Ecoflow R600 Max: Should you buy it?

we're gonna review the new eco flow our 600 and I was not excited at all and I thought it was going to be a chore to review this but there's an expansion lithium iron phosphate battery it has an MPPT and it's in the same price range as a jakhary so this actually might be a good unit I'm pretty impressed with the stats so we're gonna do a review today so first thing I want to test is the expansion battery modules so we're going to take this apart and you have to unscrew all of these screws and then slap this little expansion battery on the bottom oh look at that it has a little light now you need to add the cover and then it comes with four long screws that you put in through the bottom now the screen has a small symbol showing that it's charging up the expansion battery I also noticed that on the bottom of this battery expansion there are no more tabs for expanding it further so you can only add one expansion battery at a time so to speed this up and so that these can balance we are gonna charge it and we can test how fast it can charge so this will be pretty interesting no way are you kidding me at 478 watts you guys this charges like five times faster or more than the jakhary this is incredible there is no way people are gonna buy other solar generators if this actually works holy cow it's gonna charge in 51 minutes with the expansion battery and while this one's charging we're also going to charge this one up and add the expansion battery now they're both charging and balancing so we'll come back in about an hour or actually 46 minutes it took me four minutes to put this expansion battery in so pretty incredible now the batteries are fully charged and we're gonna connect them to increase the inverter output because I think that is going to be the most interesting and fun test and the newest feature individually these can produce 600 watts continuous in 1200 watts first surge but if you connect them together you should theoretically be able to produce 1200 watts continuous and this feature is called x-linked and you will get two cables and one of them will go to the top ports of both of the inverters and then the second one will go to the bottom so let's hook it up and now that the inverter output is connected I need you guys to understand what the company has told me multiple times that you cannot charge either one when they are connected like this so keep that in mind do not charge with solar do not charge with AC input you cannot charge when they're connected like this this is only for temporary operation of increasing the inverter output and that's it now that they're chained together we can turn on the inverter but it's a little tricky so on the first unit you want to hold down for three seconds and once this symbol pops up now you can turn on the other inverter and then you need to press and hold for three seconds on this one and once you've seen this symbol on both of them at the same time and it's not flashing that means that these are now connected and we can add a load so we're gonna add a meter and then we're gonna try to push 1200 watts from these all right 1170 Watts eat the AC output and the inverter output on the screen shows 500 to 600 watts on this unit and 500 to 600 watts on this unit so this is perfect let's see what the capacity is when we run this load down to zero so they disconnected the excellent chaining and so right now this one is 82% and this one's at 84% so you might have them discharged at different rates also the symbol for the connection is gone so that means I need to turn this one on again and then turn this one on second and then wait till that symbol comes back and then we're gonna add a different load because this was a little bit unfair when you're pushing it to the absolute limit it was spiking over 600 on each one first let's turn this back on again hold it for three seconds now they're connected so let's hook up our watt meter this is a 435 waaldt load now we have a space heater connected and we're pulling exactly 1165 to 1169 watts so this is a very fair test and we're gonna put it on the watt hour meter in the see what happens and on the screen it shows 570 and 580 0-6 hundred over here but it's more balanced and it's not fluctuating nearly as much so this is a very fair test in my opinion so I guess it does not like full output loads that's a bummer I wish they could do rate these units by like 10% so you always can hit that figure every time so let's hook up another load that's like 1,100 watts and see what happens then they are getting pretty darn warm though lots of hot air coming out of them just like our politicians all right 1,000 in 40 watts let's see if we can actually power this load come on really so it does not like powering these loads this is a bummer look we've got a red symbol but it doesn't show over temperature I've been checking for that every time so I guess it just does not like large loads I would not say that this can push 1,200 watts continuously I was really hoping it would do it turn these are plugged in all the way like I'm trying to find a problem here but I don't think there is one all right guys 902 930 this should be very easy let's see what happens all right guys this one turned off and this one's still running the load all by itself somehow I'm not that impressed you guys 900 watts it should be able to power that I mean we are 300 watts under what it's rated for this is just silly all right guys we're gonna plug it into this model and see if it makes a difference we're pulling only 930 watts let's see if we can actually do it no way really point zero four kilowatt hours and he can't power it oh man it's only 900 watts all right guys I'm not a fan of this chain linking thing I don't like it let's go on to the next test absolutely so when these are chained together I wouldn't even say 900 watts I would say 800 watts but each one is rated for 600 watts each so is it worth it to do that chain linking for an extra 200 watts I don't think so unless it's an urgency situation but yeah I would not rely on that for daily use absolutely not I really thought it was gonna push through that second test when I made it easier for it so that's just not good you know the next thing that we are gonna test is using them as an uninterruptible power supply