MAXOAK Portable Power Station 2400Wh/1000W EB240 Solar Generator, W/ 2 AC Outlets Emergency Battery Backup for Outdoor Camping Van Home Use

Edit: literally the next day after writing this review, I brought the unit home from my off-grid site and when I got home, the AC light was stuck on and the unit was non-functional. None of the buttons worked and the display did not change. I assumed I would need to power cycle the unit, but because it's fully enclosed with tamper resistant hex headed screws, I did not open it despite having a tamper resistant hex set. I handled the unit with extreme caution but possibly hitting a road bump during transportation could have messed the unit up somehow. That's all I can conclude. I was driving very carefully when transporting the unit and don't understand why it became inoperable. My parents' dog was laying in the back seat so I took extra caution on the hour drive home because country roads can be a bit bumpy at times.I tried calling Maxoak support and got a full inbox every time. After about 10 calls with no answer over 2 days, I emailed [email protected] explaining the issue who requested I attach the serial number which was ripped off the sticker!??! I didn't rip off the serial number. Was my unit previously refurbished even though I bought it here on Amazon from MaxOak Direct? (hmmm...). That said, I was given a FedEx label to ship the unit back which took about 5 days. Then I received the replacement in about 5 days after leaving me with over a week without it. I had to ask for a tracking # once it shipped because they didn't actually tell me one or that they had received it.During this time of not having the unit, I lost power in my neighborhood for 3 hours and my sump pump was inoperable. I did manage to scoop out a lot of the water with a laundry detergent bottle during this thunderstorm but this could have all been prevented if the unit didn't brick and become inoperable.The new unit has the same problem where the input wattage will not exceed about 340 watts. This is very frustrating because my parents also have a unit and we are using 440W panels. It doesn't add up. At least the new unit actually looks new and has a serial number sticker on the bottom. Sadly, I am having the same issues with my AC compressor not always kicking on and the unit will not sustain a charge above 350W no matter how I position my solar panel even though I've set up the panel perfectly using the can shadow trick to balance it perfectly in the sun.I monitored the voltage and it only outputs~108.5VAC from both AC plugs. This may be the reason why my A/C compressor doesn't always kick in because its rated for 115VAC. Either way, this unit is working although I regret buying it and wish I could get the money refunded, to be honest. I also convinced my parents to buy one and their unit also does not handle the input voltage that it's rated for.***old review:I've owned the Eb240 (2400Wh model) for 10 months now and use it regularly. I purchased a 2 30' dc extension cables and they run out of the wood block above my a/c out to my 440W solar panel where I can freely position the panel around my yard. For the most part, I get a decent amount of solar input draw to the unit, but I am skeptical that the unit is capped off or not allowing me to reach full input wattage. I cannot confirm this, but typically the unit maxes out around 380W and then will cycle down to about 350 or reset all together. The fan does kick on and I don't think it's overheating, but I'm not sure. That being said, there are other drawdowns as well.When I am running my 6,000 BTU A/C from the unit, it does not always allow the compressor to kick on, so my A/C will temporarily power cycle and go back into fan mode for a few minutes before retrying. I don't really understand this because the EB240 is supposed to be rated for 2 minutes max of 1200 W spike voltage. I put on a wattage plug to record peak wattage and it has only gone up to 750 W. The A/C also normalizes between 450-750 W range so it's well within specs according to the specs sheet. I consider this to poorly rated or I may possibly have a low quality unit.Another con that I have is that the display is a bit hard to read. I actually have to prop the unit up a face it square on or I cannot read the display. Also after about 8 months, occasionally the DC wattage has a slight bleed over or possible burn-in already. I didn't think this would be a problem this early of ownership.I do use this solar generator quite frequently and will now go over the pros.The DC PW port does provide its rating of 45W and occasionally will go above that a bit. That port is really nice to have because my laptop is charged thru USB-C PW and stays fully charged under load. My wall plug for the laptop draws over 100W at times, so this is a huge energy saver on the battery without compromise. All of the USB ports work great and provide an above average experience in my opinion. I've had power inverters in the past that do not provide enough output but this unit handles all DC like a champ.I love the portability and ease of use with this unit. Being able to see the 5 battery bars and still allow a bit of headroom when no bars are showing is a nice touch. I can carry this wherever I want because it's light enough and portable enough for a small car. Being able to run my air condition in general is the reason I bought this. It's sad that the unit can't handle it half the time even with nothing else plugged in. I think this solar generator is affordable and reasonable for what you get, but have changed my mind a bit because it doesn't fully live up to the specs, in my experience. I really don't want to ship it to the manufacturer because then I'll be without it during summer which is when I use it the most and why I purchased it.

