Power Station/Solar Generator Overlanding Buyer's Guide

what's up everyone i'm matt with ozark overland adventures and i might have a slight problem a slight addiction to power stations solar generators um i i i have a few and if you've seen my channel lately you know i have been cranking out quite a few of these videos on these things um just kind of to help you make purchasing decisions and to be honest i've made a lot and so i thought it might be helpful instead of doing an individual review on all of these things and i've done a review on a lot of these i thought i would do just kind of a general buyer's guide to help you make the best decisions and to tell you the things to look out for because on this table we've got everything from 179 dollar 300 watt power stations to 1000 1000 and 1500 watt power stations and which which one do you need what which one's the best for you and i i can't make that decision for you so let me just kind of walk through some of the things that i think are the most important when picking a power station solar generator and then talk through some of the interesting features that some of them have and you know kind of go from there but we do have everything from 300 watt to 350 watt 500 watts uh 700 watts 1000 watts 1500 watts oh 150 watt i forgot about the little this this was the one i started with the little goal zero yeti 150. um honestly haven't used them in a long time because it's just so pitiful um and you can see it this is a 150 this is a 300 and yeah anyway um and you'll also see this is the only goal zero that i have up here because i'm not a fan it's the highest dollar it's the least cool um performs me and so i don't have any goal zero up here um because i've tested one and it didn't impress so anyway and ran on goal zero ozark overland adventures is proudly supported by the moore expo the midwest's only indoor event for adventure travel enthusiasts artemis overland hardware they have the passion and knowledge to ensure that your next outdoor experience is more than a camping trip it's an adventure in the big iron overland rally a three-day weekend camp out and concert experience at the big brutus historic landmark all of these important things to look out for are first of all the wattage ratings all the batteries are going to be rated in watt hours and all your devices that you're going to be charging are going to pull watts from them and so you know if you are running a let's say a small usb fan that's pulling 10 watts and you've got a you know a 300 watt little power station 300 watts divided by 10 watts that's going to get you 30 hours of run time on a little usb fan so if you need something like that to you know power you know to cool you off in your roof top 10 or something that's kind of how the math works roughly there's each one of these is going to have a little bit of protection built in be it 90 capacity or 85 capacity that sort of thing it's going to vary depending on the maker but that's the general math how many watt hours you have available divided by how many watts you're using gets you how many hours of usable time you have there next is going to be the outputs because we want to plug things into these to either power them or charge them how many ac outputs do they have just one two four like the new eb70 how many usb ports do they have are they old school usb a which still serves a purpose are they the better usb a quick charge ports or are they does it have usbc like the jackery 500 it doesn't have usbc what's up with that the and not all usb-c is created equal there's usb there's low-powered usb-c kind of like the jackery 1000 has that has 18 watts out of its usb c port and then you've got um other ones the rock piles has 30 watts uh the watt fun uh the bowder the togo the the jackery 300 the gulu they all have 60 watt usb c ports and then you've got like the eco flow and the new blue eddy eb70 they've got a 100 watt usbc port so if you have like a macbook pro and you work on the go and you need to keep that laptop charged at you know peak capacity or charge it really fast the 100 watt usbc is fantastic to have you know if you're running laptops and stuff off them usb the 60 watts works well but getting 100 watts that's fantastic the inverters the type of inverter all of these have pure sine wave inverters every single one of these has a pure sine wave inverter which is critical do not buy a power station without pure sine inverters because it just creates nice clean power going to your devices but you've got everything from 300 watt inverters to 1000 watt inverters on these guys 700 watts on this one 600 watts on this one this one does some trickery to run higher powered things how many ac ports do they have you know like you've got one on the jackery 500 you got a um two on these guys you've got four on the eb70 you know that's just crazy the amount of things you can plug into this one the 12 volt the car charger adapters make sure that that is a regulated 12 volt and everything up here has a regulated 12 volt except for two of them and that's the bowder and this rock pals all the rest of them have regulated 12 volts and that's important if you're going to be running a fridge if you're going to be plugging in an adapter and like charging your phones and stuff just to add more usb ports that sort of thing no big deal but if you're going to power a fridge with any of these like car camping over landing that sort of thing regulated 12 volt is a must because what happens is those the fridges that we use whether it's a dometic a snowmaster and isco and alpacool they've all got voltage protection built into them so you can set high medium low voltage protection on those fridges so that it will protect your starter battery because they assume that's what you're going to be running it off of and so you don't want the fridge to drain your battery so you can't start your vehicle so that's where these come in you can run them off of these and not even mess with your starter battery but if it's not regulated the voltage as that battery drains in the power station the the voltage is going to drop that the voltage drops too much it's going to trigger the fridge to go into voltage cut off protection and shut off and then your food go bad that's not cool so make sure it has regulated 12 volt and you'll notice all of these only have one 12 volt output some of them have this the smaller little eight millimeter 12 volt output so it can work with like a cpap that sort of thing but as far as like the car charger