Is THIS the Holy Grail of VAN COOLING? My Brutally HONEST Review of ECOFLOW Wave 2 AC for VAN LIFE!

so the size and weight and then finally you have to think am I going to have enough power to run it all everyone welcome back to my next video you know there's a lot of things that as Nomads you have need of but you don't know which one's the best one so I like to keep you informed on different reviews different comparisons so that you're not wasting your precious money on a product that isn't going to serve you well so today we're going to look at an echo flow air conditioner that's what this great big box is it's an echo flow air conditioner um it seems like it has a fairly low power draw and heat is the number one enemy of us Nomads you know you can stay warm in the cold you can get a heater you can bundle up you can stay warm in the cold but man you just can't beat heat in a van or a car or in a tent so if we could find a a solution to that one really enormous problem the big thing is the power draw and the amount of cold air they put out and the size also a lot of us have pets and pets in the heat that's no good because you leave your pet in the Heat and you go to the into a store B that can be very very dangerous so we can't do that either so solving the heat problem is a big one uh we looked at one other uh air conditioner portable 12vt compressor uh air conditioner that I did not recommend I'm hoping this one's different I hope I'm hoping this one that can work for a bunch of people and if this does I'd be very very happy and this this is the battery it has its attached battery so that gives you some runtime you keep the battery charged and then that gives you some run time there's two things you need to know how much power this draws how much do you need to run it and then we need to know will it actually cool a van or my ambulance for example it's a little bigger than a van school bus where will it work where won't it work so we're going to do just a quick unboxing today to having talked about is an air conditioner a valid Choice and then uh we'll start testing it this is 1,200 wat hours so $900 for this isn't actually a bad price I mean if you bought a power station with 1,00 wat hours you're going to pay about $900 for it so be aware this is a semi- sponsored video they were make they sent me the product for free but remember the last air conditioner I tested they sent that to me and I said don't buy this thing so I hope you have some faith that I'm not going to lie to you or deceive you all I want is what's very best for you so I hope you trust me but that's your choice so last air conditioner I tested was the zero Breeze it was very very similar actually I think the length was similar except it had two hoses that came out and were very long along and they took up an awful lot of space and that was one of and I didn't think it put out enough cold air to really cool a van so I I said don't buy that they sent that one to me for free and I still gave it a negative review they did not like that they wrote me an email and said we would like you to change your review and I said well I can't that's my honest review and I can't change it we had an understanding so I'll give you my honest review I don't know yet if this is any good the the Cool Breeze also drew a lot of power and I thought it was too much for the power the cool you got out of it and the size it took so we'll find out about this I'll go do some testing come back with my preliminary results and I'll see you just like this so now I want to give you my final results final thoughts on the echol flow uh wave two well the first question is does it work and my answer is yes reasonably well if you have a van this will cool your van down enough to make it much much much much more comfortable now if it's 110 will it be adequate I doubt it and if you have anything much bigger than a van then it really becomes questionable the the hotter the temperature the more questionable it is however it at kind of the normal reasonable temperatures most of us are going to be at in the 90s maybe 100 it will work in a van it will keep you much much cooler cooler enough that it makes it okay to be inside there without any problems so yes conditionally it works so the next big question as far as I'm concerned is do you have room for this giant thing and remember this isn't all there is there's hoses that come out and you it's this thing produces a tremendous amount of heat and you have to have the heat go outside either you can put this outside and run the hose inside or if you put this inside then You' got to run the hose outside so you've got this really big unit and you've also got the hoses so the size and weight are an enormous disadvantage and then finally you have to think am I going to have enough power to run it well this particular unit came with an extra battery and the battery will run it for a few hours so I've been charging it with two 200 W solar panels and I've been charging it you can't see it but it's sitting on top of a a blue ready 200 L and I've been charging uh I've had the solar panels plugged into the 200 and this plugged in to the blue Edie 200 and so that's how I've been charging it so the two 200 watt panels are only putting in 330 watts and it's taking out about 435 Watts so every hour it's losing 100 Watts through the day however I also had everything else plugged into it so I had the the fridge and a light and what whatever was running during the day cuz you got to run everything else you can't just run this unless you dedicate a a a power system to just it and it ran it for 7 and half hours and after 7 and half hours the blue Eddie was dead I there was nothing zero I think it was down to maybe 6% and I stopped it even with 400 watts coming in of solar it's still draining the battery now I did not drain in to the the its own battery in fact initially it was charging the battery so that that took quite a bit of the draw for a couple of hours this has its own attached battery you can buy it with or without the battery they sent this to me with the battery so it was doing both it was charging the battery and running the unit and it was down about 750 watts while it was doing both so that was quite a bit of the extra power was going into charging this battery up then it dropped down to a steady 430 and that ballpark real close to 4:30 and ran the rest of the day it it ran 7 and half hours then I could run it overnight on just its battery but how do I recharge it then the next day when I wake up my blue Eddy is completely dead and so the 400 wats that I have coming in has to go to it so I can't be running this because my blue edti