Best Portable Power Stations of 2022 – CNET [CNET]

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This was the toughest category to pick. The Jackery Explorer 240 and Bluetti EB3A were also top contenders, and they both cost less than the Togo model, however, nifty features and an extra 40%-plus battery capacity give the slightest edge to Togo.

There were two main features that made the difference for me. All three units have an AC plug, 12-volt socket and USB-A connections for devices. But Jackery doesn’t offer a USB-C connection. Additionally, Togo was one of the few units overall to offer wireless charging. (The Bluetti EB3A also has this.)

Togo also showed us the largest measured capacity percentage compared to its stated capacity at 346 watt-hours at 98.95%. This unit isn’t particularly fast to charge, however, taking 4 hours, 17 minutes to fully charge from empty.

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Pronounced like the color blue and the letter “t” (instead of rhyming three syllables with spaghetti), Bluetti is a likable company with feature-rich product offerings at reasonable prices. The midsize portable power station category is a crowded space and there are a few nearly equal alternatives to the 50S including both Ecoflow models (River Max and Delta Mini) and the Big Blue Cellpowa 500. 

The 50S comes in as the second lowest “price per watt-hour” metric (second to the Bluetti AC200P), so when you’re looking at a multiway finish, that value comes into play. You’re getting all the input-output charging options you could ask for, including what seems to be the new industry standard of compatibility with solar panels for charging. This one does, however, take a bit longer to charge than some of its siblings. Seven hours to full compared to just under 5 hours for the Bluetti AC200P which offers 4x the battery capacity.

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At just over 60 pounds, this machine is not for the faint of heart or weak of arm. If you can manage to get this machine where you want it, it will keep you going for ages with a massive capacity of 2,000 watt-hours. It offers an app for basic monitoring and configuration. It sports a LiFePO4 battery for over 3,500 charge cycles. It will charge completely in a little over three hours, and all this for the lowest “cost per watt-hour” of any unit we tested. Normally that might qualify this unit for the “best value” category as well, but that is a tougher call to make when it is also the most expensive unit on our list currently, at $1,599. 

Another often overlooked aspect of portable power stations is the surge wattage and power rating. This is different from the continuous power rating (in watts) for each unit. For example, this unit not only boasts a 2,000Wh capacity rating, but also a 2,000W output power rating. That means, if you wanted to connect several LED lights that were each rated at 200W power output, you could expect to be able to run ten of those simultaneously. When LED lights are turned on, generally, they don’t require any “extra” power to get going. 

Let’s say that you’re building a deck on the back of your house and you need to use the AC200P to power a miter saw. It has a running power rating of 1,800W — no problem, that’s within the 2,000W window, but it also requires an additional 1,800W of surge power to get going. Not many portable power stations offer a surge rating that high. (The surge power number is normally double the nominal power rating.) But the AC200P offers a massive 4,800W of surge power. This is great for people who might want to use larger tools at a remote job site, or even large heating units when you’re out camping. 

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This unit just missed out on “Best small portable power station,” but with all the great features including a fast charging LiFePO4 battery, wireless charger, app-enabled, solar charging, USBA/C and AC and DC outputs all packed into 10 pounds for under $300, it’s a shoo-in for best value.

If you’re in the market for a small portable power station (we consider that to be a unit with a capacity less than 400 watt-hours), or if you’re new to the portable power game and looking for an easy entry, it doesn’t get much easier than the EB3A. With this unit you’ll get almost all the options for charging and powering your devices that you could hope for. You can even pick up a 120- or 200-watt solar panel from Bluetti to have a solar generator setup. 

The LiFePO4 battery in this unit guarantees over 2,500 cycles (charges to 80% capacity), which is at least four years of service life, even if you’re using the EB3A twice a day. Bluetti also boasts a 40-minute charge time to 80% capacity (although my test showed 54 minutes) and the ability to charge via AC+Solar.

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The Powerhouse 757 is a solid, sturdy machine (our second heaviest one at nearly 44 pounds). It’s a great pick among the over-1,000Wh choices, and really only missed out on winning the large power station category due to some extra bells and whistles other units in that category have. But there are a couple of notable features Anker’s put into this unit that give it the gas to dominate this category. 

For starters, the battery itself is the newer LiFePO4 makeup, compared to the more common Li-ion batteries. This newer battery type can be safer to use and can last five to six times longer than the Li-ion ones. This means that compared to the current standard of a 500-cycle lifespan, LiFePO4-donned units could run 3,000 cycles or more. This gives Anker the opportunity to offer a five-year warranty compared to the two-year warranty of many competing units.

Next, many of the current-gen power stations are coming with a “UPS Mode” to offer backup power to critical pieces of equipment during power failures. You plug the power station into your wall outlet and the equipment in question into your power station. With UPS mode enabled, the power station will kick in and power whatever is plugged into it from its internal battery. But before you run out and replace your existing UPS units with one of these, you should know that it is almost the same as a UPS. But not entirely.

A dedicated UPS could have a transfer time (the amount of time it takes for its battery to take over one the grid power has failed) of anywhere from 0 milliseconds to 12ms, and most of them try to stay at 8ms or faster. Anker states a transfer time of “less than 20ms.” That’s great as far as portable power stations go. But as a dedicated UPS that you might want protecting a core piece of tech or important medical device, you might consider a different solution. But by all means, your TVs, laptops, fridges and other devices will be well looked after.

