Is the Bluetti AC200Max the New King of Midweight Solar Generators?

The Bluetti AC200Max is one of the best medium-sized solar generators to come out to date. But is it enough to be the absolute best option? Does it offer the best efficiency, power, expandability, rechargeability, and all the other necessary components to be the best option?

The top competitors to the Bluetti AC200Max are the EcoFlow Delta Max and the Inergy Flex. There are many similarities between these systems including expandable battery packs, portability, and how many items can be run off of them at the same time.

Midweight Sized Solar Generators

What are midweight-sized solar generators? They are units that are too big for simple camping or day trips but not large enough to permanently run an off-grid cabin or have 240v power capability. They generally have inverter capacities from 1,500w to 2,500w and battery sizes from 1,500wh to 6,000wh.

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Inverter

The inverter on the AC200Max is a very efficient and powerful setup. It is a pure sine wave, which is to be expected from modern solar generators, and will run any AC-powered device that you can run at home very easily. With a continuous output rating of 2,200w, it is less than the EcoFlow Delta Max at 2,400w but much larger than the Inergy Flex at 1,500w. This means it will easily run any household device that you would normally plug into the wall outlet. And if there is any heavy load such as a hairdryer, chop saw, or even some air compressors, it can peak all the way up to 4,800w which is 220% higher than the continuous output capacity of the Bluetti AC200Max.

It may not have the highest continuous output of all the midweight solar generators currently available but 2,200w is still plenty of power for the standard backup power setup for most people. This means it’s easily capable of running a fridge, freezer, lights, fans, CPAP, toaster, coffee maker, hairdryer and so much more without any trouble.

But one thing that is very impressive about the Bluetti AC200Max is its inverter efficiency. It is typical for a good solar generator to have about 85% efficiency out of the inverter. Meaning for every 1 watt-hour of battery capacity you’ll get out .85 watt-hours of actual power through the inverter. This inefficiency is normal and happens because the inverter is converting battery power which is 51v DC power in the Bluetti AC200Max to 120v AC power for devices. But the Bluetti AC200Max pushes out a solid 88% efficiency which is much higher than a typical good system. This means you’ll get more power out of the battery than another system like the Inergy Flex which only has about an 80% efficient inverter. The Delta Max has an 89% efficient inverter so basically the same as the Bluetti AC200Max, both are very good.

The 2,200w inverter runs four 18amp house style outlets (NEMA 15) and one 30amp RV (TT-30) outlet. But you have to keep in mind that the 30amp RV plug can only push out 18 amps of continuous power because the inverter is rated to 2,220 watts (2,200 watts ÷ 120 volts = 18.34amps). Meaning it is not a true 30amp plug but can connect to 30amp service plugs on RVs which is a nice feature.

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Battery

The Bluetti AC200Max uses the heavy but very reliable LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery that is tried and true. With up to 3,500 cycles on the battery before it reaches 80% efficiency, this unit will last for many years without any noticeable decay in battery capacity. If the battery were used 3,500 times by doing a cycle once per day it would take nearly 10 years for the battery to get to 3,500 cycles. That’s incredible!

Although cycles are an important feature for solar generators it is very important to understand that it is not one of the most important features. You have to consider that unless you’re literally living off-grid with this unit and using a lot of power off of it daily that you’re not likely going to reach that 3,500 cycle mark. The reality is most people need these types of units during emergencies, or for RVing for a few weeks each summer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if you consider that you are using this fairly heavily then you’re looking closer to 100 cycles per year. This means you’re looking at over 30 years before you reach 3,500 cycles.

That is why it is important to have a good amount of cycles on the batteries but it is not a deal-breaker or a deal decider. It is more important to have a larger battery capacity, larger inverter, and fast solar recharge than to have a high number of cycles.

But one of the best features of the Bluetti AC200Max is its ability to use expandable batteries. Using the Bluetti B230 and B300 batteries you can expand the AC200Max to be up to 6,144wh with B230s and up to 8,194wh with the B300 batteries.

