The Helinox Chair One is the best chair for anyone who needs a lightweight, portable chair. We ended up selecting smaller chunks of wood to fit in the bottom, adding longer pieces as we stacked wood in. If you’re getting firewood in uniform lengths, you might ozark trail chairs want to chop a few pieces to fit in the bottom of the pit. It seemed to radiate a lot of heat out at an angle thanks to the bowl shape and created a warm zone in the shape of an inverted, squat cone, even when the flames weren’t reaching out of the fire pit.
Weighing about 8 pounds, the Coleman chair is lighter than most traditional models, so it’s easier to grab from deep in a car trunk or to carry for long distances. Like others in its category, this chair comes with an over-the-shoulder carry bag, but some testers found it was light and compact enough to carry without the case. We found it to be the easiest full-sized, non-collapsible fire pit to carry. The addition of the handle also makes the Y-Series easy to flip over to dump out the ashes.
The use of charcoal, along with the optional Outpost Grill attachment, makes the Y-series a competent barbecue. You can cook over wood as well, and the height of the grill surface is adjustable so you can keep clear of the flames. We appreciated the adjustable legs which raised the top of the fire pit up to 20 inches and made the grill surface easier to reach. The 15-inch body height allowed for more heat to be felt on our lower extremities. Once they were burning, we walked toward each pit until we could feel noticeable heat, then circled them to see how even the distribution was and how much it was affected by wind. We also looked at them through a Flir infrared camera to see if there were any concerning hot spots on the fire pits’ bodies.
People who did like it tended to have smaller body types, so if you find that other camping chairs are too big for you, the Skyward might be a good fit. At a little over 7 pounds, it’s also the lightest traditional chair we tested—but it had the lowest weight capacity (250 pounds). It’s currently low in stock, but REI tells us this chair will be widely available again over the summer. This Mac Sports wagon folds up to about the same size as the beach-wagon version of the Mac Sports. But because of how tightly this one folds, it seems more compact and easy to carry than any of the other wagons we tested.
Senior editor Kalee Thompson, who wrote a previous version of this guide, has been regularly using the Coleman chair she originally tested in 2016. Aside from the color fading and the cooler pouch deteriorating, her chair has held up to years of backyard hangs and camping trips. In summer 2023, she bought a newer Coleman Cooler Quad Chair to compare to her 2016 model, and she found them to be more or less the same. Testers preferred the Coleman chair’s thoughtfully placed mesh storage pouch over those of its competitors. Of the chairs we tested, the Coleman chair was the only one that came with a built-in cooler bag, which can hold four standard-size beer or soda cans.
This well-built pit is easy to take on beach day trips, campouts, and park days. It has a dual-walled design and draws air from the bottom as you’d expect from the traditional fire pit, but it comes at a significantly lower price. Integrated ozark trail canopy handles at the sides make it easy for transport and emptying the ash pan. Most likely, you want a fire pit that adds ambiance to your outdoor space, provides warmth on chilly evenings, and maybe even grills up some tasty meals.
The most striking detail of the X Series 24 is its corten finish—it’s designed to oxidize, creating a natural finish that protects the steel rather than continuing to degrade it. It weighs more than twice as much as most of the other models we tested, which means it’s not exactly portable—but it’s built to last. We shopped a range of smokeless fire pits we wanted to test in person and those we wanted to further research based on other expert reviews.
The Dual Lock seat’s name comes from a locking mechanism that secures the chair when it’s folded or expanded—releasing the lock is a matter of pushing a button on one of the legs. As a result, the chair feels grounded and less wobbly than its competitors. This was especially reassuring for testers with knee or hip issues, who noted that they felt confident using the Dual Lock seat’s armrests to stand up and get out of it. This time-tested classic is reasonably priced, roomy, and dependable enough to last for years. It’s not our lightest, most comfortable, or toughest pick, but it’s close enough, and it’s reasonably priced.