The best camping lighters to keep it lit in the great outdoors

Based in Japan, Soto has been making “innovative flaming devices” since 1978 and is well-regarded for its camping stoves and other camping gear. With its Pocket Torch XT, the company checks nearly all of the boxes for a perfect camping lighter. Reliability was my number one criterion when rating the lighters in this article. If they didn’t light every time they were activated, they didn’t make the cut. Owing to its excellent build quality, this butane torch lighter fires up very reliably, and I can confidently say it is an all-weather lighter.

While initially skeptical of the telescoping burner head, I did extensive research of primary sources with hands-on experience with this lighter, and the telescoping head is actually rugged and well-made. When building a fire, the tinder is placed in the center, and larger pieces of wood are arranged around the outside. Without a long neck lighter, you have to awkwardly reach into the construction to light the tinder, but the neck is always awkward and doesn’t travel well. The ability to collapse the neck back into the lighter is innovative and actually extremely useful. Due to the long telescoping neck, this is an excellent lighter for campfires. Priced at around $25, this camping lighter combines quality and value.

While butane jet lighters with piezo ignition aren’t generally considered the most reliable category of lighter, the Pocket Torch XT still wins the top spot due to its uncommonly excellent build quality and reliable ignition.

Since 2011, the California-based MK Lighter has been making top-notch affordable lighters. With that said, the MK Lighter Outdoor Series Lantern is the most reliable and earns the award for the best budget lighter.

While the Outdoor Series Lantern looks like a Bic and is just as simple to operate, it has what a Bic doesn’t: a torch-style windproof flame. Every single time I click the piezo switch on MK’s Lantern (or Navigator), it spits out a nice blue, pressurized flame.

The MK lighter would’ve made the top spot if it wasn’t for two things. First, it has a small butane reservoir despite its long neck, and second, it has a relatively lightweight construction. While MK has a beefier model — the Hawk — it’s a utility torch and not a camping lighter.

MK’s outdoor series of lighters spans several models and features really nice color and image themes that give a nice camping vibe.

If there’s a “best lighter for X” list, Zippo is probably on it. Renowned for American-made quality, history, and nostalgia, Zippos are an icon in the lighter world. With its butane lighter inserts, Zippo has taken its already “wind-proof” lighters to the next level. While excellent lighters, setting a camp fire ablaze with a traditional Zippo is not ideal due to the engineering of the “chimney,” or flame area. The butane jet inserts improve campfire lighting efficacy by projecting the flame out enough to keep your fingers away from the inferno. The Zippo inserts boast a feature not found on the other butane jet lighters in this review: an adjustable flame, which is always a nice addition for when you’re lighting a candle instead of a campfire. This is a small lighter by most standards, making it an attractive option for backpackers. Maybe the best feature of these inserts, though, is you can put them right inside of your favorite Zippo shell, so you can start that marshmallow-roasting fire in style.

Not even Zippo has the perfect lighter, though. The insert retails for around $15, and while it can be used alone, it should be put in a standard-sized Zippo shell, which costs extra. The small butane reservoir is only good for 50 10-second lights between fills, and even though it’s an improvement over the traditional design, the Zippo architecture doesn’t allow for the burner head to be on an extended neck for maximum fire-starting efficacy.

The Extremus Blaze 360 electric arc lighter has a lot to offer. It boasts an impressive IPX7 waterproof rating and has a rugged case with a locking lid, and an LED flashlight at the base. Personally, I can never have enough sources of light handy when I’m in the woods, so a reliable LED on my lighter is a significant perk.

The electric (or “plasma”) arc is completely windproof, and while Extremus doesn’t specify the duration of each use, it advertises up to 300 ignitions per charge. Even if each ignition is only three seconds, that works out to at least 150 more useful six-second ignitions. Due to its durability, this would be an excellent lighter for backpacking. The lighter also comes with a paracord lanyard and survival whistle. Lastly, there are several color options, ranging from higher-vis neon pink and orange, to more subdued green camo or black.

While electric arc lighters have a lot going for them, they are much less versatile than a combustion/flame lighter. Trying to light a pipe or larger cigar is futile, and arc lighters are not ideal for lighting camp stoves or campfires because the business end has to be in actual physical contact with the fuel, making the job awkward and increasing the potential for burns to your decidedly non fire-resistant digits.

The Exotac titanLIGHT is the most reliable lighter because it’s a simple, rugged, utterly dependable piece of fire-starting equipment. With the titanLIGHT, Exotac solves the 100-year-old problem with the fluid-wick-striker design, making it rugged and evaporation-proof enough for a true wilderness lighter.

The body is basically a high-quality, well-engineered O-ring sealed tubular canister that houses a lighter fluid reservoir, flint, striker, and wick. The flint and wick are replaceable, and the unit is easily refilled with lighter fluid. There really is no apparent failure point to this lighter, unlike a piezo-ignited jet lighter (several delicate mechanical potential failure points).

However, I would not consider this lighter a Zippo replacement. It is both hefty and bulky, so you wouldn’t want to carry it in a pants pocket, and the price point (around $70) is more than many campers will be willing to shell out, even for an American-made piece of equipment.

Lastly, the chimney combustion area design is not ideal for lighting a campfire due to the flame dynamics. That said, where utter reliability in an austere environment or very long backpacking trip is your number one concern, this is your lighter.

If you’ve ever tried using a low-quality ferro rod or magnesium, then you know frustration. The Fire Fast Kamper Lanyard is neither cheap nor frustrating. Fire Fast started out as a small mom-and-pop operation in California, bent on delivering the very finest Made-in-America fire-starting tool possible, and it’s done just that.

The magnesium is high-quality, not the super-hard-to-scrape el-cheapo unit you can get at most department store camping sections. The ferro rod is sourced from Austria, which makes the highest quality available (there are no U.S. manufacturers of ferro rods). The wooden handle is high-resin, and can be scraped for kindling in a pinch. The striker is hardened, sharpened steel to prevent dulling and to guarantee a consistent shower of sparks with each strike. The entire tool is completely waterproof, and only gale-force winds would be able to divert the sparks from your campfire.

While an excellent fire-starting device, no ferro rod or magnesium tool is meant to start anything but camp fires. Trying to start a cigar or pipe with magnesium and a shower of sparks seems like an express ticket to your nearest ER or burn unit. The Kamper Lanyard model is moderately bulky and I wouldn’t want it in my pants pocket, and although a smaller size is available, the shorter the ferro rod, the harder it is to get a good spark shower.

When you need a firestarter that will burn when wet — even while submerged — these UCO Stormproof Matches are the best answer. Each match has a ferrocerium tip for striking, and a generous coat of flammable compound that is self-oxidizing (this is how it burns underwater) and which burns at a controlled rate, providing up to 15 seconds of flame per match. While these matches can be used to light anything (camp stove, pipe, cigar, camp fire), they excel at starting a campfire in damp conditions. Granted, no fire will start without dry tinder and dryish wood, but if everything else is wet including your fire-starting kit, these matches could be your salvation. Having experimented with these matches extensively, I can comfortably say that they live up to UCO’s claims of water and wind resistance.

The trait that makes these matches great, also makes them potentially hazardous — they’re difficult to put out once lit, which is not a good thing if you accidentally start the whole container ablaze. As the coating is self-oxidizing, the matches can’t reliably be smothered. Lastly, the sturdy waterproof case, while handy, is also bulky and not for pocket carry