The B230 battery is the same battery that is in the Bluetti AC200Max of 2,048wh. It is just the battery packaged into another case and has external connectors to link up with the AC200Max. The B300 battery however is 3,072wh in capacity. And you can use either two B230s or two B300s attached to the AC300Max.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to use any other kind of battery with the AC200Max so you are limited to only using Bluetti batteries. But they are fairly priced and are LiFePo4 cells as well so they will last forever and are very high quality.

The downside though to using these LiFePo4 cells inside the AC200Max as well as in the B230 and B300 is that they are very heavy. The AC200Max alone without external batteries is 61lbs which is definitely quite heavy. Just by adding a single B230 battery, you’re looking right about 100lbs to handle. With a couple of B300 batteries, you’re well over 150lbs which makes it much more difficult to keep it portable, but they are expansion batteries that are externally mounted so it is easier to move them around than having a single system that is all linked together as one unit.

The batteries are not without their major flaws which I’ll talk about below in the weaknesses section.

Recharge

There are multiple ways to charge up the Bluetti AC200Max. The one that is most important is the solar recharge but it can also be charged with a wall charger, car charger, and even a lead-acid battery. It is unclear why Bluetti thought that it would be an important feature to be able to recharge the AC200Max from a lead-acid battery. But, it’s capable of doing that and that is a unique feature that is not common in other solar generators.

The AC200Max comes with a 500w AC power charging brick that is a bit heavy but does charge fairly quickly in just about 4 hours for just the base unit with no external batteries. The car charger puts in a little bit more than 100w into the battery at a time so it’s a very slow way to charge but nonetheless has that option. For midweight systems like this, car charging is very uncommon because it takes so long but is a nice feature for anyone using this system in a Van setup. At least while driving it can get a little extra charge.

The AC200Max has a high input of 900w input directly from solar. And with a special adapter that you can buy as an extra, you can get an extra 500w solar input into each expansion battery that is added. If you had two external batteries added you can have a total of 1,900w of solar input going into the whole system which is very impressive. That is only beat by the Titan solar generator which has a standard solar input of 2,000w, 3,000w inverter, and 10’s of thousands of watt-hours in battery capacity can be added to the Titan.

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The AC200Max’s standard solar input of 900 watts beats the EcoFlow Deltas 800w max solar input and the Inergy Flex’s 400w solar input. The Flex is capable of adding more charge controllers as well just like the AC200Max but the Flex’s extra charge controllers are two years behind production so don’t hold your breath on getting those.

The AC200Max with no extra batteries can be charged in as fast as 2hrs and 20mins with its 900w solar input. It can be easily over-paneled which is a very nice feature to have on solar generators. With a solar input of 10-145v and up to 15amps it’s easy to get upwards of 1,500 watts in solar panels connected to the AC200Max.

Why over-panel? If the sun comes up at 8 am, but isn’t near its peak height in the sky until 10 am, that means from 8 am until 10 am you won’t be making the full power of your solar panels. As an example, if you can only get 60% of your solar panel-rated power into the AC200Max then in the early morning you’re not charging at the highest capacity. So if you had 1,000 watts in panels connected at 8 am you’d get 600 watts to go into the AC200Max. But if you had 1,500 watts in panels connected at 8 am, at 60% power input, you’d actually be getting 900 watts of solar input at the very beginning of the day.

This allows you to get more charging hours of full capacity throughout the day and makes it much easier to fully recharge the system on cloudy days or in adverse weather.

Over-paneling is one of the best features any solar generator can have and between the AC200Max, Delta Max, and Flex, only the AC200Max is capable of doing it. The Titan beats the AC200Max with up to 4,000w of solar panels being able to connect to it in over-paneling capability. But the Titan is considered a heavyweight solar generator, a different caliber, and more capable so it’s not a fair comparison.

