BIG POWER! 5100Wh Bluetti EP500 Battery Generator TEST & Review

in today's video we're going to be reviewing blue eddie's brand new ep500 solar generator now this thing is big and i mean absolutely massive it puts out 5100 watt hours and it's capable of some pretty amazing stuff but it's far from perfect and in this video we're going to take a look at the unit in detail put it through a series of tests and help you decide if this might be something for you it's got a modern look overall that i like they've even included four wheels you've got two large ones on the front and these ones on the back can rotate and lock in position now you're definitely going to need them because this unit is heavy at 167 pounds and the majority of that weight is due to the batteries the ep500 uses lithium iron phosphate batteries these are currently some of the best types of batteries for a battery generator like this because they can handle a lot more charge cycles and they're actually much safer in terms of a fire risk using it the first time is easy just flip the built-in circuit breaker to the on position press the power button and wait a few moments for the unit to start up the built-in screen is full color and it is in fact a touch screen which makes using this a lot easier than other models all of the ports in the ep500 are covered and they've split them up to make it a little bit easier to connect things into them on the top you've got the dc output cover and when you flip this open you can see you have a number of ports you can use you've got a 12 volt dc 30 amp plug along with a fully regulated cigarette lighter style outlet and additionally you've got two 12 volt dc 10 amp plugs and then you've got the normal usb with fast charging and a 100 watt usb c port and you've also got wireless charging on the top of the unit you can charge two different devices up to 15 watts each but you can't do anything with this unit unless you can charge it up and they've given you two different ways to get the job done you can charge it via an ac outlet in your house or by using solar power now the ac cord is included just plug it in your regular outlet and it's got these pretty cool twist lock style plugs just line up the white dots and then turn the blue collar and the plug will be securely locked in place and the best way to charge this device is to use the free power of the sun and the included solar input cable it can actually handle between 70 and 145 volt or up to 1200 watts of solar input that's a lot of power and you can charge the unit in as little as four hours and the cable you see is standard and included right in the box using the built-in display is a little bit odd but it gives you everything you need the interface can show you how much power is going in and out the state of the battery your battery management system and pretty much everything you need to see what's going on and customize certain settings now additionally this unit has built-in wi-fi and they will be supplying you with an app now i had a demo version of the app that unfortunately was beta and it just didn't really work so i couldn't show you in the video you can see in the display i'm putting in about 561 watts and that'll charge the unit up in about nine to nine and a half hours it's also worth noting that the cooling fans are in fact smart fans and they only turn on when needed even just a couple of feet away you're barely hearing them at all around 37 decibels and when you're dealing with this much power cooling system is critical so the verified was working properly and there was no leakage i conducted a smoke test i put the smoke in the front and you can see the output coming out the rear and there was no smoke getting out from any other areas of the case the ep500 is rated for up to 2000 watts continuously that means you should be able to run 2 000 watts at any point in time without causing any sort of fault and to test that out i connected an industrial heat gun started on a low setting and then i cranked it up and now i'm taking about 1800 watts but i wanted to get this right at the 2000 watt limit so i connected this small heater as well and now i'm drawing just over 2000 watts i ran this for about 20 minutes i didn't have any issues at all but what if you've got something that has a big startup draw and could draw over the 2000 watts well the ep500 can actually run 3 000 surge watts but i wanted to put that claim to the test so i added this small heat gun that uses around 300 watts and we ran it around 2300 watts and the unit had no problems whatsoever and it actually ran it for several minutes but then i went ahead and added a much larger heater that used around 300 watts to see if i could overload the unit and what would happen so once i plugged in the heater it was already on within just a couple of seconds you can hear the error tone and the unit shut down and this is exactly what it should have done because the unit would have been drawing over 4 000 watts bp500 claims that it puts out pure sine wave power and it also states that it's capable of 5100 watt hours now first i wanted to check out the quality of the power so i used my tektronix power analyzer and connected it up things like voltage frequency and harmonic distortion were all perfect but the sine wave was exactly what i was looking for and it's definitely putting out pure assigned power but now it's time for the real test the efficiency test because these units all have a dirty little secret and that's that they don't really put out the power you think they do because inside of each one of these devices is circuitry and an inverter that actually uses some of that power that the device stores now a higher efficiency unit is better for you because you'll be left with more usable power so i put it through a test on the tektronix that's kind of like filling your gas tank up in your car and then seeing how far you can drive so in this case we put the battery to 100 ran an electric heater and we measured exactly how much power we could actually get and this was the final result 4 170 watt hours now it's always going to be less than what they advertised but that ends up being about an 82 percent efficiency and that is a little bit below average and i was kind of disappointed that it wasn't a bit higher and this device also has a really clever feature it's got this communication port and they include this special cable and if you buy two ep 500s you can actually connect them together with the special interface box and now you can put out 240 volt power this is a really complicated thing to do this is one of the first production devices i've ever seen that actually offered it now unfortunately i don't have two of them or the interface box so i can only go by the specs that this will actually work if you choose this option another great feature is this unit can actually be a ups that means if you connect up a computer or your tv and the power goes out you won't even notice because it keeps the power going to the appliance after using this device for several weeks i really liked it but i had one major problem and that was around the weight at nearly 200 pounds this is going to limit where you can put it that's a lot of weight and even lifting this thing up a couple of steps can be a real challenge for a lot of people but the issue is even bigger than that because this system is not modular and if anything breaks and you need to ship it back it would cost you a fortune so reached out with my complaint to blue eddy and i was really surprised by what they told me they're actually going to arrange for on-site service if you're in the warranty period and they will pay for the return shipping if in fact they have to send it back so that single statement really changed how i felt about this unit because if you don't get stuck paying or return it then you're not really going to care if you have to because it's not coming out of your pocket and if you want one of the biggest units on the market that will give you a huge amount of run time this is definitely the one to get 5 100 watt hours this thing is going to run the largest loads for a long period of time this could be a viable replacement for a lot of people's gas generators if you're interested in buying one of these i've put a link below now they're selling it on kickstarter as a pre-order which means that you will guaranteed get it or you'll get your money back and i hope you enjoyed this video if you did please give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you're not already for more videos coming up

Channel: Silver Cymbal

Views: 342,321

Keywords: bluetti, bluetti ep500, ep500 pro, battery generator, solar generator, silver cymbal, silvercymbal, jackery, blueetti, best portable power station, best solar battery, best battery generator, ac200, ac200p

Id: WSB3bnoe7tY

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021