Mesa Tabletop Fire Pit

A fire smokes because it is starved of air. The fuel gives off gas faster than the flame can burn it, and everything unburnt leaves as smoke, which is why most small fires end with somebody moving their chair.

Solo Stove's Mesa is a tabletop fire pit that runs the company's patented 360 degree airflow on a 285 gram fill of wood pellets, and burns with almost no smoke as a result. The visible half of that answer is a ring of secondary burn holes near the rim, and the lighting instructions turn on it: fill with pellets only until they rest just below the ring, never above, so the holes stay clear and keep feeding air into the top of the flame. One full load runs 30 to 45 minutes before it needs more, a figure Solo Stove measures by lighting from the top down and not refuelling.

The grate takes two fuels. Pellets are the default, but ordinary hardwood works too, in pieces up to five inches long, so the Mesa can run on whatever the evening has. Heat carries one to two feet, roughly the width of a small table. For carrying, the stand folds its legs in and nests inside the pit, and a nylon bag comes with it.

Finish is the one decision that keeps mattering. The bare stainless version picks up a patina with use and the ceramic coated colours do not, so the choice is between a fire pit that records its evenings and one that stays as it arrived. Either way this is an outdoor object only, and Solo Stove is firm that it should never sit on a heat sensitive surface, even with the stand underneath.