Best Spork of 2021

Best Overall Spork

Snow Peak Titanium Spork

Material: Titanium | Weight: 0.6 oz

The Snow Peak Titanium has the desired versatility of a spork but handles like a typical utensil, providing top-notch comfort alongside quality construction. This model's design makes it easy to forget you are using an oddly shaped piece of silverware, allowing you to enjoy your meal — whether on the trail or during a workday lunch. The utensil's bowl and tines have an ergonomic feel and perform well as a multi-utensil. Whether scooping, stirring, spreading, cutting, or stabbing, this model is easy to clean, extremely durable, and holds up to regular use, as the titanium resists scratches.

The many pros outweigh messy fingers, but this model does quite literally come up short when trying to reach the bottom of a dehydrated food bag or JetBoil backpacking stove. Additionally, its small bowl size also makes it a mediocre soup spoon. However, for most meals, this competitor shines and will keep you fed for many adventures to come. After digging into your first meal, it's easy to see why the Snow Peak Titanium takes the cake.

Read review: Snow Peak Titanium Spork

Best Bang For Your Buck

humangear GoBites Uno

Material: Nylon | Weight: 0.53 oz

The humangear GoBites Uno provides an exceptionally low price point without forfeiting durability. It was by far the most robust model of all the plastic versions we tested. Not only does the thick design lend to its strength, but it improves the comfort of the bowl and tines when eating. The sleek nylon material makes it easy to wipe clean when you are on the trail, and the large bowl delivers a satisfying amount of your favorite soup or stew.

The main drawback of this competitor is the double-ended design. With a spoon on one end and a fork on the other, holding it feels far from natural. Besides discomfort, this design lacks a true spork's versatility because you have to pick either the spoon or the fork side. Once your choice is made, you're either committed or willing to swap ends and risk contamination from dirty hands. Despite its flaws, this model is great for the price and may be well suited for children with its rounded edges, resistance to breaking, and low price tag.

Read review: humangear GoBites Uno

Best for Ultralight Backpacking

Vargo Titanium ULV

Material: Titanium | Weight: 0.3 oz

The Vargo Titanium ULV is an excellent tool for those looking to save on weight without sacrificing function, material, or longevity. This model received high marks in all of our tests: Its low weight and strong material make it ideal for backpacking but comfortable enough to double as an everyday on-the-go utensil. Whether tossed in your backpack, purse, or lunchbox, you will forget it's even there until it's time to feast.

Although this utensil meets the weight standards for ultralight backpacking, if you're planning to rely heavily on dehydrated food bags, its average length does lead to challenges. The thin construction may feel slightly unusual in hand, but we found nothing uncomfortable about eating with this model. The pure-grade titanium material of the utensil sets it apart from the more common plastic ultralight options, so be prepared to spend extra for the upgraded material. One of the lightest and most durable of the models we tested, this was our favorite for heading deep into the backcountry, and we liked it well enough for regular use.

Read review: Vargo Titanium ULV

Why You Should Trust Us

Authors Leslie Yedor and Sara James are well-versed in consuming food far from the traditional dinner table. Leslie's a doctor and an avid outdoorswoman, both of which require frequent eating on-the-go. She also spent multiple seasons living at the Yosemite Search and Rescue site in Camp 4, where running water and cutlery drawers are frankly non-existent. Sara has been traveling internationally for over 30 years and chooses to eat outside whenever possible. A passionate white water kayaker, she has broken a dozen sporks, a handful of kayaks, three ribs, and countless other items, all in the pursuit of more fun. Durability is essential for Sara in the backcountry and daily life, as she shares her office with fifteen, fifteen-year-olds.

The assessments in this review were made as objectively as possible. We scoured the market with a fine-toothed comb before finally selecting the top competitors. After buying them all, we spent months cooking and eating over a hundred meals in a wide variety of environments. From backcountry to sidecountry to front country, we used these sporks at home for breakfast, work-week lunches, car camping dinners, and as our multi-purpose utensils while trekking, backpacking, and ski touring. We also put them through specific tests to evaluate their comfort while eating, how useful they are for cooking, how simple they are to clean, and how likely they are to break. Leslie and Sara also enlisted a crew of friends, family, co-workers, and students to help with the testing and remove some user bias. The result is a comprehensive review that will help you find the perfect cutlery to match your unconventional eating needs.

Related: How We Tested Sporks

Analysis and Test Results

Following countless meals and targeted assessments, our testers compiled notes and scored each product against identical performance metrics. Each metric is detailed below. We also highlight top performers within each metric. While overall scores are useful, we recommend that you focus on the metrics you care about most when deciding which utensil to bring on your next adventure.

