How to Pick The RIGHT Portable Power Station (For Beginners)

how do you choose a portable power station these guys have grown tremendously in popularity over

the last few years and it seems like everybody and their dog has started a company selling these

things and I get why they're amazing products and they made it really easy for someone who

wants power to have access to it whether they're just trying to power an off-grid cabin they're

trying to power their home in case of an emergency situation they want to power their RV or they just

want to go camping and overlanding whatever your needs are there's a unit for you but with so many

options on the market today it's overwhelming and it's honestly just kind of daunting when it comes

time to actually making a choice my personal needs and requirements led me to this guy right

here the jackary 1000 plus and hopefully by the end of this video you guys will have a solution

that actually fits your needs as well cuz when you're buying a portable power station there's

a few things that you got to ask yourself as well as a couple warning signs from us on things

that you should definitely avoid to make sure that what you spend your hard-earned money on

is worth your hard-earned money but before we get into any of that I'm going to hit you guys

with a super quick 60-second electricity lesson to make sure every everybody's on the same page and

you understand what it is that you are spending your money on electricity is actually very easy

to understand and the only thing that we really need to know today for this video is what if you

picture a garden hose like a faucet on the outside of your wall that you open and close when you open

it allows a certain amount of pressure to flow out and through the opening that's volts volts

is something you don't really have to worry about because it's pretty standardized a house has 120

or 240 volts so volts not super important amps is like the hose coming off the more amps the

thicker the hose is so if you have a 15 amp hose it'll be this big and it's going to allow the 120

volts to go through at 15 amps a 20 amp hose is going to be a little bit bigger and allow

that to flow through much more efficiently the water flying out the end is wat if you were to

put that into a bucket the bigger your hose and the more your faucets opened the more water is

going to end up in that bucket within an hour and that's watts and watts is a timely measurement

it's like miles or kilm 30 m per hour watts is a per hour measurement what I'm trying to say

here is if you have a 100 watt light bulb that means it's going to take 100 watts per hour if

you only use it for half an hour it's only going to take 50 Watts that hour the reason you need to

know this is because everybody's equipment and things that they're trying to power is a little

bit different so you can't just Google like how much power does my light take most pictures will

tell you the volts and the amps if you multiply volts and amps you get Watts so if you're going

to power a 100 W light bulb and you get a 1,000 watt battery Bank you can power that light bulb

for 10 hours and in that example if your inverter is only 50 Watts which all inverters are way

bigger than the inverters grow as the batteries grow you probably won't R into this problem but

if that inverter was only 50 WS it wouldn't be able to power the light bulb it needs to be at

least a 100 wat inverter so the first thing you need to know is what are you going to be powering

and for how long now that you figured out how to calculate watts this should be pretty easy easy

for you to do this is going to help you determine your battery Bank size whether you need something

medium a little bit bigger or maybe absolutely tiny it's also going to help you figure out your

inverter size the two things you need to determine here is what is the total amount of power that you

need and how much power do you need to be able to Output at one time and for this I'll give you my

own personal example which landed me here at the jackary 1000 personally I just wanted it to power

my 45 W ice code 12vt fridge and while I do use the solar panels with this all the time I can't

always Bank on solar so I wanted a battery Bank size that would be able to last me about two and

a half days which is usually the length of time that I'm actually out camping super simple where

it gets not so simple and I hate to confuse things right away is that a fridge is the same thing as a

heater as your air conditioner they don't run all the time they actually run about 40% of the time I

round up to 50 because I'd rather have a little bit extra in my math than not enough so since a

fridge only runs half the time I took 45 WTS and divided it by two since since watts is an hourly

measurement so 22 1/2 watts is what I use per hour powering my fridge that times 60 hours which is 2

and 1/2 days gets me at about 1350 Watts very simple I also only needed to be running one

thing at a time which was the 45 W fridge but the 1350 landed me at the 12200 some odd Watts

that the jackary 1000 plus is now I actually find my fridge runs way less it's a really efficient

fridge so for me getting something with 12200 WS is plenty of power do that quick math find

out the total amount of things that you need to power and ideally for how long so you can get a

round measurement and then how many are you going to need to power at once the next question is how

do you plan to power the unit that you want do you plan on powering it with AC just like the regular

wall plug in your house or do you plan on pumping it full of solar AC charging is simple if you're

just looking to shove some power into a unit most units have pretty fast charging in about under 2

hours you can normally fill anything from a small to a very large portable power station

and AC charging is a great option for someone like me going camping or someone that runs a business

and they're trying to keep power in their Mobile Trailer that they're charging equipment with and

when they get home it's dark out so they just fill it with AC in the morning when they leave

the trailer is full again AC is a fine option and a lot of people use portable power stations

with no solar input at all if you are planning to use solar though the good news is you already

understand the math a 100 watt panel produces about 100 watts an hour so it's super easy to

figure out how many panels you need which seems to be the question that people are always asking if

you have a 1,000 watt battery like we were talking about earlier and you have a 100 W panel assuming

that there's proper sunlight on that panel the whole time it's going to take 10 hours to get

