Buy it for Life

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A place to share practical, durable and quality made products that are made to last, with an emphasis on upcycled and sustainable products!

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Recommendations for portable power stations? (for camping, power outages, etc.) (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I took a look around and a lot of comments mentioned to get one that uses 'LiFePO4 Batteries', and that seemed like a reasonable requirement.

They're supposed to have a longer life span, be safer, light weight, and better charge/discharge efficiency which is in line with what I'd be looking for.

Some brands/models that I saw recommended:

BLUETTI came up in more recent posts
Ecoflow (specifically the RIVER 2) came up a lot
Anker was suggested a few times, but the comments weren't that detailed

edit, added an image of what I'm referring to

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I like my Bluetti stuff but in some aspects Ecoflow has more flexibility (dual fuel), though at a higher price point.

A few high points :

Historically (from Internet and friends, that is to say - anecdotally), Ecoflow has had better customer service than Bluetti but I've not had any problems with Bluetti. I've not had any problems with the products but they quickly refunded me the difference on their "30 day price" guarantee when I asked.

I decided against Jackery when I started this journey because they were higher priced and not using LiFePO4 yet. Not sure on prices but it seems they've updated the battery chemistry.

My use case is home power outage so 2kWh was my min capacity (AC200P) and I eventually got an AC300 too. I have an EB3A just because I caught it for $70.

The EB3A is annoying as desktop computer UPS, don't try it... Unless you're okay with it running fans when it charges pretty often whenever it drops to 99%. There were also UPS mode switching problems on older versions. Never experienced that but I stopped using it after two days because of the constant charge cycling.

EDIT: prices between brands are as I remember them when I was doing comparisons and I have not checked prices in 1 to 3 years. So, likely different now.