The Tortoise reviews the Stovax Studio wood burning stove, exploring its striking design, boost lighting system, clean burning performance, controllability, fuel economy, and who this spectacular wood burning stove is really for.
Well, this isn’t your average stove. This is certainly not playing it safe or playing it by halves. This is the Stovax Studio.
It has a 6-inch outlet. Obviously, there’s a complete convection box all the way around the stove, and it has a spectacular log store which, when it’s full of logs, looks completely bonkers.
One final thing: this is the middle size.
If you’re a mere mortal, you can have the Studio 1. If you’re a bit of a G, this is the Studio 2. And if you’re completely insane, there is a Studio 3, which is around 1.4 metres wide. It’s so massive, in fact, you can’t even open the door in the normal way. It has to fold down.
Regardless, these all look pretty spectacular.
Okay, let’s light it.
I have pre-set it up. We’ve got about three fires here. It will take some time, but bear in mind this is a metre wide.
We do also have a boost function. That’s fully open, but you click it up and it goes into a sort of light mode because, obviously, you want to be able to shut the door. This door will find its way open.
We’ll leave it like that.
When you bear that in mind, this is like a Bentley W12 engine. It’s going to take time to heat up, but this was quick thanks to that boost function.
Obviously, at this point you can hear it just click out of boost. We’ll still leave it on hot. No, I mean we’re fully up to temperature. It didn’t take long.
I think this is a solid 8 out of 10 for lighting. We’ll just nudge it back a touch because this is a properly controllable stove.
Believe it or not, even this stove you can have DEFRA approved, which means it is officially certified as smokeless.
Let’s just bear that in mind. Obviously, it’s Ecodesign compliant and, despite the fact that it has an enormous piece of glass which is throwing loads of heat out, that should make it incredibly difficult to keep clean.
But actually, it runs beautifully clean. After a couple of weeks of abuse, you can see here that we managed to haze it a little bit. That is not just a component of the stove. It’s possible to do it because you can shut it right down and strangle it of air, making the glass dirtier.
But if you run it hot, it will run beautifully cleanly.
Once it’s up to temperature and you’ve got this lovely charcoal base, as you can see here, it does burn really beautifully, particularly once we reload it again.
I may be being manipulated because I have visions of having this in my own underground cave, man cave, and it just looking awesome. But that’s the whole point.
This is definitely an 8 out of 10 for clean burning.
When we were initially talking with Stovax about them sending us this stove, they described it as part of their premium range and you could see why straight away.
When it arrived, it was packaged in crates. It was very pleasing to behold. Even the bench came with its own microfiber towel for keeping it just so.
It weighs about 120 kilos. The handles are beautifully finished. It comes with gloves. Everything about this is very smart.
The only thing I would say is that, at different temperatures, this inner frame can distort at different levels to the rest of the stove. That’s me being really critical because when I’ve actually been looking at it, I’ve never noticed that once. Until I’ve said it, you’ve probably never noticed it in the camera either.
We then take a look at the controls.
The first thing, obviously, is the boost mode for lighting. That’s also useful when you’re wanting to get it going again.
This stove is very controllable. Yes, you can run it overnight. Cleanliness will suffer slightly if you do, but it gives you the impression that this can be left for many hours on one load of fuel.
Obviously, the flip side is that it’s a little bit like using a supercar as a delivery van. It’s not really what you would intend to do generally anyway.
But the fact that it has that ability means the control and the build have to score a 9 out of 10.
Once it was up to temperature, we burned a net of logs for 9 hours, which I thought was a great score.
Interestingly, getting up to temperature does take a little while, but once you’ve got that boiling hot charcoal base, every load lasts a couple of hours. You can extend that further if you want to.
Because of that boost function, you can burst it back into flame really easily.
Obviously, the more charcoal you build up, the better the flame effect gets every time you reload it and the longer it burns for as well.
It’s a rewarding stove to use, but not cheap.
To be fair, when you bear in mind the look, feel and finish of this stove, you don’t feel short-changed. You then add in the exclusivity.
This is a 7 out of 10 for economy.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room.
Does it spill smoke?
Of course it does, but only if you’re using it wrong.
Even now, this is too early to reload the stove. Don’t believe anyone that says, “Oh yeah, I wait for it to burn down and then it still smokes into the room.”
That isn’t possible.
Once we allow this to stop flaming, there is no smoke. There is no burning. There’s nothing coming off it.
To be fair, when you light the stove, you also need dry fuel and some good technique. But if you’re doing those things in the right way, it will work beautifully.
This is when we reload.
Because it’s burned down, there is no smoke.
At that point, you can have it open all day and there’s nothing spilling out. I’ve got a very short chimney here. It’s nothing to do with anything other than the fact that it’s burned down.
Which, of course, means it’s less work because I don’t want to reload every five minutes. I’ve left it for a good long time.
I shut my door, put it into boost mode, and away we go.
So, what do you think?
It’s a showstopper. It’s spectacular.
But who’s it for?
Well, it’s for a lover of fire. It’s for a big room, a contemporary build, a giant fireplace.
This thing is spectacular.
You don’t buy this because it’s got seven seats and a big boot. This is a supercar.
You buy it because the doors go up and it shouts louder than anything else.
Britain’s favourite bird is the robin. It was once said in Irish folklore that Jesus Christ touched the breast of a brown bird and it turned red in a blush of honour.
But as far as Britain is concerned, the Stovax Studio is it. This is the real McCoy.
But for me, this isn’t Robin.
This is Batman.
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