or a UPS and I actually like this method of chaining because what you do is you only use one inverter output and then you charge them both simultaneously with an AC input or a solar panel array so with the last method that we had we cannot charge either one of them but with this method we can charge both of them at the same time so I think this will be a lot more useful and more practical for most people and it's easier to do so you just connect the charger to this one and then we connect the AC output of this one to the charger of this one and then you just need to turn this one on and then both of them will be charging simultaneously the max allowable capacity of chaining them like this is three units so do not exceed that and look at that the wattage has increased over here so 653 watts of input and over here 492 so you can charge both of these very quickly when they are linked together like this and you can actually use these numbers on the screen to calculate the loss of efficiency when charging through this chaining method so we have 563 watts over here and 496 watts over here so you just divide those numbers and you can actually figure out what the losses but there's also gonna be more losses so with this charger over here there will be another loss so I'm thinking that it might be better to do a DC that do you see linking for UPS so we're gonna take the DC receptacle over here and connect it to the solar input over here and see what happens it is current limited so I think it should be fine so it actually works you guys DC a receptacle output is 132 watts and over here we have 118 watts going in naught equals 89% so you save a whole whopping 2% of efficiency and it's at a very slow rate unfortunately so instead of like 300 or 400 watts really pushing 100 watts practically so that's not that good I would actually stick with the AC charging method just because there's only a 2% difference but it really depends on where the watt meter is located for the DC and the AC output so maybe I would imagine under most circumstances the converter system or the DC voltage changing circuit would be more efficient there might be more steps that are not being computed by the watt meter on the screen so I would imagine that the DC is more efficient but yeah it's only 100 watts so I would not recommend doing that anyways I would stick with the AC inverter method even though there are more losses now the batteries are fully charged and we're going to connect a 600 watt load and see what the total capacity is when these are linked together so we're gonna disconnect the AC charger over here first and then add the load to this one and then leave this inverter on now the load is connected and we are pushing 596 watts so we're gonna run this as long as possible and see what the total capacity is I'm gonna actually move these so that they can get a lot of airflow and here's the meter showing 596 watts and then we're gonna do the kilowatt counter and see what the capacity is we just started the test and this one is not charging I keep having this problem I always have to turn it on and off and reset it and then it will start charging but yeah AC inverter is on over here AC inverter is on over here this cable is connected to the charge port and it's still not charging it shows zero watts of inputs we're gonna pull this out and put it back in and I can't get it to charge we have 90% over here in 100% over here again AC receptacle is on it's a direct connection to the AC input and we are still not charging so what we're gonna do is stop the load and stop this test at point zero three and then we're gonna let it start charging and now it's actually charging two hundred three hundred watts now that it's charging we can add the load so let's turn on the inverter and then add the meter but remember we all look at that the input dropped to zero so now it's not charging anymore so I cannot use this as an uninterruptible power supply at least in this test look at this zero watts going in 595 watts going out and even though we are still under 600 watts and this is rated for 600 watts it might be going into some form of overload protection and reducing the charging limit just like on the Eco flow Delta when these warm up it will reduce the charging and maybe it's turning off the charging entirely so I'm gonna reduce the load and instead of 600 watts we're gonna do a 500 watt load and see if that changes anything so again we're gonna turn off the inverter let's start charging back up again and now it's charging again so let's add 8 500 or 450 watt load now it's just 460 Watts on the screen and 470 wants the receptacle and look at that the charging stopped again so I don't think I can use this as a UPS and the whole point of uninterruptible power supply is if the grid power goes down it will power your loads continuously and if this is the case when you have two of them linked together and one of them starts charging let's test just for a second what will happen if we put an AC input into this one if it will start charging it both of them again it's still not charging we need to turn off the inverter over here and then plug it up back in again this is a pain in the butt it should just work so I would not consider these to be a viable option as a uninterrupted power supply I cannot recommend this this is giving me too many problems now we're going to do the same test with the Eco flow Delta it is now powering the charging over here we're gonna turn the inverter on and plug in a load and it did it again but this time it did an overload so it's at zero and zero so yeah you can't do this with this model let's try it with this one Oh check this out so with the Eco flow Delta I actually tested this previously but it does work as an uninterruptible power supply so we have an input of 1300 watts in an output of 700 watts so it's charging while the inverter is on so yeah this actually does work let's link a second one and see what happens so this is actually working we have 1800 watts going into this unit 700 watts going out 700 watts going in and 700 watts going out so this can actually work as a chainable UPS so that's awesome I don't know why I cannot get it to work on the are 600 but this worked instantly so yeah eco flow Delta is the clear winner in this resort that's a lot of power guys 