Uni Flame Campfire Table Review: The Best Camping Table You Can Buy?
Uni Flame Campfire Table Review: The Best Camping Table You Can Buy?
Not every piece of camp gear needs to be high-tech or loaded with features to earn its place in your rig. Sometimes the best gear is the stuff that just quietly does its job, trip after trip, year after year, without ever letting you down. That’s exactly what the Uni Flame Campfire Table is.
We’ve been running this table since 2019, that’s almost seven years of campfires, camp ovens, dusty tracks, and everything the Australian outback can throw at it. And honestly? It still impresses us every time we pull it out.
If you’re after a compact, lightweight, heat-resistant side table that works hard around the fire, read on. This one might be exactly what your camp setup is missing.
What Is the Uni Flame Campfire Table?
Uni Flame is a Japanese brand, the same country that gave us Snow Peak, and that heritage shows in the build quality. This isn’t budget gear. It’s a precision-made, thoughtfully designed camp table built for people who take their time around the fire seriously.
The Uni Flame Campfire Table is a low, steel-topped side table with aluminium legs and timber end caps. It’s designed to sit low to the ground near your campfire, giving you a heat-safe surface to rest your camp oven, cookware, drinks, or anything else that needs a spot while you’re in the middle of a cook-up.
There are two sizes to choose from, standard and large. We have the large, which for us was the obvious choice for practical use around camp. The review below reflects our experience with the large size, but the design, build quality and overall impressions apply equally to the standard. If we did not have another table with our Drifta drawers, we would likely add the standard size to our collection.
Uni Flame Campfire Table Specs (Large)
The specs below are for the large Uni Flame Campfire table.
- Set up dimensions: 700 x 450 x 370mm high
- Folded dimensions: 700 x 450 x 25mm
- Weight: 3.3kg
- Load rating: 50kg
- Price: $170–$200 (depending on retailer and sales)
If you are interest to know the size difference between the large and standard Uni Flame Campfire Tables see the below specs for the standard size table.
- Set up dimensions: 550 x 350 x 370mm high
- Folded dimensions: 550 x 350 x 25mm
- Weight: 2.3kg
Build Quality: What Makes The Uni Flame Campfire Table Stand Out
The first thing you notice when you pick this table up is how thin the steel top is. It looks almost too thin, like surely this can’t be that strong. But at 3.3kg with a 50kg load rating, it punches well above its weight.
The steel top is heat-resistant, so you can put your camp oven, cast iron pan, or any hot cookware straight on it without a second thought. No melted surfaces. No worrying about damaging anything. That alone makes it incredibly practical for camp cooking.
The aluminium legs are lightweight but solid, and the timber end pieces give the table a quality look that you don’t normally expect from camp gear. It’s a small touch, but it makes a difference, this is a table that actually looks good at camp, not just functional.
Setup and Pack Down: Quicker Than You'd Expect
The leg mechanism is one of the clever bits of this table’s design. The legs fold flat and are secured to the underside of the table when packed away.
Setup goes like this:
- Flip the table over.
- Pull one of the two metal securing sections out 90 degrees from the table.
- Remove the folded legs from the underside.
- Close the metal section back into position.
- Open the legs and slide them under the two metal sections to lock them in place.
- Flip the table upright and you are done.
Pack down is the same steps in reverse. Once you’ve done it a couple of times, it takes no more than 30 seconds. There’s no fiddling, no loose parts, and nothing that rattles around when it’s packed flat.
At just 25mm thick when folded, it stores incredibly neatly. Which brings us to one of our favourite things about this table…
- Lightweight
- Underside storage of table legs
- Leg locking and storage mechanism
- Legs removed for setup
- Underside view of table legs setup
- Legs locked in place
How We Store Ours in the 76 Series Cruiser
We originally bought ours with the Drifta storage bag, which does a good job of protecting the table. But after we fitted out our Drifta rear drawers setup in our 76 Series Land Cruiser, we came up with a much neater solution.