is empty so I have to wait till the blue Edie to get full and at 330 watts an hour it only takes 3 4 5 hours so by midday it will be full and I could start running this again the bottom line is I think you need 750 watts to really run this thing as much as you want that would allow you to run everything else around keep your blue edti full and uh run this at the same time so you're doing you're not just running this 435 Watts you've got to maintain your batteries so that when at night they're still full and you just can't do it it needs the whole 435 Watts coming in to keep this going so if you have 700 Watts 800 watts then you can do both you can keep your blue EDI full keep everything else running at the same time and keep this going and then if you wanted to you can even run off the battery it's own the echo flow battery at night and then you wouldn't even draw on your blue Eddie at all the next morning when you woke up the blue a still be full so you would always be ahead so if you have 700 Watts 800 WTS of solar or more of course the more you have the better off you are then you can do this but most of us don't have 7 or 800 watts of solar most of us have 200 and at 200 Watts you can't run this thing maybe you could run it two three 4 hours a day and um if it's really hot in a bigger rig that won't do it it won't cool you down it just won't do the job and you have to have the room for this so so even if you can do that the 700 800 watts if you have room to hold this is it going to be the space you have too big for this to cool it probably so for me these don't work I would never consider carrying this I have 700 Watts on the roof I can do it it's too big I've got an ambulance and it's too big it will barely keep the ambulance cool and uh and it's hasn't been tremendously hot it's not been over a hundred it certainly wouldn't have kept it cool over a 100 the the it just can't do it uh it was in the low 90s and it it worked okay for that I think much above 95 and it's just not going to do it so and even then it was an area my whole van wasn't cool just the area I where I spend my afternoon I work and on my bed and so I spend my whole afternoon on my bed and it stayed reasonably cool I was satisfied with that however around this thing is hot this thing is producing a huge amount of heat so I just can't imagine that I this would ever work for me I would never own one of these I don't know many people that it would work for if you had a van and you had 1,000 Watts on the roof and I do know people who've stuffed 1,000 Watts on the roof and you're willing to give up the room for something this big for air conditioning this would work for you for everyone else if you're in a a minivan an SUV a car don't even think about this you don't even think about it it's not going to work uh if you're in an RV and you wanted to cool your bedroom or just one small area and you got a big solar system or you can run the generator of course if you could are willing to run the generator then everything changes yeah this would work pretty well if you're then you're carrying a generator around you got to carry this thing around and the generator where are they going to fit this has very limited uses and finally probably the biggest of all is the price this thing retails for about 1,300 if you add the battery it retails for 1,500 and right now it's on sale just not the battery just the echo flow the air conditioner itself is $900 so you're going to spend $900 for this and you have to meet all the other conditions and then it will work for you most of you don't have an extra $900 to spend for this and really it's 1,500 you do need that battery what you can do instead of buying the battery is is get another uh battery station that's probably what I would do is just have another battery battery Station instead of that battery cuz the battery can only be used for one thing a battery station can be used for lots of things so it's the age- old conundrum uh if it puts out enough cold air to really cool a van can you it's too big to fit inside the van in in my opinion you got to have a lot of extra room for this if you have a blue Edie power station here then you got a lot of space taken up with the two of them and where's this going to sit this whole unit going to set the bottom line here is for the vast majority of you this isn't something to consider if you have the room you have the money you have the solar it is something to consider uh but I think there are very few of you that this will really fit for you and and work for you okay I know I I I I did the zero Breeze and basically the wor the review was even worse for that I said there's almost nobody that should buy this it didn't put out as much uh cold air it was actually kind of longer because the hoses came out both ends and I didn't didn't put out enough cold air and it was still big and heavy and so no I and it had a big draw so my opinion is that these portable air conditions are probably not going to work there is no magic solution for us for an air conditioner I wish there was okay so that's all I got to say and uh I hope that helps well I hope you got something out of this video I try to be as honest they sent this thing to me for free and I'm kind of dissing it so I hope you know that you're my most important priority I want you to make wise decisions so I tell you the good and the bad fortunately some products don't have a lot of bad and it's easy but this has a lot of negatives and I want you to know about them okay so if you got anything out of this video Like Us on YouTube subscribe to the channel hit that thumbs up button I would really appreciate if you did tell your friends and that would be the best thing of all and remember when you come to the end of your life you don't want to have a lot of regrets oh I never lived no you want to have good memories wonderful memories good thoughts no regrets and the way you're going to do that is living your best life today I hope you'll each and everyone do that talk to you later

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 131,897

Keywords: car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, camper, camp, boondock, travel, caravan, tiny, house, RTR, Bob Wells, Nomadland, CheapRVLiving, Cheap RV Living, vanlife, van life, how to live in a van, van dwelling, van tour, van conversion, living in a van, camper van, van build, diy van build, sprinter van, van living, #vanlife, van dweller, campervan, vandwelling, diy camper van, RV Life, Living in an RV, Class B, Class C, Truck Living, Living in a car, boondocking, Living in a RV

Id: 7uGtjQgpkFU

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2024