Extra Features

The Bluetti AC200Max has many great features such as a very interactive and informative touch screen. It shows plenty of information from the load output, the recharging input, battery percentage, battery cell balances, and much more. Some people have reported that their touch screens have frozen and were not usable for many hours at some times. It is likely a bug that is no longer an issue but was most likely just an issue in early models.

The AC200Max as well as all of Bluetti’s power stations come with a 24 months warranty which is the current industry standard.

It has a very sleek and interactive Bluetooth app that allows you to connect to the unit, monitor, control, and adjust settings all from your smartphone. This is becoming more and more popular with solar generators and power stations today and works very well. As long as you’re within the short range of about 30ft from the unit you can see everything from your phone through the Bluetti app.

Weaknesses

The biggest concern besides the touch screen locking up and not being used are the external batteries. The issue is that if for any reason the total battery capacity on the AC200Max drops all the way down to zero, only the onboard battery inside the AC200Max will recharge when the sun comes back up and hits the solar panels. For some reason, the external batteries do not get any charge at all after hitting 0%. They have to be jump-started using the AC wall charger. Once they’ve been jump-started they will then begin charging from the solar panels.

That means if this was to be used at an off-grid cabin, van, RV, home, or anywhere, and you drained the battery down to zero which can definitely happen, you have to manually reset the external batteries. That is nearly a deal-breaker if this is to be used for emergency backup power, off-griding, or boondocking. At our off-grid cabin, there are times we are not there for weeks, or there is bad weather for weeks. On the one good day there’s sun in the midst of bad weather I can’t afford to be wondering if my system was fully drained and not charging the extra batteries.

The cable management. This is a big issue if you have expendable batteries. Each battery has a very heavy-duty cable that connects it to the AC200Max. Then if each battery has an additional solar charger connected to it plus the solar cables themselves, it can become quite the rat’s nest of cables. It simply requires a lot of cable management which for many people is not a strong suit or is not wanted to be dealt with in the middle of an emergency.

Also, the weight of the entire system is necessary to address. With the base unit alone being 61lbs it’s not going to be easy for many people to move it around. Having a furniture dolly may help but in the end that will only work on flat surfaces. Even the Titan which is considered a heavyweight system can be broken down into smaller parts and have a max weight of 35lbs per piece making it very easy to transport and setup again. Especially since the Titan doesn’t use external cabling to connect to extra batteries, they simply stack on top of each other. And because the Titan already has 2,000w of solar input built into the unit itself there are no external charge controllers to have more of a mess of cables.

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Pricing

Factoring in the inverter size, battery capacity, and solar input which are the three most important features of any solar generator system, the Bluetti AC200Max is well priced. At about $2,099 for the average price you’ll only end up paying around $1.44 per “unit wattage.” That is very close to the Titan’s $1.42 per unit wattage which has been considered the “best bang for the buck” for years now.

Conclusion

The Bluetti AC200Max is a very good system. It’s efficient, expandable, quickly rechargeable can be over-paneled, and has a good price per unit wattage. It’s nearly tied in capability with the EcoFlow Delta Max. The AC200Max has a slightly smaller inverter at 2,200w whereas the Delta Max has a 2,400w inverter. But the AC200Max has a max battery capacity of over 8,000wh and the Delta Max can only go up to just over 6,000wh. And the Delta Max has 800w max solar input without the ability to over panel. And the AC200Max has 900w of max solar input and can be over paneled. The AC200Max has 3,500 cycles and the Delta Max 800 cycles. So nearly in every way that matters the AC200Max beats the Delta Max.

As far as midweight solar generators are concerned, it would appear that the Bluetti AC200Max is currently the very best option available. The Inergy Flex doesn’t hold a candle to the AC200Max.

If you find you want a little more inverter power, more than twice the solar input for the base unit, and more expandable battery capacity than any other unit currently in existence, then the Titan solar generator would be the next best option.

But the Bluetti AC200Max can absolutely stand on its own as the best midweight system.