Related: Buying Advice for Sporks

Value

Reusable sporks cost money, even if it's only a little. Our testers believed that reducing the use of disposable plastic cutlery, environmentally sustainable cutlery is worth the extra expense. In addition to their eco-friendliness, the reusable products offer superior utility and durability to their flimsy fast-food cousins.

The humangear GoBites Uno is inexpensive and scored above average across the board, giving it our best price-to-performance ratio. Still, we like the value of the titanium models. They will likely outlast the longevity of plastic models, making their value appreciate over time. Just don't lose it.

Eating

Any utensil's primary function is to serve as a vehicle for transporting food from your plate to your mouth. While spoons and forks serve distinct purposes, the spork is the one-man-band of utensils. It provides the functionality of both a spoon and a fork, which, theoretically, makes it the perfect utensil for a multitude of food types, especially when on-the-go or space is limited. We tested our products with various meals and specifically evaluated their ability to handle ramen noodles and stab meat. Fashion may often be sacrificed for function, but comfort should only be abandoned as the last resort; after all, your food should be the star of the meal, not your utensil. This metric contributed to 35% of the overall product score and factored in how comfortable the model was to use, how well it handled different food types, and how much liquid the bowl could hold.

In this category, the top dog was the Snow Peak Titanium, but the Vargo Titanium ULV came in at a close second. The Snow Peak model takes the cake with its familiar design. It feels normal in your hand, making it easy to forget you are using an unconventional utensil. The bowl is a similar shape to a standard spoon, making it comfortable in your mouth, and the tines offer a smaller imitation of your classic fork. The Vargo Titanium ULV is not your typical piece of cutlery, reducing its overall weight with its thin metal design. Despite the lightweight feel, it's enjoyable to eat with and easy to overlook the difference.

Its unique ability to deliver broth and hearty bits at the same time when eating soup is one of the best things about a hybridized spoon and fork. All single-ended models excelled with ramen. If you are a die-hard ramen lover and either lack chopstick skills or are trying to streamline your ramen-eating experience, sporks belong in your cutlery drawer. If you are more of a ramen traditionalist and chopsticks are a must, the GSI Outdoors Kung Foon spork and chopstick combination is the best of both worlds.

When it comes to stabbing dense food, like meat, the metal products with larger tines handle more like a conventional fork. The Light My Fire Titanium performed best at this task, with the Snow Peak Titanium and the Vargo Titanium ULV following close behind.

To determine how much liquid each product can hold, we used a syringe to fill each model's bowl with water until the surface tension broke. Unsurprisingly, the double-ended models with a true spoon on one end held the greatest volume. The LMF Original and Titanium models held an astounding 8.5 cc's, followed by the Vargo model with 5.75 cc's and the humangear GoBites Uno with 4.5 cc's.

Durability

When many miles into the backcountry, the last thing you want is to be stranded without any reasonable way to cook your food and shovel it into your mouth. While everyday use speeds up the inevitable process of entropy, the thermodynamic principle that all things undergo gradual progress towards disorder, how quickly these utensils bend, deform, or break with normal use depends on the design and the material.

The Snow Peak Titanium and Light My Fire Titanium are practically bombproof. We have testers who own models of each that are over five years old and still going strong with no signs of faltering. The Vargo Titanium ULV showed no signs of bending or other weathering throughout our rigorous testing period, while the humangear GoBites Uno showed surprising brawn for its plastic construction. It felt sturdy in hand and wasn't phased by any of the thick, sticky meals we threw at it. However, the other plastic models were prone to bending while stirring and had an insubstantial feel with use. The Light My Fire Original snapped in half early in our testing period while being used to stir breakfast potatoes. Fortunately, it was our only in-use casualty.

To make sure these products were able to stand up to even the most robust culinary experience, we purposefully set out to test their limits. Using a c-clamp, we fixed the handle to a table just up from the bowl where your hand would typically grasp the handle. With the bowl hanging off into space, we hung a water jug filled with weighted amounts of water ranging from 1 lb to 10 lbs, watching for signs of warping.

The Snow Peak, humangear, and the GSI Outdoors models held up to 10 lbs with no signs of flexing. The Sea to Summit and the Vargo showed some give with 10 lbs, but there was no visible change when the water jug was removed. The Toaks didn't break, but the folding joint released with just 1 lb of weight. The MSR showed no lingering signs of damage, but 5 lbs caused it to bow so severely, the water jug fell off.

