BEST Under $300 Portable Power Station - EcoFlow vs Jackery vs Bluetti

here I have three of the top selling power stations under three hundred dollars and in today's video I want to find out which one of these is the best portable power station of 2023 fortunately for me these power stations aren't very heavy so I'm going to stack them back up and bring them back inside and do some testing now this jackery will only work on the top because it has that sloped handle but the other two seem to stack pretty easy with the way that they're designed tested all of these power stations extensively over the last few months and you can see each of those individual videos on my channel but in the name of science today I'm going to test all three of these power stations in five categories those five categories are battery capacity power output recharge time display features in the final category is overall value for what you pay before we get started let me introduce the competition I have the jackery Explorer 240 the Eco Flow River 2 and I have the blue Eddie eb3a I selected these three devices because they're very popular they cost under 300 MSRP and they have battery capacity between 200 and 300 watt hours the jackery Explorer 240 is the first contender in this lineup it has a 240 watt hour lithium nickel manganese Cobalt battery it's AC inverter is rated to handle 200 Watts continuously and can take loads up to 400 watts in surges it has the least amount of features of this lineup coming in with two USB a Outlets rated at 12 watts each a 10 amp dc car style Outlet it only one AC Jack it weighs in at 6.6 pounds it has a permanently fixed carry handle on its top and it accepts up to 65 Watts through this eight millimeter Barrel plug input this jackery does not have a built-in flashlight next up is the newest of today's lineup this is the ecoflow river 2. it was released just a few months ago and brings a lithium iron phosphate 256 watt hour battery to the contest the AC inverter is a little more powerful and rated at 300 watts continuously and with its X boost mode it can handle loads up to 600 watts for a more extended period of time than just surges this River 2 has two USB a ports rated at 12 watts each just like the jackery it also has a 10 amp DC Outlet or car charging outlet but the ego Little River 2 does step up the features just a notch with the inclusion of a USBC Outlet rated at 60 watts for both input and output it does come in a little heavier than the jackery at 7.7 pounds and it has a fixed carrying handle on the back which also provides some standoff when you plug in your cables to the back it does not have a built-in flashlight the final contender in our lineup is the blue Eddie eb3a the eb3a comes in with the largest battery of the lineup at 268 Watt hours of lfp or lithium iron phosphate chemistry it has the highest rated AC inverter coming at 600 watts continuously and with power lifting mode it can handle loads up to 1200 watts for extended periods of time the eb3a overall has the most features of all the power stations in today's lineup it has wireless charging on the top and also includes a flashlight looking at the specs of all of these devices side by side I think I know which one of these is the best value but I want to wait until after the testing until I declare won a champion vote for which one you think is the best in the comments capacity testing uses a box fan pulling 40 Watts the fan pulls about 20 percent of the battery storage or about 0.2 C although each of these devices does have a slightly different rated capacity and voltage output this test gives us an idea of how much power you will truly get from the device each test begins with the fan completely cooled and a 100 state of charge removing the charging cable and turning on the inverter starts the test so this test has completed but unfortunately I cannot read this display unless it has power so I'll go ahead and plug it back in give it a second to start back up so 5 hours and 24 minutes and we took 230 Watt hours so a 240 watt hour jackery gave me 230 Watt hours which is a really good conversion for this device next up we'll do the blue Eddie eb3a I'm just going to move this over get this guy out of the way while he's charging and he said this for this test it does look like the fan is pulling more power it's running at 120 volts whereas the jackery was putting out an actual 110 volts causing also the wattage to look like it's higher so the eb3a ran the fan for 3 hours and 44 minutes and it gave me 188 Watt hours that's much lower than I expected from this 268 watt hour battery for the final test I had the ecoflow river 2 set up I just topped off the battery at 100 percent and I'll initiate the test unfortunately my meter is upside down but it only starts to count time when I turn on the fan similar to the ev3a this one is pulling about 50 Watts which was a little higher than I expected it is also putting out about 120 volts the Eco Flow River 2 only powered the fan for about 3 hours and 42 minutes and returned 185w Watt hours out of the battery this is much lower than I expected I was actually very surprised with the results of this battery capacity test the jackery came out with 230 Watt hours which far exceeded both the blue Eddie and the Eco flow these things only put out about 185 Watt hours a piece that surprised me because they're rated much higher so 240 for the jackery 258 for the Eco flow and 268 for the blue Eddie eb3a those are much higher ratings but they did not perform as well as I expected for that reason the jackery wins the battery capacity test now I'm going to do the recharge test for this test I'm going to plug in all the power stations to one power strip hook that up and then we'll find out in what order each of these charges if you have some kind of intermittent grid power access for example the power crew is working on restoring power to your house can you fully recharge any of these devices and if so which one of them recharges the fastest so what I'm going to do is hit start on my timer turn on the power on this power strip and then we'll check and see how long it takes to charge so the bloody reached 80 percent in about 33 minutes and I expected it to complete its charge first but surprisingly