The Best Portable Power stations for staying changed up when off grid
Camping out in nature is one of life’s great pleasures; the gentle breeze against canvas, a stream nearby and hang on…is that a kettle we can hear? Purists will bemoan the rise of tech in camping preferring to leave their gadgets at home and embrace the outdoors but for those that spend extended periods of time off grid, then the lack of electricity can become an issue.
There’s been an explosion in portable power stations in recent years, perhaps driven by the meteoric rise in #VanLife and choosing between them can be a bit of a minefield with various figures thrown about for capacity, peak output, and recharging times. We took three of the best on a road trip around Scotland to see which is worth your money; living out of our car, we’d need to power our fridge, recharge a laptop and camera equipment.
The power stations we’d be relying on to keep up powered up are the Jackery Solar Generator 1500 Pro, GoalZero Yeti 1500x and EcoFlow River 2 Max. All three had a smattering of USB A and C ports, 12v DC and a traditional three pin plug socket (or two).
What is a portable power station?
Simply put, it’s a big battery with loads of different outputs on the front to power your gadgets. There’s a range of capacities on the market all designed for slightly different applications; from smaller units designed to charge a laptop a few times to behemoths that could run a small house.
What to look out for
There’s a couple of important figures to take note of when comparing power stations, the first is the capacity. Measured in watt hours (Wh) this figure essentially tells us how long the power station can power a device of a given power. For example, a 500Wh power station could power a device drawing 100w for five hours or a device drawing 1000w for 30 mins. A phone charges at around 12w and a laptop at around 80w to give some context to these figures.
Peak power is exactly that, the maximum amount of power the power station can deliver. Figures range from around 1000w all the way up to 3600w on the larger units. Manufacturers will often include two figures, a base wattage and a surge wattage. The surge power is handy to run a hairdryer or kettle for a short period of time but extended use at surge power will damage the power station.
All three of our power stations are capable of being charged up via solar power; the Jackery is the only one that comes with a panel but both EcoFlow and GoalZero offer panels that will work with their devices. Another way to charge these devices up is through the 12v cigarette lighter in your car. They’ll only draw around 100W though and only when the engine is running (unless you have a leisure battery setup) so charging will be pretty slow but it’s a handy backup to have in case you can’t get to a wall socket or solar isn’t a viable option.
An important note is that the Jackery solar panel uses a propriety connector so will only work with Jackery batteries whereas the GoalZero and EcoFlow use a standardised connector so will work with any suitable panel.
EcoFlow River 2 Max
£549 | Buy from Amazon
1000w output
512 Wh battery
Fully charges in 1 hour
Compatable with solar panels
The River 2 is the smallest capacity power station we’ve got on test; sporting a capacity of 512Wh, a peak power of 500w and a surge of 1000w. It’s also the smallest unit weighing 6.1kg, so is ideal for users where space is at a premium or those that don’t need a huge amount of capacity.
The front is festooned with 9 outputs; two AC outlets, three USB A and a USB socket as well as three 12v DC outlets with one a cigarette lighter style. The USB C socket can deliver up 100w so will happily charge a laptop without using an AC brick.
Jackery Solar Generator 1500 Pro
£2099 | Buy from Jackery
1500w Output
1512 Wh battery
Fully charges in 2 hours
Packing a very similar capacity to the GoalZero Yeti, the 1500 Pro has a 1512Wh battery to keep everything juiced up. It has a peak AC output of 1800W with a surge of 3600W which should be plenty for the majority of users. The Solar Generator aspect of the name comes from the inclusion of a solar panel in this kit. The 200W SolarSaga panel can fully charge the battery is 9.5 hours in direct sunlight. This time can be drastically reduced by using more panels; line up six and it’ll be charged up in a mere two hours.
There’s plenty of outputs too, two USB A ports and two USB C fast charge ports will keep your phone and other smaller devices topped up. There’s a pair of AC outlets as well as three 12V DC sockets, one of which is a cigarette style.