Okay, I hate to say it, but there are really only two things that are great about this product. And they are the reasons I bought it over other units.1. The battery capacity. I love that I can get 2000Wh of usable power out of this (under the right conditions. See below).2. The battery longevity. 2500 cycles is great. It will probably only be 1500 cycles in real life since these are not LiFEpo4 batteries. But still much better than most units out there.That’s it. Not much to like here other than the batteries. Serious. Read on.Now for all the things I do not like. In no particular order.1. The display. I like that it shows the input, AC, and DC outputs individually, but that is all I like. Even the cheapest units now days show the battery percent, hours left to charge or discharge, and many other features that make it much easier to get the most from them. For example, the battery capacity is huge on this unit, but you only have steps of 20% on the battery indicator. So that is a very large value of ~400 watt hours (assuming 2000 watt hours of actual usable power) for each bar that you can’t tell how much you have used of. You also cannot plan at all how long you have left to charge or discharge since there is no time indicator. Pretty terrible in my opinion on a a unit of this price point. And I didn’t realize how important these things were until I got this Bluetti and it doesn’t have that. I got spoiled with the cheaper units I guess.2. The display always turns off. Why can’t we, the user, decide when the display is on or off?! It’s not like it is a big drain on the battery lol. Or at least make the time longer that it is on for!!! So annoying when you are trying to get the most from your solar panels.3. The display does not register usage under 30 watts for the input, and the AC. Yep. Just shows zero watts being used. And the display can be +-30 watts off of actual usage as well. Crazy. None of my other units are this terrible.4. The inverter is VERY inefficient at low loads. Don’t try to use the AC inverter with low watt <200 watt devices. It uses an outrageous amount of power just to run the inverter that is not actually going to your device. Worst inverter efficiency I have seen when using lower wattage devices. My other cheap units are significantly better at low watt loads.5. This brings me to the next dislike. With a crappy AC inverter you need good DC output. But there is only one DC output, in the form of the cigarette lighter. And it is limited to 100 watts. Even though it claims 9amps, it shuts down if I get to 100 watts from the cigarette lighter, which is no where near 9 amps. Pathetic. All of my other cheap units do much better from the cigarette port. And most other cheap units also have at least have some 5mm DC output jacks as well. One of my cheap units has three! If you want to get the most from this unit, expect your cigarette lighter port to see a LOT of use! All the other ports are pretty lax.6. Claims the cigarette port is regulated. But it doesn’t seem to be regulated. It starts out at about 12.7 volts with no load and drops from there to around 12 volts with a 95 watt load and a full battery. So forget about charging things efficiently that are 12 volt devices themselves like other portable solar generators. It should be a minimum of 12.7 volts in my opinion, and better if it was 13.5. As the voltage of the battery you are charging increases, the charge rate drops to nothing eventually, as it gets charged and gets closer to the Bluetti’s 12 volts output. This would not be an issue if it was regulated to 12.7 or higher.6. Crappy USB ports. Even the cheapest units nowadays have 60 watt USB C and QC 3.0. This comes with one pathetic 45 watt USB C unidirectional port and all the rest (4) are the useless standard old school USB ultra slow ports. Forget about quick charging things. There is no reason why all USB ports on this shouldn’t be QC 3.0/PD capable, and the USB-C should be 100 Watt bidirectional capable. And more of all ports!7. Crappy inverter. Only 1000 watts max and no real leeway with that. But worse, it is is also extremely inefficient at lower wattage outputs! And when I say low, I actually mean <200 watts. For example an 86 watt device (verified by my kill a watt meter as well as my other cheap units) will actually draw about 140 watts according to the display!! And it seemed like it is even worse than that judging by the battery drop. Keep in mind the Bluetti watt meter can be off by 30 watts, plus or minus. Seems to be only be off by under, never over. So add a minimum of 30 to whatever the display says on AC at lower wattages, it seems. So it could be using 170 or even more watts! And I hate to say it, but that is what it seems to be doing judging by how fast my 86 watt device drains the Bluetti! It does not last anywhere close to 2000/86 or 23 hours. No. Where. Close. It lasted only about half the time it should have! Unbelievable inefficiency. The DC wattage display seems much more accurate, and much more efficient. If you’re going to be using the AC inverter, try to use a lot of watts at a time, to get the somewhat better efficiency. This unit is not designed for low wattage <200 loads. I am not sure how much this improves above 200 watts. But it does improve somewhat the more watts you are using. Also, this inverter should be a minimum of 1500 watts. And much more efficient at lower wattages.7. The fans. They turn on all the time, and it is wattage based. Not temperature based. So even if it is 40 degrees and you are only drawing 90 watts from the cigarette lighter, you get the fan. 100 watts input to charge it, you get the fan. They should have made it temperature controlled, not a seemingly arbitrary low wattage. The fans come on when there is absolutely no chance of any overheating, whatsoever. I have never felt even the slightest bit of heat coming from this thing, no matter what I do to it. The fan seems to be way too eager.8. Solar input is finicky. Sometimes it will get stuck below 100 watts input with full sun and 300 watts worth of solar panels. You have to unplug the input and plug it back in, and it will immediately jump past 100 watts. Very annoying. Have to constantly be checking to make sure the input is correct for the sunlight conditions. Otherwise unplug and plug again.9. The two AC ports are on the back. This thing is huge. Tons of space on the front of it. Yet they decided to put the AC on the back. My cheap units have all ports (and many, many more ports) on the front, with bigger, more useful displays as well, in an area 1/3 the size of the front of the Bluetti. There is no reason for the minimal ports, tiny display, and AC on the back at this price point. Terrible design.Conclusion: This unit gets away with doing the bare minimum because it is still a great deal for the capacity of the battery alone. And that is the only reason I bought this unit and am going to keep it. It is still a good deal because of the battery alone. Although if you use low wattage items on AC the battery capacity is really only equivalent to a unit with about a 1500Wh battery with an efficient AC inverter. So keep that in mind. To get the most from this unit you need to load the AC inverter...the closer to 1000 watts the better efficiency. Or use the cigarette lighter port exclusively. The USB ports are pretty useless on this unit as they as such low power versions of USB. Use a cheap unit to charge your USB devices, not this unit. I bought this for emergencies and the huge capacity, so it will work okay for that, but that is all it is really practical for. For everything else I prefer my cheap smaller units. By far!! Everything about them is superior in every way!Search for Oukitel CN505 or Bibene CN505 to see what a properly designed unit is like (they are the same unit). Has all the latest tech. LiFEpo4 batteries as well! The thing is a beast! If they came out with a version with 2500Wh and a 1500 watt inverter and all the same features, it would be the perfect unit! Even if it was more expensive than the Bluetti, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. Better in every single way, other than the capacity. Forget all the rest, including Jackery and the other big names. They all have compromises, like the Bluetti, but without the capacity of the Bluetti to make up for them.This thing was clearly designed to mainly be an AC unit where you want to power something close to 1000 watts for a couple hours. That is it. The DC is an afterthought. And low wattage AC loads are just not worth the massive inefficiency. Might as well buy a smaller cheaper unit and get about the same actual usable capacity with a more efficient inverter.I am keeping the Bluetti, because as an emergency unit with tons of capacity, it does fine. Otherwise, look elsewhere.