this ecoflow River 2 hit 80 in 45 minutes and they both completed charging within about five minutes of each other the Blue Yeti eb3a charged in 59 and a half minutes and the ecoflow river 2 charged in one hour and three minutes the jackery is still charging and only reached about 23 percent during the hour so I'm gonna let it continue to charge and I'll move on to my next topic these three displays mostly have all of the same features with the exception that the jackery does not have an estimate of time remaining based on the current load the jackery does have the most dated of all the screens with its monochrome 1980s style calculator appearance but it is still functional the Eco flow display is definitely the second best because it is a little more readable in certain light conditions of all of these displays I do prefer the blue Eddie the most the bloody does have a multi-colored display but my opinion really is just based on those Aesthetics that we just discussed so for those reasons the blue Eddie eb3a wins in the display category the ecoflow river 2 comes in as a close second and the jackery 240 really needs an update now let's check in and see how long it took the jackery 240 to complete its charge it's been almost five hours and 10 minutes and this thing is still charging it hit 99 at about 4 hours and 40 minutes so that last percent so far has taken almost 30 minutes to complete as it's been charging the wattage has been slowly going down but how long is it going to take to get that last percent it's almost like trying to watch water boil now we're going to test which of the three power stations has the best output with their inverter the jackery 240 does only have a 200 watt inverter while the ecoflow river 2 has a 300 watt and the blue Eddie eb3a has a 600 watt inverter in addition to that the Eco flow and the blue Eddie eb3a have a little bit of magic that they do to support loads that are higher resistive loads than what they're actually rated for and the way that they do that is they lower the voltage for high resistive loads so that that high resistive load item will still run but probably not necessarily as designed so this is perfect for if you're camping and you want to run a hot plate or run a coffee maker and get a cup of coffee but it still won't perform as you would expect it to if it's plugged into a standard wall outlet let's start with the jackery 240. the jackery 240 is designed to support surges up to 400 watts I have the dash 7 seven egg cooker hooked up which pulls usually around 300 watts so what I'm going to do is just start it up start this device I noticed the fan kicked right on I'll add a little bit of water so it'll burn out the hot plate and that was about 30 seconds on the jackery 240 at a 300 watt load this is only designed to really handle 200 watt loads so it's not necessarily a fair comparison but this is what you get for your 200 something dollars from the jackery 240. the ecoflow river 2 is rated at around 300 watts continuous so it should run this hot plate no problem as that inverter hit around 300 watts I could hear the little fan kick on so you can see this egg cooker starting to get condensation in it that's an indication that the water is boiling this will do this all day so let's try the kettle I should have checked this before I started this test if the Eco Flow River 2 is in its higher resistive load then it should run this water boiler no problem it turned on it shut off immediately I did confirm that the Eco flow was in its X boost mode and it still wasn't able to run my Kettle the eb3a claims to be able to handle surges up to 1200 watts which is their power lifting mode this Kettle typically pulls around 800 watts as you can see the voltage almost have so it went from 120 to 70 and we're not getting the wattage that we would normally expect to get from this device so overall I would say the power output contest goes to the blue Eddie eb3a with the ecoflow river 2 coming in second and the jackery 240 just not able to keep up with the competition so the last category is the overall value of these power stations we've seen through the last few tests that they more or less perform just about the same with the exception that the jackery Explorer 240 is much slower in recharging and it also puts out a lot more power so there are a few things to consider there on the one hand you get the the more power but on the other hand it will take almost all day to recharge this and if you're realistically trying to recharge it for the solar panel you wouldn't be getting that 60 watts for more than about five hours max in an entire day for that reason I think the jackery is the worst value of the three the Eco Flow River 2 does have the smaller inverter of these two it's pretty capable for what it is and it is a newer design of the two but the 600 watt inverter does give you quite a few more options when it comes to what you can actually power with the device so for that reason I think of these three power stations the blue Eddie eb3a is the best power station there's one thing to keep in mind when you're talking about these power stations the snapshot and the prices are more or less today's prices this thing may go down to 150 dollars this thing may rise or decrease a little bit in price as well and that eb3a did have an initial MSRP of 349. so even though they're relatively the same cost right now the MSRP was about fifty dollars higher than the ecoflow river two ecoflow also has the river 2 Pro and the river 2 max jackery also has some other devices as well but the one reason I steer clear of the jackery products is that lithium nickel manganese Cobalt battery for the applications that I use these power stations for I don't want that more volatile power station in my vehicle while I'm camping if you like this video give it a thumbs up and watch this video next because YouTube has hand selected it for you

Channel: Off Grid Adventure

Views: 133,875

Keywords: Best portable power station, Eb3a, Ecoflow river 2, Jackery 240, best portable power stations 2023, bluetti eb3a, bluetti solar generator, jackery 240 review, jackery explorer 240, solar generator, solar generator portable

Id: 2bt1q-dNM4M

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023