How Much Power do you Really Need in a Portable Power Station?

well i reviewed a bunch of different types of power stations at this point but i always get the same general question which one do i actually need based on what i'm actually doing i have three different types of portable power stations here and most of you who are in the market for buying this type of thing are probably looking at these two right here trying to make a decision between these two this one is a 2 000 watt hour unit that can run basically anything for an extremely long period of time you're probably not looking at one of these because they are significantly more expensive than these two right here we're just gonna get that out of the way i'm mainly gonna be focusing on a comparison between these two to kind of tell you what you need to know about these two to make your decision this is the anchor 521 and this is the anchor 535 brand names don't really matter too much right here but i just like anchor so i'm just using these as the example what really matters is the size of these what type of ports they have and how they charge the angular 521 is the smaller of the two units which i've reviewed on my channel before and it has 256 watt hours while this anger 535 has 512 watt hours both of these units are using lithium batteries that can be discharged three thousand times and still have up to eighty percent of their capacity left over after all of that so anker makes some of the longest lasting power stations on the market but if you're not going to go anchor just make sure that you're using lithium this one is what's known as a compact power station and this one is a mid-sized power station compact is basically anything that's under 500 this one's right at 500 but this one's half right at 250. you're usually going to find the compact ones at 250. so the bigger one is basically double the size and battery but it looks almost exactly the same and it just has some more ports than the 521 does just to give an idea on size the anker 521 can be recharged in about 1.4 hours or one and a half hours and then the 535 can be recharged in 2.4 or two and a half hours which is pretty good for both of them at the maximum input of power so with double the size battery you have double the price here so you can usually find this one for 500 and then you can usually find this one for around 250 but there's always deals on amazon and stuff like that so you can get these for like 20 less than the actual price depending on when you actually buy them both of these have one dc car socket and the same exact display on them but this one is going to have more usb plugs and more ac outlets on it whereas this one only has two of each both of them have a power saving mode so they'll be able to use less than their maximum output of ac power so that way you can save some more battery on them and they both have this ambient light on the front except if you look at them the bigger battery has a brighter light not sure if you can tell on camera but it is significantly brighter the display of both of these units you can easily tell how long they will be able to run with their current workload now as far as charging both of these can only take in 120 watts max and they both have the same solar charge controller installed inside of them so that's actually a huge downside versus building a diy electrical system if you have a 200 watt solar panel or two 100 watt solar panels this can only take in 120 watts so it's not really going to be able to charge up nearly as fast as if you just had your diy set up and you put in as much power as you want to but at the same time then it would be perfect for someone who wants a smaller setup they just want to have one solar panel of 100 watts or so and then just throw that on these and then they'd be good to go now that you know the main difference between these two here's the biggest factor in my opinion that has to do with these it's the weight this one is pretty heavy pretty bulky uh and this one is basically as light as a feather i think this one is like eight pounds or something like that and then this one is up over 15 pounds 16 17. so in my opinion the light weight of this makes a pretty huge deal considering that it can pretty much almost do the same thing as this one now both of these units say that they can run a mini fridge so i'm going to be testing that out with this fridge right here that i'm going to be using in a future project i'm just going to plug it into both of them and see how long they say on the readout how long they'll last i'm going to be using the dc port on both of these because it's more efficient and also by the way these both have a 500 watt max output for their ac ports so in my opinion that's kind of low but that'll run most of the things that you need to run all right so i plugged that in there and it has actually turned on on the fridge so everything's working there i'm just gonna set this really quick to 36 degrees and we'll let the condenser kick in for a couple seconds and then we'll see how long this says it can run it let it sit for five minutes and according to this it can run it for 4.8 hours which is pretty much exactly what they say on the website they said that this small unit can run a mini fridge for five hours and same thing on the bigger one let's see what it says all right so after a couple minutes this one is saying 11 hours which is basically double a little bit more than double what the small one said and that's also pretty accurate for the size of the battery here so keep in mind if i was going to do a full test on these like this i would actually eventually be using less power because the condenser would turn off once this got down to temperature but this is the maximum amount of output that this fridge would be needing at this time and right now it's saying it could run that exactly at five hours if it stayed at that same output level and this one was saying 11 hours so with everything being said about these which one do i recommend for a first time van builder or adventurer of any kind i kind of recommend both but there's different people for each one of these and i'll explain if your main goal is to charge things up like a laptop camera gear stuff like that while you're on the go this is 100 the best option considering the price and what you can do with it and it can even run a fridge so i would even argue that you could still use this as your main power source if you were building a van or something like that because it's not always going to be using the maximum amount of power that a refrigerator needs to run and on top of that you're most likely going to have an additional power source charging up your battery at the same time that 120 watt input is a big limiter because i would say just load it up with solar panels and then be able to just run your fridge or in your other appliances indefinitely but even with that inhibitor it still will be able to run it for a long time for example with a refrigerator once it gets down to the temperature that it's at it kind of just sits there and acts as a cooler it's not really drawing much power at all but i would recommend that you get the bigger unit if you really think that you're going to be running a ton of stuff if you use a lot of electricity on your day-to-day life and you really don't need that portability i mean you definitely have a lot more security with this unit let's say if your solar panels aren't working you're not able to charge this up with the car or ac outlet or whatever you're just not able to charge something up then you know that this is going to be able to run that fridge for 11 hours at its maximum output so it's probably going to be able to run it for about 24 even more than 24 hours without any other outside help whereas this one pretty much needs to be hooked up to a solar panel at all times but this weight and this size this is so small this is less than almost six inches tall so you could imagine building this into a cabinet and setting up your solar system off of this versus this one you need a lot more room to figure out what you're going to do with it and if you're a tent camper for example i have a rooftop tent on my truck if i want to climb up into that rooftop tent i can just grab this and just walk up there with it and use it i also want to mention that the power in frank's house went out last week i happened to have this battery out in my truck because it's so tiny i just kind of throw it in there with my stuff power didn't come on for three days and frank was able to charge up all of his stuff and even play video games off of this and it was still at around 50 when we finished it so it really depends on what you're using this for so there you go man my final recommendation with everything in mind is the anchor 521 the smaller unit if you're trying to save some money but if you have the 500 definitely go for this one because you'll be able to use it for significantly longer amount of time but both of these will basically run the same type of appliances anker is recognized as the number one charging brand on the market and has been in the industry for 10 years and they've been selling their products across a bunch of different countries so that's why i choose to use them they're just pretty reliable and they really like this youtube channel but all the information that i went over here can be applied to any power station so just keep that in mind so i'll put a link in the description if you guys want to check out anchor and i'll see if they have any discounts that i can throw you guys because they did send me out the new version of their 521 which is the 535 so that i could make this comparison so i'm gonna put their links in the description check them out if you get the chance and uh i'll be seeing you guys in the next video stay tuned see you in the next one later

Channel: DualEx

Views: 54,519

Keywords: stealth camper, van life build, van build tour, diy van conversion, cargo van conversion, van conversion, urban stealth camping, van stealth camping, van camping, van build, van build timelapse, camper van, camper build, van conversion camper, stealth camping, urban camping, tiny house, tiny living, tiny house tour, solar power, i built a solar powered tiny house in a van, tiny home, off grid, off the grid, van life, vanlife, diy van build, van tour, living in a van

Id: WoT7YBpv0AY

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 05 2022