It works well however people should be aware that like any dc-dc / dc-ac converters there are losses. It does indeed store 2400 WH however depending on your use case it's closer to 1200 - 1500WH. My use case is to have this as an emergency blackout charger to keep the family's phones charged, an AC rechargable radio and flashlights.You would think 5 phones charging etc with 2400 WH that we'd be good for many weeks. However I ran experiments1) Charged different phone types (9watts out) . Timed how long a certain amount of WH was stored in phone (used new phones so batteries still at full capacity). Long story short the WH stored was about 62-65% of the indicated power out. 9WH (1 hour of charging) stored about 5.8 WH. Most Walk chargers are 50-60% efficient so nothing too surprising for the complete end to end path.2) Then I was curious about how inefficient the internal converters were and also what idle power is used. If you leave DC out on with no load (it does not go asleep, it does go to sleep if the DC out is off) so how much does it use?. I charged the unit fully. Then left it on with DC out on (no load). Checking every hour I watched for when the units first bar was used. There is an error margin but In approx 64 hours it dropped the 20% (one bar in display). So 480 WH/64 = 7.5 W per hour is burned while on with no load . So every 3 hours about 1% of the capacity is lost.So I realized you do not want to leave charging over night (ie a few phones) as it will use (10.hrs for example) 75WH idle + 9WH x Phones x time. in fact I started this testing when i was charging 3 phones overnight and within 3 days 20% of the capacity was gone.So efficiency is anywhere between 50-60% for charging DC (phones) and turn off the device as soon as you have finished charging do not leave it overnight.I still like it but I think of it as a 1200WH ish device that can charge multiple phones etc and don't leave it in over night (3 Hrs is a good max target ) . I gave it 3 stars just because it can only transfer 2400WH in a lossless set up which doesn't exist.