100 WT per hour into that unit until it's reached its full 1,000 watt we usually say you can count

on about four good hours of sunshine per day so let's say you have a cabin with a 3,000 W battery

that you're trying to charge with solar if you're trying to get 3,000 WS into that battery in about

4 hours you're going to need 750 wat which is really easy to achieve you need two 400 WT panels

you need four 200 W panels or you need eight 100 W panels that's it so at this point you should

have all of the numbers figured out now it's more about features and portability how are you going

to be running the things you're running what kind of plugs do they take are they stationary are they

on the move that kind of thing for example if you have a trailer or an RV or something like that you

might want to find a like this anchor F 2600 that has a 30 amp dedicated plug right on the front you

might want something like this that comes with wheels and even a little suitcase handle so you

can just kind of pick this thing up and drag it wherever you need to go and uh be done with it

cuz you'll learn really quick that these units get heavy really fast if you're going to be plugging

it directly into a transfer switch for a whole home backup you might want to consider getting a

unit that already has the l14 generator plug so that you don't have to again just have adapters

and stuff going on you can also get units like the f3800 that have 50 amp plugs on them which is

really cool if you're doing anything on a job site trying to power like a compressor or something big

you also need to determine right away are the things you're going to be powering 120 volt or

are they 240 volts because that will make a huge difference on the unit that you end up choosing so

think about things like this what kind of features and stuff do you want in the unit that you want to

spend your hard-earned money on final thing that I would say to consider before we get into what you

should avoid is the price the cheaper a unit is the cheaper a unit is where this could come into a

problem is a lot of units have a for example 3,000 watt inverter with a surge capacity of 6,000 which

means picture starting to ride your bike it takes a lot more Force the first few pedals and then

once you're riding it's pretty easy so once you're riding you only need 3,000 watts of energy to ride

but getting going that first 5 Seconds takes 6,000 watts to go and the cheaper you go the

poorer that surge capacity gets and it tends to be the lifespan of the batteries customer support

goes out the window and if you're having trouble finding a unit in your price range don't be afraid

to go backwards I would recommend going backwards overgo on Marketplace Craigslist something where

you don't know the history of the unit for example the Delta Pro is like 3 maybe 4 years old and it's

still a great unit and right now it's as cheap as it's ever been because the Delta Pro Ultra

just launched so ecoflow just dropped their pants on the price of the Delta Pro there's

nothing wrong with buying a unit that's 3 years old when it still packs all the features that are

standards today in early 2024 you could also try something like Jack's plus lineup a lot of other

companies do this but it's a little bit harder to know which ones expand plus means you can add

batteries to it so I got one I could afford now and if I need more later I just buy an expansion

battery and put it on top it's another great way to save you money get a unit with the features

that you need at the most entrylevel price point and then just start stacking expansion batteries

on it as you need them or as you can afford them into the future and finally there's just a couple

things that we would recommend you look look out for when you actually go to purchase a solar

generator starting with companies that don't exist or haven't existed for that long like this one for

example this is a Gulu Amazon generator it might work great uh but there's no telling for how long

or how well it'll actually work what the customer service is like anything there's you don't know

anything about this try to avoid that try to find a company that's been around for a while has some

decent reviews a lot of companies say they offer a 10e warranty that's great a 10-year warranty

from a company that's been around for 6 months means absolutely nothing be careful buying from

a company that nobody knows what they are do not trust any solar generators website on how long

something will last they tend to overinflate their numbers and underestimate how much power

you're actually why is this still on the table even big names like Eco flow they will tell you

their products will power your house for a week when in reality if you look at it you think okay

the average US House uses 30 KW of power a day uh there's absolutely no way that this is getting me

more than 3 days don't buy based on the numbers that they're giving you on the website buy based

on the math that we taught you earlier in this video and I think most importantly once you find

a unit that you think you want just watch a ton of YouTube videos on it honestly there should be

YouTube videos on these products and you should be able to find a a a handful of them enough to

get kind of everybody's well-rounded opinion try to steer away from ones that seem sponsored here

at the lab we don't take money to make videos all the videos that we make are our honest opinion

but we're also relatively new so we don't have a ton of videos on a ton of products for you guys

to reference so when you're out there just be be careful of anything that includes paid promotions

or uh is seeming obviously like it's only sunshine and rainbows and there's no negatives try to find

some of the videos with the negatives try to you know what I mean get an honest feel for what it

is that you're looking at so hey hopefully that helps we've listed some of our favorite companies

for you guys to check out in the description below we also designed an entire quiz that we're going

to be launching hopefully by the time this video comes out if not very soon after that you guys

can take and it will spit out a recommendation for you based on the questions you answered it's

like a 60-second quiz takes no time and takes you right to a unit that we recommend for you

not one that someone's being paid to tell you to buy so that is all I got for you guys make

a smart decision get some portable power just have a damn good year this year that's all

I'll catch you guys in the next one thank you guys so much for watching peace out and stay

charged