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Steve Conaway/CNET

And by camping, I don’t mean “glamping.” I’m not trying to power your PS5, beer fridge and jacuzzi. Since solar panels are more common now, and most every portable power station offers an option to charge with them, we don’t have to be quite as concerned about overall battery capacity or our ability to get to grid power to recharge. 

Even if it does carry a hefty price tag (on sale now for $749 from its normal retail price of $999), I feel like this model hits a sweet spot of basic functionality, capacity and price. Even though you have the option of charging via solar panels, you can probably survive a weekend trip with a full charge — obviously depending on what you’re powering. And that helps when you’re in sub-prime conditions for solar charging such as overcast or rainy days. 

You have plenty of output options, lots of AC ports and at just under 24 pounds, this unit isn’t too heavy to cart around or move-as-needed during your outing.

If you happen to be a solo flier, or otherwise have very minimal electrical needs when you camp, check out the Jackery Explorer 240. It offers all the basic needs, reliable construction and also happens to be the cheapest power station on our list. 

It’s also worth mentioning that even though the GoSun PowerBank 1100 didn’t finish in the top of our testing, GoSun offers a whole suite of camping and solar-friendly equipment, including a nifty folding solar table that I’m hoping to add to an upcoming solar panel best list.

How many years a portable power station will last depends on three key factors — how well the product is maintained, how often it’s used and the battery type.

We have researched and spoken with several manufacturers and most units boast a 500-cycle lifespan. In some cases, such as the Anker 757, a unit may use LiFePO4 batteries compared to the more common Li-ion battery and offer up to 3,000 cycles or beyond.

One cycle means using the product from fully charged to zero charge (or at least 80% in some cases). Therefore, if you use your portable power station several times a week, it might only last a year or two. But if you use it less frequently, it could last for much longer.

Portable power stations are generally designed to power smaller electronic devices and appliances, from phones and table fans to heavy-duty work lights and CPAP machines. Pay attention to the estimated watt-hours each brand provides in its specs to determine which model makes the most sense for what you’d like to power.

If a company says its portable power station has 200 watt-hours, it should be able power a device with a 1-watt output for about 200 hours. I go into more detail on this in the “How we test” section below, but consider the wattage of the device or devices you want to power and then the number of watt-hours your portable power station would need to have. 

Possibly, depending on the fridge and the portable power station. 

For example, this standard LG refrigerator has an estimated annual energy consumption of 608 kilowatt-hours. That works out to 1.67 kilowatt-hours per day, or 1,670 watt-hours per day. 

1,670 watt-hours per day works out to just under 70 watt-hours per hour. If you have a short-term power outage and only need to power your fridge, a 200-watt-hour power station could keep it running for nearly three hours. You’d need a power station with higher estimated watt-hours to run your fridge for longer. A mini fridge would last much longer than a larger model. 

Always confirm the electrical requirements for your specific fridge and portable power station before trying this, especially your refrigerator’s peak and startup watts. 

There are lots of factors that can affect this, and most of them center on how the manufacturer chooses to build their units’ internals to manage their charged capacity. There is some (usually negligible) amount of power that goes to fuel the various indicator lights and readable led panels on the units. Some of the larger units even have their own operating systems, so it’s almost like powering an additional mini-pc on the inside. Other units can have power-saving features where they reduce outgoing bulk power as they near depleting their charge.

To run our capacity tests, we connect some number of 10,000 lumen LED work lights rated at 110 watts to each unit (the number of work lights is based on the overall watt-hour rating of the unit under test or UUT). We record the outgoing voltage and wattage using external measurement instruments or the UUT’s own measurements if available. Once we have this data, we can math our way into a dizzying array of information about the UUT’s performance. But the main piece of information we look at here is the observed capacity, based on our measurements, compared to the UUT’s stated capacity.

In every case, that percentage ends up at less than 100%. (Most manufacturers say you should calculate expected usage at 85% of stated capacity.) Two of our smaller units both clocked 98% capacity — the Jackery Explorer 240 and the Togo 350. Generally speaking, the midsize units didn’t fare well. The largest units did better, with the Bluetti AC200P scoring highest at almost 96%. Now, if you blindly accept both a unit’s stated capacity and our work light wattage rating of 110 watts, the numbers look very different.

For example, we will take the GoSun PowerBank 1100 (to make the math easier) and attach 4 of the 110 watt lights. That load rating is now 440 watts and the GoSun’s capacity of 1100 divided by 440 is 2.5. We would expect to see 2.5 hours of usage. The actual run time for this unit was 2 hours, 50 minutes — 113% capacity. Great! Right? Well, we’re missing some key factors. Without going into a long(er) explanation of how to more accurately measure power, the fact that this unit has an output of 110 volts AC (compared to 120VAC) and the actual output wattage to the four lights is 352 watts, our real expected run time is 3 hours, 8 minutes, which drops the capacity rating to 90%.

Here is the calculated capacity data for the tested units. One note for these numbers — the Oupes data might be slightly off. The unit turned off the lights at 9%. It would allow me to start the lights again, but would turn them off again after some time. I repeated this process at least twenty times before the unit wouldn’t power the lights for more than a couple of seconds at a time.

Charging performance can be nearly as important as knowing your actual capacity stats. It helps to know how long your device will take to charge, especially if you’re crunched for time or need to be able to charge quickly for whatever reason. Will it take an hour? Two? Ten? Twelve (this is an actual number from our tests!)?

We report three data points for charging performance. Each unit is plugged in for AC charging and we record how long it takes to reach 50%, 80% and 100% charge. Half-full is probably the least amount of power you’re going to want, especially from the smaller units. 80% is the “magic number” for many rechargeable batteries. 

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