Continue ReadingIs the Bluetti AC200Max the New King of Midweight Solar Generators?

Unbiased Review – Jackery Explorer 1500 Portable Solar Generator Power Station

To be upfront and 100% transparent, I have received zero benefits from Jackery in any way. I did not receive my Jackery Explorer 1500 for free or at special pricing, I have not received money from them, they haven’t even reached out to me to review this unit. With all of that said, should you even consider the Jackery Explorer 1500 solar generator a contender in the power station world?

The short answer is, maybe. But probably not. It doesn’t come close to the Titan. Are other smaller solar generators like the AC200P and Delta better suited for people than the Explorer 1500?

Overview

The Jackery 1500 is a decent unit. It’s not very heavy, has a pretty strong inverter for powering anything that uses 120v power. It has a decent-sized battery and supposedly can charge pretty quickly. Should it be used for emergency backup power, RVing, VanLife, camping, and so on? That’s what we’ll find out.

Click Here to Buy the Jackery Explorer 1500

Output Power

The Jackery Explorer 1500 is truly capable of pretty much running anything under 1,800w of power. Remember that watts are simply the result of volts and amps multiplied together. Common household voltage is 110v or 120v. They’re essentially the same thing but to keep the math simple I’ll just use 120v since that is what’s most commonly used today.

1,800w ÷ 120v = 15a. A typical outlet in the wall at home is rated up to 15amps of output. Meaning that if you can run the device out of an outlet at home, you can run it off of the Jackery 1500 as well. This is why reviewing this unit can be helpful to see if this is actually true. I have found in my testing that this is true.

Its peak or surge rating is 3,600w which is double the running wattage which is definitely adequate for most appliances.

Jackery has always put really good inverters into their systems. I have never had an issue with the Jackery 2000, Jackery 1000, or the Jackery 500 units which I have also reviewed. If it says it is capable of pushing out 1,800w then it really can. But not all things on paper for the Jackery systems have been accurate, as will be shown shortly.

All of the outlets on the Jackery 1500 are regulated which makes it very safe to use because it will keep the proper voltage and amperage going to whatever device is being run all the way down to the battery hits 0%.

It has a pure sine wave inverter which is very common in solar generators and power stations today but is not 100% guaranteed. Jackery makes sure to use top-notch quality in the inverter so they only go with pure sine wave which means you can safely run anything that would plug into a normal house outlet.

A modified sine wave is the other option and that has limitations as to what it can run and is often called “dirty electricity.” You won’t have to worry about any dirty electricity coming off of the Jackery 1500 or any of the Jackery units. That’s one thing that Jackery has always done very well.

Battery Size and Capability

The Jackery Explorer 1500 has a 1,534wh battery which is why it’s called the Jackery Explorer 1500. They rounded the number down from the battery capacity to 1,500 so they could give it that name. The 1,534wh battery is a 24v battery that is rated to 25.2v and 60.9a. It’s confusing but that’s just how solar and electronics are. The bottom line is it’s a 24v system that has 12v and 120v outlets on the front of the unit.

Using a Lithium NMC battery, or most commonly referred to as Lithium-ion, the Jackery 1500 will push power out constantly with no problem either at the max load of 1,800w or it can be trickling out power to your device at very low loads. The big advantage of using Lithium NMC is that it is much lighter than Lithium-Iron-Phosphate batteries or what is most commonly called LiFePo4.

The battery is the heaviest part of the Jackery 1500, and many other reviews have said that the weight is very manageable and easy to move around. I find in my testing and reviewing that it is indeed easy enough and portable enough to move around and use pretty easily. The total weight is 33lbs for the whole unit and I find that anything under 35lbs is not too bad for anyone to use.