We made a custom storage slot using angled aluminium pieces wrapped in the same carpet as our drawers (speaker box lining from Clark Rubber). The table slides in above our Waeco CFX55 fridge, it’s a tight fit, but just enough clearance. We secure it in place with hook and loop tape and it hasn’t budged since. It fits snug, doesn’t rattle, and is always exactly where we need it.
If you don’t have a similar setup in your rig, the Drifta bag is absolutely worth picking up. At this price point, you want to protect your investment.
How We Actually Use Out Uni Flame Table at Camp
At 370mm high, this isn’t a dining table. It’s not meant to be. Think of it as your campfire companion, a solid, heat-safe surface that lives near the fire while you’re cooking or sitting around of an evening.
We use it constantly when cooking over the fire. If we’ve been cooking with our camp oven and it’s time to serve up, the Uni Flame Campfire table is where the oven goes while we’re dishing out meals. No messing around trying to find somewhere safe to put a campfire hot camp oven. It also works perfectly as a side table for drinks, plates, or condiments while you’re sitting around the fire.
We’re a bit table-mad in our camp setup, if we’re being honest. We run three tables in the 76 Series:
- The Drifta table (from our drawer setup) – height adjustable legs, used between our camp chairs for drinks and plates.
- Our Svnty Offroad rear barn door table with extension – our main cooking and prep surface.
- The Uni Flame Campfire Table – near the fire for hot cookware and as a fireside side table.
Every one of them earns its place. Good tables at camp genuinely make life easier, and this Uni Flame is probably the most specific in terms of what it does, but it does that job better than anything else we’ve used.
A Few Things to Know About Care and Longevity
After almost seven years of use, our table is in remarkable condition. There are a few small spots of surface rust in sections, but nothing significant, and given where this table has been (outback tracks, coastal camps, the full range of Australian conditions), that’s genuinely impressive.
The timber end pieces do need a little attention every couple of years. We use beeswax, which takes about two minutes to apply and keeps the wood looking good and protected. Don’t skip this, it’s worth doing.
The steel top is resilient, but like any steel, it’ll benefit from not being left sitting in wet conditions. Common sense stuff.
Quick Tips: Getting the Most Out of Your Uni Flame Campfire Table
- Treat the timber ends with beeswax every year or two to keep them looking great and protected from the elements.
- If you have rear drawers in your 4WD, it’s worth engineering a snug storage slot, the 25mm packed thickness makes this very doable depending on your setup.
- If you don’t have a custom storage solution, grab the Drifta bag, it’s worth the extra outlay to protect a quality table.
- The steel table top handles heat, so don’t be shy about putting your camp oven or cast iron straight on it, that’s what it’s designed for.
- Check out both the standard and large sizes before buying, but in our experience the large is the more practical option for a full camp setup and if you have the space and budget, get both.
Our Verdict: 5/5: Highly Recommended
We’ve used a lot of camp gear over the years, and the Uni Flame Campfire Table is one of those pieces that has never once given us a reason to look for something better. It’s lightweight, packs incredibly flat, sets up in seconds, handles heat without complaint, and after nearly seven years of hard use, it still looks and performs the way it did when we bought it.
Yes, $170–$200 is not cheap for what is essentially a small side table. But the build quality justifies every cent. This is Japanese-made gear, and it shows. The online ratings and reviews back this up, this table has a well-earned reputation as one of the best camping tables on the market.
My final note, we purchased our Uni Flame Campfire Table in late 2019, almost seven years later the design has not changed and that’s because it does not have to.
If you love cooking over a campfire and you want a heat-safe, packable, long-lasting table to go with it, this is it. No hesitation.
Do you run a campfire table in your camp setup, or do you have a different system for managing hot cookware around the fire? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear how you handle it.
Thanks for reading.
Disclosure: We purchased our Uni Flame Campfire Table at full retail price from Drifta. This review reflects our genuine experience after almost seven years of use. We have no commercial relationship with Uni Flame or any retailer.
The thoughts of Peter
