NEW HONDA BLUETOOTH Generator EU2200i Exposed! CO Minder Review / 2021 Model

this is honda's newest generator it's their eu 2200i now it might look like the old one but they've added completely new features you can now run this thing over bluetooth using your smartphone you can even control the generator but additionally they've added a safety system with carbon monoxide detection but i was really concerned that a safety system like this could make your generator stop working when you need it the most so i put this thing through a series of tests and did a complete review to help you decide if this generator is worth the upgrade honda was smart because the old eu 2200i was a huge success so they didn't get rid of that they actually just updated the design and added some new electronics to control the generator now when you order one of these this is what you'll get and when you open the box you're going to be underwhelmed because all you're going to get in there is a manual and the generator itself there's no tool kit no oil or extra cables or anything else before you can use your generator you've got to add gas and oil i'm using 10w30 which is what the manual recommends and you're going to use about 14 ounces this is the same gas cap they've used on other models now this works really well it's got an off and on control for the fumes to add our oil we just need to remove this maintenance cover now this is the same design they used in the old model and you can remove it with a phillips head screwdriver or even a coin if you don't have any tools now we just need to add our oil and that's easy to do by removing the dipstick and filling it up until the oil comes to the bottom of the threads you can use the dipstick to check the level but you want to remember that you don't screw the dipstick in to check the level you remove it and then just place it into the opening this cover makes maintenance really easy you can get to the oil but also your air cleaner and the only other item is your spark plug but they've used the same design where you can just remove the small cover on top and you can get easy access to change your spark plug in the future the design of the new eu 2200i has stayed the same they use the same engine and exhaust so all of the controls are in the same positions as the original this is a good thing because this design worked really well and i'm a big fan of having the outlets on the thin side of the generator and honda's off on switch actually has a third position in the middle and that's the fuel off so if you put it to the fuel off position the generator will run itself out of fuel and that's perfect for winter storage the control panel is where everything is brand new and they finally put a weatherproof cover over the two 20 amp outlets but this thing is even smarter they've got two little magnets in this cover so that when you fold it closed it actually will hold itself shut and you've still got an eco throttle switch so when you put that on the generator will rev down to only supply the amount of power that it needs that can save you gas and bring the noise level of the generator down and you've still got your parallel operation outlets and you use these to connect two of these generators together so that you can double the output this is the eu 2200 original control panel and you can see that honda eliminated this 12 volt outlet used to be able to use this to charge batteries but this has been completely removed and the old circuit breaker was exposed to the elements and the good news is they finally added a weatherproof cover to that as well now we're ready to start our generator so switch your eco throttle to off put your choke on and make sure that your fuel valve is set to the on position and because this is the first time i'm starting this it's going to take a bunch of holes before the gas gets to the engine it's one of the quietest generators on the market and it's 57 decibels when it's running at full speed and now for the best part i want to see what this app can do so you want to go to your app store and download the honda my generator app and once it's installed you're going to get this this is the longest list of terms and conditions i've ever seen look how far i have to scroll down and you can't go any further until you finally can hit the accept button at the bottom once you're in you're going to select the model that you've got and i've got an eu 2200i now this app is pretty advanced it actually brings up your camera and you're gonna take a picture of the serial number on your generator and it'll scan the qr code so that saves you a lot of typing and once you put it in it's gonna tell you exactly what to do i did make one mistake here you actually have to have the generator off before you begin this process so it's no big deal i just went ahead and stopped it started it up and then you're going to follow the directions on the screen and this thing literally will pair your phone with your generator it asked me if it was a new or used generator and the reason it's doing that is because it can also track your maintenance and then i went to this screen this thing looks awesome it looks like an automotive tack and it was actually communicating with the generator so i tried some of the functions to see what it could do and it knows if the eco throttle switch is off or on it can track your oil life so you'll know when to change it next but then it had this it said if i held this button down it would actually stop the generator so i pushed it it flashed the screen red and it actually shut the generator off now that switch is still in the on position but this could be really handy now to restart it of course you do have to use the pull starter but if you had this app with one of the newer models like the 7000 that had electric start you could actually start and stop the generator this app had a lot more functionality than i expected you can actually name your generator which can be handy if you have more than one and it has a bunch of other functions here but some of these things like passwords won't work because that only will work on a generator with electric start but i wanted to see what the app could do in terms of power consumption so here i'm hooking up my electric heater put it on the lowest setting but as i crank it up you can see this thing is pretty cool it actually communicates with the app and you can see exactly how much power you're drawing now when i put this heater into the high mode you can see this thing really ramps up i really love this app but the one thing it didn't have is it can't tell you how much gas is left in the tank and that's probably because none of the 2000 series have ever had any type of gas gauge up until now i was so excited but we have to deal with this this is their carbon monoxide safety system and the only reason i don't like this is because anytime you add a safety system you also add potential for failure so the first thing i wanted to do is see if this actually worked so i put my running eu 2200i inside my atv and closed the doors now it only took a few seconds for this thing to detect the monoxide and it's shut off right away and it notifies you in two different ways it'll flash that red light on the front of the generator but additionally if you've got the app you'll get this pop-up message but look closely because they actually misspelled the word safety in the app and the spelling error this app was pretty impressive when i clicked on details you get this screen telling you exactly what to do to recover from the alarm so that means that you need to push that button on the front of the generator and then you can restart it but this is what got me really worried because things like a safety system can fail down the road but there's even worse news this sensor has a lifespan and it needs to get replaced by a dealer at some point in the future so i wasn't going to live with that and i wanted to know could i remove or bypass this sensor if i wanted to in the future now this is going to avoid your warranty i'm not recommending you do it but if you've got this generated years down the road and it won't start because of a fault you want to know whether or not you can get around this sensor so to answer that question i opened up the front control panel and i removed the sensor so that i could get a closer look and unfortunately i don't have good news i was really hoping to just be a couple of wires in there that i could short out and bypass the sensor but what i found was this and this is a multi-conductor plug and that means this thing is digital and you're not going to just be able to hot wire it now on a positive note when i remove this sensor it's pretty small and it doesn't really look like an expensive part to me now even though it has a number on it i wasn't able to get a part number from honda so i don't know what they will actually sell this for but the good news is you could replace this in just a few minutes yourself and i don't think it would be a hard job at all but as i went to put the unit back together i had another thought what would the generator do if the sensor wasn't there at all i actually disconnected the wire completely and i tried to start the generator up and i was pretty sure that this generator was not going to start without the sensor in place but to my surprise when i pull started the generator it started right up so that means i was able to run the generator with no sensor at all now i'm not recommending that you ever bypass a safety system i did this just as an experiment to see what the generator would do the bottom line after reviewing this generator and working with it for hours is that i really like it now the best part about the app is it's about time that honda put some real technology into their products but if you're somebody that's not a techie you don't have to use it at all you can just use the generator the way it is i hope you like this review and gave you some information to help you decide if you might want to consider one of these in the future if you like this video please give me a thumbs up subscribe to my channel if you're not already for more videos coming up

Channel: Silver Cymbal

Views: 1,416,002

Keywords: home backup generator, honda generator, generator, eu2200i, eu2200itag, eu2000, honda, bluetooth generator, wireless generator, remote start for generator, remote stop for generator

Id: CLqSPvvO_8U

Length: 8min 57sec (537 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020