The draw capacity of the Jackery 1500 is what is most impressive. Typically, it is difficult for batteries to push out more power than their own capacity and often times will not push that amount of power out until 0%. For example, the Inergy Apex solar generator has a battery capacity of 1,100wh and an inverter size of 1,500w but cannot push 1,500w out of the inverter for more than 5 minutes max. The Apex cannot draw more than 800w and run to 0%. If it’s running 900w it will quit working after a short while.

The Jackery 1500 on the other hand with its battery capacity at 1,534wh and the inverter at 1,800w is capable of running a 1,800w load all the way until the battery hits 0% which takes about 44mins. That is quite impressive that the battery has only 1,534wh but can run 1,800w continuously without interruption. The Titan solar generator is one of the only other units I have found that can do this as well. The Titan has a 2,000wh battery and a 3,000w inverter but it can run the higher loads until empty.

Many people dislike that Jackery hasn’t gotten into LiFePo4 batteries yet but it’s really a tossup between the two battery types and it all depends on what you need the system for. Lithium-Ion is good for portability since it’s lighter, but the Jackery batteries are only rated to 500 cycles which is considered low.

Keep in mind that a cycle means you have the solar generator at 100%, then discharge it to 0%, then recharge it back up to 100%. That is one full cycle. Once you’ve done that 500 times then the battery will only have 80% of its original capacity. That doesn’t mean it’s a dead unit. It just means that instead of a 1,534wh battery it would be the equivalent of a 1,227wh battery.

A LiFePo4 battery will commonly have 3,000 cycles or more, but it is much heavier. Therefore, it makes it much harder to be mobile and portable. Some other reviews like the lighter more portable option and other reviews prefer the heavier longer-lasting option. Again, it all depends on your own preference and needs.

That is one of the reasons why the Titan is so well-liked and has been the leader in solar generators for over 2 years. It uses Lithium NMC batteries which are lighter but have 2,000 cycles in them because of how they are designed. In that case, you get the best of both worlds where they’re lighter and have a lot of cycles.

Click Here to Buy the Jackery Explorer 1500

Charging

Charging the Jackery 1500 is where the most issues arise. It can be charged in many different ways including from a wall outlet at home, solar panels while camping, RVing, or during a blackout, or while on the road through the DC car charger.

The solar charging capability on the Jackery 1500 is where this whole unit begins to fall apart. It may have a good inverter and battery, but the MPPT solar charge controller is a problem. Jackery advertises that it can charge up to 500w of solar power at once which means it could recharge the battery in about 3 hours.

3 hours or less is the preferred amount of time for solar recharge. That is because there are only about 5 or 6 hours a day in the USA where you can get maximum output from solar panels.

To clarify, a 100-watt solar panel will generate 100 watt-hours of battery capacity in one hour of charging.  Watt-hours is the unit of measurement for showing stored energy in a battery.

If the Jackery 1500 could put in 500w that would be great, but it can’t. Its max input rating is actually only 400w according to the user manual. But wait, Jackery also says 500w is the max input? So how does that work? It doesn’t. This is where the advertised specs are a big problem. It is simply impossible to get 500w of power into the Jackery 1500.

But 400w of solar power is still pretty good, right? Well, sort of. A 1,534wh battery will take about 4 hours to charge up from 0% if you put 400w into it from the solar panels. The way Jackery likes to accomplish this is with their SolarSaga 100w solar panels. The SolarSaga 100w solar panels are portable folding panels that can be taken anywhere and used with ease.

But, I have yet to personally see a SolarSaga 100w solar panel generate more than 67 watts. I have that panel and have watched and read many other reviews of that solar panel and 67 watts seems to be the max that anyone can get out of it. I have heard rumors that Jackery has made some upgrades to their most recent generation of SolarSaga 100 panels and that some people have gotten upwards of 80w per panel, but I haven’t seen that repeatedly in any other reviews. Hopefully, it’s true though.

The Jackery SolarSaga 200 solar panels were made to work with the Jackery 1500 and Jackery 2000 units, but Jackery exclusively shows that the Jackery 1500 should only be used with the SolarSaga 100 panels. That is, again, very confusing.