It’s a weighty best however, 17kg to be precise but the integrated handle that folds down when not in use made handling the Jackery easier.
GoalZero Yeti 1500X
£2299 | Buy from GoalZero
2000w output
1516Wh battery
Charges fully in 3 hours
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is the Yeti 1500X from GoalZero. As the name might suggest, it has a 1515Wh battery, peak power output of 2000W and a surge of 3500W. It will draw 600w from the wall when charging and fully charges in 3 hours. It can also be charged using solar panels (available separately) and a bank of three GoalZero Boulder panels will take between three and six hours depending on conditions.
This is a serious bit of kit and could power a small house if needed; it’s slightly sparser on outputs than the EcoFlow with a single AC outlet, two USB A and two USB C sockets and three DC outputs. There’s no reason you couldn’t plug an extension lead into the AC outlet to power all your tech.
All this power does come at a weight, 20.7kg to be exact so it’s not something to be lugging in and out of the car every time you need to use it so it’d be wise to position it somewhere accessible.
Our Impressions
It’s important to preface this section by saying our thoughts from testing are focussed on usability as the three batteries on test are best at doing different things and we’d recommend each one for a different use case.
The EcoFlow River 2 Max would be our pick for those that find themselves needing to charge up smaller devices but have access to a wall socket every few days to recharge. We found it to be highly portable and light enough to easily move around camp; if the sun shining we’d pull out our favourite camping chair and set up our laptop outside to work, using the River 2 Max to power a laptop and recharge camera batteries.
After a couple of minutes though we’d find the cooling fans would kick in which made quite a noise. The fans seemed to kick in regardless of load and temperature; they burst into life even when charging a phone through the USB C sockets and in single digit temperatures so if you’re looking for silent power this might not be the choice for you.
There’s a handy app to keep an eye on power usage and the onboard display shows the current inputs and outputs with an estimate of how long the battery will last or how long until a full charge. Plugged into the wall we went from empty to full in around two hours which is really impressive. The fans kicked in here too so stealthy charges in coffee shop are off limit.
If you’re looking for a small power station to keep smaller gadgets charged up on a weekend camping trip then this is a great option as it’s small and portable but it does lack the pure capacity of the larger units.
The Jackery 1500 Pro and GoalZero Yeti 1500X are very closely matched in terms of power output and battery capacity. We had no problems running our 25L Dometic fridge from the Jackery, managing to keep it going for a three-week trip just using the solar panels to top up the battery and used the GoalZero to keep our equipment fully charged.
Both of these units are beasts, weighing nearly 17KGs each which meant we spent a lot of time scrabbling around plugging things in rather than taking them out of the car. The screens on both batteries provided a wealth of information however we found the Jackey slightly easier to read in direct sunlight. The GoalZero also has a companion app to keep tabs on various parameters and remotely turn on and off outputs remotely which is handy. The Jackery 1500 Pro is not compatible with their companion app yet but we’re reliably informed that support is on the way.
We think the ideal application for these larger power stations would be as part of an electrical system in a (camper)van; offering plenty of power and outputs, they’d both make a great hub for an off-grid vehicle. Coupled with a solar panel, these power stations could keep you powered up for many weeks assuming the sun is shining! We managed to harness the full 200W from the Jackery SolarSaga panel even in the north of Scotland which recharged the Jackery to full from around 60% in an afternoon.
The fans on both power stations burst into life when charging but it was more of a gentle whirr than the whoosh of the EcoFlow so is much less likely to disturb a peaceful camp spot.
If it were our money on the line, and we we’re looking for a battery to keep us power up for extended periods off grid, we’d go for the Jackery; it’s considerably more affordable than the GoalZero even with the solar panel included and we found the ergonomics and form factor made it easier to lug in and out of the car.
For short trips where it’s just a phone or camera that needs charging, the EcoFlow River 2 Max is a great option to have as it’s highly portable taking up almost no room in an already stuffed car and we were very impressed how quickly it charged.