels and stay warm out there

Channel: Playing with Sticks

Views: 389,632

Rating: 4.8936276 out of 5

Keywords: mr heater, heater, mr heater buddy, mr buddy heater, portable heater, camping heater, camping, stove, buddy flex vs big buddy, camp stove, portable stove, propane, propane heater, rv heater, mini heater, best heater, propane cooker, portable buddy, camper heater, tent heater, should i buy a propane heater, best outdoor heater for winter, best outdoor heater for camping, buddy heater, flex heater, buddy flex heater, playing with sticks, teardrop trailer, small camper trailer

Id: XR8TOFnoaVM

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020