things they they've all got one i don't know why none of these companies put two in there but they don't but um another big little thing is the little door protection this one has it the jackery 500 like that it has no door just to keep dust and stuff out that's a handy little feature size and weight i mean typically the more battery capacity you have the bigger it's going to be so yeah you've got the 300 watt ones down here you've got the 500 watt ones here and there uh got the 1000 the 1500 the bigger the battery the more the the bigger the size the heavier it's going to be and by far this booger right here the eb 150 by blue eddy is the heaviest sucker up here and it's a beast and you don't want to have to deal with this crawling up into your tent at night to plug things up so size and weight is going to matter depending on how you're going to use it for me if it's just to keep electronics charged and cell phones batteries that sort of thing bring it up into the rooftop tent with me at night to recharge my phone plug in my apple watch that sort of thing the 300 watt ones are fantastic for that they're also good enough that if you need it to power your fridge it can if you you know just for a few hours um maybe maybe several hours maybe even a day for some of them depending on what type of environment you're in so if that's your priority and you just need it to charge electronics and what you know that sort of thing the 300 watts great choice for that that's what i like to you know bring up into the tent and that sort of stuff with me if you need to run a fridge and running your fridge is your you know the main reason for getting this and then powering your other things is a bonus um minimum of 500 watts for that so the jackery 500 the blue ready ac50s which you'll see is not here because i have a friend is using that um the the gulu 500 um they're the 500 watts i think is going to be the baseline for running a fridge and that's going to buy you you know two two and a half up to three days worth of run time on a fridge with a 500 watt power station now if you need more than that if you need more power than that if you need to plug in more things than that maybe you're like me and you're you know out creating videos and photography and got drones and cameras so you not only need to run a fridge but you need to power those devices then a laptop for editing that sort of stuff that's when i would seriously consider a 700 watt because that's kind of a sweet spot i think both the eco flow river pro the new eb 70 by blue eddy fantastic for that it's crazy how much stuff you can plug in and how long it will last on the eb70 and this one is really cool as well and then from there i think you're getting into if you need some sort of home battery backup emergency preparedness storm damage power outages that sort of thing you need to run your home fridge maybe you need to power you know things around the house and you're not going to have obviously electricity to recharge it maybe solar that's where i think the thousand watt the 1500 watt both blue eddy and jackery make 2 000 watt power stations which honestly don't have but that's where i think these come into play is if you want something for emergency preparedness disasters needing backup power around your house that sort of thing for all of these they can accept solar input solar i think is a big deal for what we do going out you know in our vehicles living off the grid we can recharge these with our vehicle but we don't you know we're stationed at camp for a day or two and just enjoying being out you know in a remote location solar is going to be key mppt solar controllers is the key technology that you want to look for just about every one of these has an mppt controller except for i think the jackery 500 it's got an older school solar controller but mppt's great technology inputs they're all going to be pretty standard like most of these eight millimeter inputs here um a couple of these like the bowder and the jackery 1000 will have anderson ports that so if you have a solar panel that uses anderson ports you can plug those directly into it but most of these run off of eight millimeter or slightly smaller ones like this uh the the tocopower and the the watt fund have a little bit they don't have eight millimeter much for the size but it's a little bit smaller but both of those include the adapter to plug those into a solar panel so that's important making sure that not every one of these comes with an adapter jackery's they don't come with an adapter because jackery solar panels they all do eight millimeter input so but the rest of these are going to come with mc4 adapters to plug into a variety of solar panels and that's a great thing with all of these they can you don't have to use a jackfree panel with a jacker you don't have to lose a blue eddie panel with blue eddie or rockpow with a rock pal you can mix and match them if you can find a good deal on one that's fine i would say minimum 100 watts on your solar panels make sure these can accept it something like the eb70 it can take up to 200 watts of solar input same with the jeffree 1000 this one can accept 400 watts of solar input that's crazy i mean you plug two 200 watt panels into this thing and just recharge it super fast so knowing the wattage they can input having a solar panel that can handle that is super handy now there each one of these have maybe just some a few things that can you know set it above the rest one feature that i personally love is wireless charging and the blue eddies the ac50s which in here the new eb 70 the togo the balfour you'll see they've all got these flat spots on top and they can wireless charge your phone and it is crazy handy to have to just drop your phone up there and be able to charge it i actually it's not a gimmick it really works and it's really handy some of them have different lights and flashlights of varying effectiveness like this jackery 1000 it's got this little super annoying led here which makes this the world's heaviest flashlight i think you've got practical ones like this balfour and this togo power but excuse me this togo power this watt fund have nice um diffused lights which actually come in handy um if you need like light on a table or something these are nice these are worthless um like the eco flow has the this one yeah but these nice diffused ones super great this one has a nice big one on the back so if you know if you need a little light look for one that has the the diffused type of lights