GEAR | GoSun Go Portable Solar Camping Oven – Review

July 31, 2020 Shell Robshaw-Bryan

Homepage Feature, Outdoor Gear Reviews, Reviews, Sponsored Product/Stay

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A solar powered oven, cleverly designed for life on the go and ideal for camping, but how does it perform during a typical British summer and just how practical is it? Read on for our full GoSun Go review.

What is it?

GoSun Go £129.99

Stockists

Features

Bake, roast, steam or boil with no fuel source needed
EVA frame
Stainless steel cooking tray
Glass vacuum tube
Silicone Cook Pans (4x)
Universal Action Mount
13.5 oz capacity / 1 meal
Solar-powered but also works under clouds (adjust cooking times)
Cooking time 20-45 minutes
Cleaning brush
Solar dial
Instruction manual
Drawstring carry bag

When the GoSun Go arrived we couldn’t wait to use it and patiently had to wait for 3 straight days of rain to clear before we got our first chance.

The first day we tried it out was less than ideal, it rained until late afternoon so we only managed to set it up outside around 4pm. Pretty late in the day and with the strength of the sun waning, and significant intermittent cloud cover, we filled the tube with chopped and seasoned potatoes, convinced nothing would happen.

GoSun Go solar cooker review — **GoSun Go positioned in our garden to catch the last of the early evening sun**

20 minutes later I went back out to check and was amazed to see steam coming out of one end. 20 minutes later and the smell of garlic and rosemary started to waft across the garden to me.

I couldn’t resist a peek and could see very clearly that the potatoes were indeed cooking. I left it another 35 minutes before checking again, to find the potatoes not only fully cooked but that some of them were starting to brown and crisp up nicely.

GoSun Go solar cooker test review — **Our first test, seasoned potatoes ready to pop into the GoSun Go**

We’ve since cooked king prawns, scone mix, brownies and an omelette and have had mixed results, with some successes and a couple of fails, mainly down to overcooking and difficulty in judging cooking times on cloudy days.

It is claimed that the GoSun cooks even when cloudy, but we put this to the test on a hot but overcast day. We popped in some king prawns seasoned with fresh parsley, lemon and garlic and they took a very silly 2 hours 15 minutes. So whilst things will cook well on days with some limited cloud cover, on a fully overcast day, you’ll get very slow performance.

On another hot but overcast day with the sun peeping through only occasionally, the scone mix we tried took 2 hours before it started to look like it might be cooking, but then the sun came out and 20 minutes later it was very brown and over-done (thought just about edible!).

On a very hot 32° clear sunny day, I tried a 3 egg omelette for my lunch, but the cooking tube wasn’t big enough so I had to leave some of the mixture out.

Placed in direct sunshine, the omelette took 35 minutes to cook – light and fluffy with slight browning at the top, just the way I like it – result! Using a spoon to scoop it out of the tube, it came out more cleanly than I was expecting too.

Pros

Lining it up with the sun is easy to do using the gauge on the front of the cooking tube
Easy to use once you’ve read the instruction book
Highly portable – It’s really well packaged and is ideal for camping and days out
Relatively easy to clean the cooking tube after use
The inside of the case does get mucky, but is easy to wipe clean too
We found it didn’t need constant direct sun to cook and operated on sunny days when it was also a little cloudy
Opens up additional food options when camping
We found it best to line with foil or baking paper to stop food sticking to the cooking tube

Cons

The Go is too small to be of truly practical value
Suitable only for very small amounts of food for 1 person at most – you can just about fit in a large 2 egg omelette
It does not cook on overcast, fully cloudy days even if it’s a very hot day
It’s tricky to get cooking times right on days with a lot of cloud cover

The verdict

We love the design of the GoSun Go. It has been very well thought out to make it as light and portable as possible. The padded case feels reassuringly protective and is big enough to fit the silicone cooking trays inside too. As well as the case, there’s also a drawstring carry bag, so it’s clear that it really has been designed for use on the go.

Our scone mix experiment didn’t go particularly well 🙈

A simple rule of thumb is when looking at the cooking gauge, if you don’t see a sunspot glare to line up with the red dot, then it’s too cloudy and won’t cook (or expect it to cook very, very slowly!).

Once we got over our initial glee that it really does cook like an oven under the right conditions, albeit a slow oven, the small size, whilst highly portable, severely restricts the volume of food that can be cooked at any one time which means it’s not massively practical.

That said, for camping trips when we’re usually limited to food we can cook on a gas stove, it’s good to now have the option of tossing some veggies in the GoSun Go, sprinkling with olive oil and garlic and enjoying some roasted veg to go with our camping meals or popping in cookie dough for a freshly baked dessert!

DISCLOSURE | Thank you to GoSun who supplied the featured product to us to test. We were not paid to write this review.

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Shell Robshaw-Bryan

Editor & Owner at Camping with Style

Shell loves all things travel and outdoors and is a nature-loving, comfy-camping kinda girl. Shell started the Camping with Style blog after a serious snowboarding accident which left her with a broken back. Despite this she used the outdoors and healing power of nature to aid her recovery and she continues to spend time outdoors whenever she can.

From open water swimming, snowboarding and kayaking to hill walks and meditation, Shell shares her travels and microadventures here on the blog and in various publications she's written for, Shell has a particular interest in promoting wellbeing and the many benefits of nature therapy.

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