The power stations are well made, very solid casing and extremely easy to use: overall outstanding quality. I usually don't write reviews but this company gave an impeccable service and care to its customers, as well as answering all my questions, exceeding way beyond my expectations. I would definitely recommend their products, as the company stands behind their quality, brand and guaranty. I ordered a few power stations for my family members for emergency during a power outage but they could also be useful for camping and road trips. It is crucial to keep in mind that they must be recharged at least once every 3 months and stored in a dry, cool area. The product also ensures peace of mind for unexpected emergency on the road or at home. These power stations can run lights, alarm system, IPHONE, laptop and router at the same time for up to 1000w combined. I hesitated to buy one at the first place because they are not cheap but they are well worth it as I ordered few more for my relatives. I wish I had discovered these powerful lithium batteries earlier along with solar panels which is the future of energy in case the power grid goes down.

J'adore ce bloc d'alimentation portatif et possède une incroyable réserve d'énergie,comme par exemple le mien est branché sur un panneau solaire 32 volts 275 watts et d-en l'espace d'une journée en plein soleil en fin d'apres midi il est full et j'ai tester une mijoteuse a basse intensité a +/- 200 watts de consommation j'ai allumé a 20h30 et éteint a 6h Am le lendemain matin il me restait encore une barre de puissance et mon repas était cuit a point !! Oui jle recommande !

I bought this as a backup to my AC200. In an extended power outage, use one while solar charging the other. After much research and reading online reviews, I decided on this rather than another AC200. Plus it's much more portable than the 200 (still quite heavy) but easier to lug around. Still have yet to use and test it as I just received a few weeks ago. Will update when I've had time to use it.

I'm prompted to write this review by the excellent service from this supplier. My request for a delivery exception was answered almost immediately and the device arrived within two business days, which is unheard of in this remote burg.The bluetti power station arrived with about 80% charge. I plugged in a fridge and it handled it without a blink. I estimate it will run a fridge for a couple of days.It does take a long time to charge, but that should ensure the batteries last.I've only had it a few days, but it looks like it will do what it's advertised to do. Again, the primary reason for this review is the excellent service from Maxoak.