um other technology jackery has gotten creative with the jacket 300 with dual charging so it can actually charge via usbc and you can double that by also plugging it into a wall outlet and so get twice as much charging input on like that that this is the only one that really can do that uh the rock pals can charge by usbc but it can't go dual um i don't think the rest of these the gulu it can charge by usbc um that's handy but not dual so different charging methods to look out for the eco flow it's very unique it is well known for its crazy fast charging on ac if you can plug it into a wall outlet this thing accepts like 500 watts of power on the wall charger and can it's a 700 watt power station it can charge from zero to full in an hour and a half which is bonkers but it's only on ac so if you're out off the grid not going to do you much good but it is super cool and there's definitely some applications for that other things to look out for the displays the displays vary from stupid basic um kind of crappy like the um the blue eddie here where's the button um there we go the blue eddie eb70 crap display very basic to a lot of detail like the eco flow the watt fun the gulu the togo power fantastic displays that not only show you inputs and outputs but also how much time you have left either to charge it or and how much your how much power you're you're drawing on it how much longer you have left in hours or minutes so the displays can vary from one to another battery technology and life cycles is something to look out for a lot of these are using standard lithium ion batteries the jackeries are the the togo power the rock pals but some of these are using newer lithium-ion phosphate batteries so the blue eddies uh the watt fund the gulu you know we're talking 500 life cycles on a jackery and the eco flow and some of these other ones or up to 2 000 to even 2500 cycles for these that use the new lithium-ion phosphate batteries so when you're looking at lifespan that's something to look out for another key feature to look for is pass-through charging and all of these have that that should just be a standard feature pass-through charging regulated 12-volt and pure sine wave inverters those three should just be standard but pass through charging allows you to have this plugged into either car outlet or solar charger or out a wall outlet at home and also be using it to charge devices and power devices so opacity charging is very handy to have and something you want to make sure yours has honestly as long as it's got regulated 12 volt higher powered usbc pure sine wave inverter mppt solar controllers i think you just about can't go wrong all of these do great i haven't had one fail me and depending on your power needs i think that should be the the most you know once they've got all the other things the regulator 12 volt the mp mppt pierson inverter you know higher-powered usb-c once it's ticked those boxes then to me it's just a matter of how much power do you need and your budget so the little things you know the wireless charging that's handy not a deal breaker by any means but really just comes down to how much power you need to use and your budget is is where i would go with that warranties range from a year to like the little watt fund to two years to the jackery's can if you register them you can get three year warranties out of those so anyway what other questions do you have i tried to cover everything that i thought was important everything that's mattered to me when i've been using these and the scenarios in which i've used them so let me know in the comments what other questions you have and i'll do my best to answer them but these things are fantastic one consideration a lot of people have is do i go with a power station do i go with a dual battery set up in my rig and really i think that depends on how you're going to to use your rig and what your needs are if you're purely living out of your rig and you know not needing power elsewhere dual battery is the way to go it's complicated it can even be more pricey than some of these um if you've got the techie know-how to be able to run the electrical and and do that stuff awesome i don't um but i love the flexibility of these because i can use them in my rig i can for the power outage i can take them in my house if i'm you know out oh you know sleeping in a rooftop tent i can take one of these up there if i need to pull my fridge out away from my vehicle for some reason how i've got camp set up the flexibility of these i think are fantastic and the prices continue to come down so anyway i hope this was helpful if you've got more questions leave them in the comments i'll do my best to answer hopefully i have just given you a general overview of what to look for in these and i honestly don't think you can make a wrong choice depending on your needs i would you know there's definitely some up here that i would avoid just because they don't have regulated 12 volts and to me that's important but if that's not important to you then you know something like this rock pals would be fantastic for you just to throw in your tent because you don't need the 12 volt but anyway thanks so much for watching if this video was helpful hit that like button subscribe uh to the channel i like to try to do things like this just try to help educate and you know help you make good decisions uh lots of great trip videos coming up so hit that subscribe button patreon if you followed some of our trip videos and want to you know see those routes or just support the channel you know you like the channel and you want to support us we have a dream of doing this full-time getting out of the house getting out of the garage living on the road and so if you want to help us you know support us that way hit that link really appreciate that but thanks for taking the time to watch and i'll see you next time bye you

Channel: Ozark Overland Adventures

Views: 311,204

Keywords: solar generator, best solar generator, top solar generator, best power station, power station, portable solar generator, solar generator reviews, power station review, solar generator review, off grid living, overlanding power setup, overlanding power station, overlanding power systems, overlanding power solutions, overlanding power options, solar power overlanding, best power station for overlanding, solar power for car camping, overlanding gear review, Overlanding Gear

Id: 3MHdmc5fGQI

Length: 22min 28sec (1348 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021