1800 watts and it's still charging both of them so this is nice this is how it's supposed to work now we're gonna link these with the DC connection so the cigarette car lighter of this one will attach to the solar input of this one and we'll see what happens and we'll get that 80 100 100 watts so this actually works as a DC UPS as well so it's actually working how cool is that yeah I like the Eco flow Delta more already this thing is powerful man now we're going to test the solar input so I clipped off the MC fours we have the xt60 receptacle and we're going to connect it to a variable power supply and this is a 30 volt 10 amp power supply and the max that this can handle is 25 volts at 10 amps so this is a perfect way to test the solar input so first we're gonna start with 12 volts and you'll notice that the current is rising that means it has a Buch bus converter so if it needs to boost the voltage from like a car cigarette lighter adapter it can do that through the DC input now we're going to increase the voltage and see if the MPPT does work and what the working voltage output is so we're gonna increase the voltage oh and now it's going into like MPPT mode around the working voltage of a 12-volt panel so look at that now the current is rising back up again and you can watch the MPPT attracted Power Point when I change the voltage it decreases the current and then it boosts it back up again so this is a very intelligent converter circuit design for this application so 25 volts and 8.6 amps is the max with 2 100 watts going in which is pretty good especially for this size battery that means it can charge in an hour and a half if you do not have the expansion battery module but if you have the expansion it will take four hours to charge which is pretty acceptable the jakhary takes about seven to nine hours and with realistic conditions it only produces like 60 or 70 watts so yeah this is a world of a difference for this size generator this beats everybody out there so that is very impressive but something I'm curious about is after the UPS testing and seeing how it doesn't like charging while there's a load connected if they cannot power a load while a solar panel is attached then this thing is pretty much useless so we're going to test that next we're going to add a solar panel or the power supply and we're gonna power a load at the same time so now we have a load connected in the power supply and let's see what happens so right now it's only the load and it is not charging and we're a twenty five percent state of charge so this suit should start charging no matter what look at that overload why why is it overloaded this is a small load so I just turned off the inverter and it's starting to charge with solar so I cannot make it run a load while it's charging with solar or the AC this is a very bad sign so let's turn on the inverter connect a load and let's see what happens look at that it's dropping 230 watts why is it doing that I've never seen a single solar power system in the world do this and now we just gotta head over load but it wasn't over 600 watts and this is a very fair load it doesn't fluctuate oh this is so strange so I am NOT impressed and I'm getting very tired and very frustrated now and look at that now it's starting to charge right when you turn the inverter off this is so silly this is not okay just to show you guys one more time so we have 169 70 watts going in we turned the inverter on the load goes to 450 this inverter is rated for 600 watts so that should be fine and look at the charging input dropped to 30 volts so yeah I do not see this as a standalone solar power system in my opinion this is not acceptable and look at that overload that's not cool I don't like that that's not good why in the world would they send this to me if it says in the manual that it can do all of this stuff I cannot get it to work and I think these are very very simple tests this video should have taken me a couple hours and it's already been a whole day so I'm very disappointed right now I'm actually gonna give up on this review I am very disappointed and I don't think that any of my viewers should buy this model they are going to send me out the are 600 Pro with lithium iron phosphate battery expansion and hopefully that works better but so far with this model I do not like this model this is crazy I was gonna test all the other functionality features like the Wi-Fi and stuff but if it cannot charge while powering a simple AC load that is D rated by quite a lot you guys should not buy this especially if you're getting an overload with a 450 watt halogen light this is a very simple test that I was throwing out it and it failed every single time so yeah I'm very disappointed right now the Eco flow Delta passed all of these tests and I complained about that one but yeah this one is not passing those tests I was so excited for this to work well I wanted to put this is the main unit on my website but yeah for now I don't see it as an option I'm hoping that the are 600 Pro is an option and we'll find out soon enough anyways thank you so much for watching I'm so sorry that I had to get so frustrated and it took so long to the old of this testing but yeah this is unacceptable I'm hoping the company actually emails me and tells me that I got a wrong product or something because this is just silly I do not understand what I'm doing that's wrong here and I think the one thing that tripped me up the most is powering a 450 watt load and then it trips the overload why would it do that this is rated for 600 watts continuous in 1200 watts surge it should not be tripping at 450 Watts anyways I hope you guys like this video there's gonna be more to come I'm gonna do further testing and other aspects with the newer model and hopefully that will work as advertised but for me and this one it's just not working and in my opinion I would not buy this how it is right now very unfortunate I am very upset actually I really wanted something to recommend my viewers but this is not going to be it I hope you guys like this video and I will talk to you soon bye

Channel: DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse

Views: 162,602

Keywords: off grid solar, will prowse, diy solar, rv solar

Id: afk4VV_-2ZQ

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020