One of the biggest difficulties of using the SolarSaga panels is that they need to be near the unit to charge because there is no long charging cable. Since they use proprietary 8mm connectors as well it’s basically impossible to get a longer cable to be between the panels and the Explorer 1500. That makes it really hard to charge the unit while using the unit at the same time without long extension cords to the fridge or whatever device.

In addition to that, they claim that in just four hours the Jackery can be charged from 0% all the way up to 80%. Let’s break down the math: 1,534wh is the total battery capacity. 80% of that would be 1,227wh. If we take 1,227wh and divide that by four hours (1,227wh ÷ 4hrs) we get 306 watts of solar charge coming in.

The claim was 500w solar input, but that wasn’t true so it got dropped to 400w absolute maximum input, but then at its very best, they’re saying 306 watts is what it will do with four SolarSaga 100 panels? That is beyond misleading. Reading the fine print is an absolute “must” for this solar generator power station.

The user manual also says that it is necessary to use at least two SolarSaga 100 panels to charge the Jackery 1500. But then why do they say the SolarSaga 200 panels are best for it if they also say only use the 100w version. Again, more confusion, that’s not okay.

The charge controller has an input rating from 12-30v and up to 10.5a. That means panels have to be connected in parallel, not series, in order for it to work. And there are two charge controllers so each one will have two panels connected to the 2 to 1 adapters that come with the system.

FYI, you cannot use your own solar panels. I’ll go over that in a minute down below.

Hopefully, you can see why this is such a problem. People will spend $1,600 on a solar power station thinking they will be able to recharge it in 3 hours, but in reality, it takes over 5 hours in ideal conditions to get it fully charged, that’s not good at all. In fact, that puts in the category of “not good enough” solar generators.

But don’t worry, the solar charging may be completely incorrect and hard to follow the but charging from AC power off of a wall outlet is all good, right? Wrong. Jackery clearly says that the Explorer 1500 will charge at 500w from a wall outlet using the AC power brick charger and I have yet to see it charge above 261 wats. That’s effectively half of what is advertised.

Either there is some serious miscommunication between the technical department and the sales department at Jackery or they’re intentionally trying to trick people into thinking they’re getting something that it’s not.

That is wrong. Period.

It has a car charger and that’s all great, but it is rare that anyone will use a car charger with any solar generator system. It simply takes too long because you can’t draw a lot of power from a cigarette lighter port in a vehicle. Jackery says it takes nearly 16 hours to charge it from a car charging port in a vehicle.

On a good note, the Explorer 1500 is capable of charging while it is running other equipment. Just as long as you have extension cords running to those devices since the Explorer 1500 has to be near the solar panels outside.

By the way, the Jackery 1500 is not waterproof. Not that you’d get much power from solar panels if it’s raining but, what if you left it outside charging and then forgot about it at night, and the sprinklers came on or it rained. That could be catastrophic to the system. Really the point isn’t it needs to be waterproof or resistant, the point is that it should be possible and easy to put a long distance between the panels and the unit like the Titan has so it can be kept safe.

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Outlets and Connectors

It has three 120v 15a rated outlets. Jackery calls it 110v at 16.4a but they’re essentially the same thing. It has two USB A type outlets for smartphones, tablets, and charging cables. Then a single USB C plug that is rated up to 60w output. It would’ve made sense and been preferable to have a 100w USB C outlet, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

No solar generator or power station is complete without at least one 12v DC cigarette lighter port. The Jackery 1500’s DC port is rated at 12v and up to 10a. Meaning that it can run up to 120w of power out of that single port.

Jackery has used the 8mm barrel connector for a very long time. But there’s an issue with it. There are two types of 8mm barrel connectors. One has a small inner pin and the other has a larger inner pin. The Jackery comes with a travel box for all of its accessories and includes two 8mm adapters that can be used with the SolarSaga solar panels.