Cooking

These products inherently act as multi-tools by combining multiple utensils into one. However, if you plan to use yours on a backpacking trip, it also needs to boost the added utility of just about every culinary gadget except the kitchen sink. We used each of the competitors to prepare and cook multiple meals with a backpacking stove to evaluate their ability to spread, slice, and stir.

The back of the bowl works great to spread things like nut butter, and all of the models did well at this task. The serrated edge of LMF Titanium is there to help when basic slicing is required. Most testers felt they could achieve the same slicing power by using the thin wall of the bowl of the metal products like the Vargo Titanium ULV, the Snow Peak Titanium, and the Sea to Summit AlphaLight. However, the thicker metal and plastic mover caused our block of cheddar cheese to crumble and was not useful when trying to cut sausages.

Stirring may sound like a simple task, but the depth of the pot plays a considerable role. Your typical silverware, as well as the majority of these products, measure 6.5" from tip to tines. This length is perfect for eating but leaves your fingers barely above the surface when stirring a pot of soup. Fortunately, none of the handles became hot with regular use, but try to reach the bottom of a dehydrated food bag or a JetBoil stove, and you can forget about keeping your fingers out of the meal. This is the unfortunate case for all of our competitors, save the GSI Kung Foon, Sea to Summit AlphaLight - Long, and MSR Folding models. Our favorite of these three is the Sea to Summit model by far. Its 8.5" profile provides just the right amount of bonus length to make it eclipse the standard models in this category. It's more stable when stirring thick food and features an angled bowl that is deliberately designed to facilitate scooping and stirring. The Sea to Summit does sacrifice some comfort for its practicality. Still, if it's going to be your "everything" utensil on a backpacking trip and you plan to live on dehydrated food bags, its functionality makes it worth it.

Sauteed veggies with eggs is a fundamental camp meal—just poke your head around the Yosemite Search and Rescue camp, and you'll discover that this team is fueled by almost nothing else. While all of these products were successful at sauteing, we want to note a few caveats. The thin plastic models, such as the Light My Fire Original and the MSR Folding, are prone to melting after many uses. No significant deformity occurred during our formal testing period, but the edge of the bowl that touches the pan became blunted from the repeated contact with the hot pan. And we have, in the past, collectively melted more than a few plastic sporks while cooking. Additionally, if you're planning to use a non-stick pan, beware. Most of the models we tested scratched our GSI Pinnacle Frypan's Teflon coating. The Light My Fire Original spared the non-stick surface, but other models left notable scratches. The GSI Outdoors Kung Foon consists of extra-thick stainless steel, so expect some deep gouges if you let this product scrape a non-stick surface.

Cleaning

When you are on-the-go, cleaning options are limited, so we tested each product to determine how involved the cleaning process needed to be to keep it looking spick and span.

While not the most hygienic, the simplest means of removing food from your utensil is to wipe it clean. Depending on your standards, this action can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Thus to accommodate even the dirtiest of dirtbags, we investigated each model's ability to be wiped clean by mouth and with a dry towel. Eggs and other proteins stuck a little more to the plastic models, but the titanium versions looked shiny and new after a thorough wiping. It's a useful technique, even in the front-country, when you want to toss it in your bag before returning to work. It keeps your bag clean and lets you wait to do the heavy cleaning once you're back at home. Except for the Sea to Summit AlphaLight, all of the models we tested are dishwasher safe.

Dried sticky food can be a challenge to remove. We made up a pot of mac and cheese, dipped each product into the sauce, and let them sit out until the sauce formed a crust. We then set out to rinse them first with cold running water and no additional tools other than our fingers. The Snow Peak, the Vargo, the humangear, and the Sea to Summit were the easiest to get clean. The two folding models from Toaks and MSR required the addition of a sponge to get the folding joints free of gunk. The spork portion of the GSI Outdoor Kung Foon was quick and easy, but the chopsticks have tiny holes on the backend, which were almost impossible to clean out entirely and required an unfolded paperclip.

Conclusion

Whether you are eating a summit snack at 10,000 ft. or leftovers in the office breakroom, a spork is your ideal on-the-go utensil. The versatile design of a spoon-fork hybrid maximizes eating efficiency, and the lightweight material makes them great for travel. Everyone's got to eat, and this technical piece of cutlery is an essential part of every adventurer's mealtime kit. No longer the nerdy climber's utensil, the awakening in eco-consciousness has enabled people to see the value in carry-your-own-cutlery. From big walls to picnic dates, these tools keep you fed and save your fingers for the more important things, like hand jams and puff paint.