But what this means, is you cannot use your own solar panels with a typical 8mm to PV Connector adapter. This is my number one complaint with any solar generator, compatibility. Many people already have their own solar panels.

For almost all of my solar generators, I use the Rigid 100 panels because they are the highest wattage producing 100w solar panels we have tested at Powered Portable Solar. If I am not using the Rigid 100 panels I am using the Flexx 100 panels. Why would I want to spend $300 for a single SolarSaga 100 solar panel that only makes about 67w when I can get a Rigid 100 solar panel that has multiple reports of getting 85-95w power output for about half of the price? I wouldn’t.

Jackery does have, in secret, an 8mm small pin to large pin adapter but you have to ask for it. They do not advertise or have it for sale anywhere. I also have been unsuccessful in finding that same connector anywhere else on the internet which makes me feel like Jackery knows what they’ve done and wants to require people to use their panels, or it won’t work. Not cool.

Warranty and Customer Service

Jackery provides a 2-year warranty for the Explorer 1500 which is great. 1-year warranties used to be the norm and then when the Titan came out a 2-year warranty was provided so now many other companies provide at least 2 years. This is great for us consumers and users so we have more coverage.

I have called and emailed Jackery many times and have always received a response to my emails and had my phone calls answered. When I would speak with someone, they were competent and knew how solar works, and were very helpful. In regard to their customer service, I personally have zero issues with it and have found it to be very good.

Expandability, X-Factor, and Weaknesses

The Explorer 1500 has zero expandability. You cannot add more batteries, charge controllers, link two systems together, or even connect to an RV with a 30amp RV plug since one isn’t built into the system. What you get is what you get, nothing more.

Expandability is important and oftentimes underappreciated because people often do not think about how their situations will change over the years. Some people will get a freezer and now need to run both their fridge and freeze during a blackout but cannot increase their solar input or battery capacity to be enough to fully do that. Or some will just want to use it for basic camping needs one weekend and then there’s a power outage the next and they have different needs.

That is why the Titan has been the reigning king of solar generators because it can expand up to any size of battery with the Titan batteries or other batteries. It also has 2,000w of solar input, the highest of any portable solar generator system, and can be “over-paneled” (connect more than 2,000w of solar panels) in order to get more power output longer each day.

As far as anything for the Explorer 1500 that makes it stand apart from the rest of the power stations and solar generators out there, I could only come up with one. It does have the ability to run a higher number of watts than what the battery capacity wattage is. That’s not specific only to the Jackery 1500 but it is not always common so it’s a good extra feature.

It does however do a very good job of not charging below freezing. A lot of systems will still charge below 32-degree Fahrenheit and that can damage lithium cells. Jackery put in a good level of protection there. So it’s not specific to the 1500 but is a very key feature in safety.

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Weaknesses, there are many. Obviously, solar charging and wall charging is completely misrepresented and make this system not a good choice because it cannot be charged in a single day. It takes longer than 5 hours to recharge with solar panels, and that’s if you’re not running anything off of it while charging. Most people need to run a fridge, lights, fans, chargers, or something off of the Explorer 1500 while it’s charging, which will increase the charge time. It cannot be charged in a day is indeed a deal-breaker.

Another weakness is being required to use the SolarSaga solar panels which are very expensive at $300 each, and not the highest output. The SolarSaga 200 is $600, very pricey. That’s not fair to us consumers and people who need to use this for emergency power, RVing, camping, or just portable power.

The screen will not stay on. After 10 to 15 seconds, it will turn off which is really annoying when I just want to see the state of charge from a distance or when I am walking by it. And the AC outlets are really close together making it hard to charge camera batteries, radio batteries, and other things at the same time because those have large plugs.

Those things along with only having 500 cycles make it hard to be a top choice, especially for $1,599.

The EcoFlow Delta is most similar to the Jackery 1500 in terms of specs. The Delta has a 1,800w pure sine wave inverter. It has a 1,260wh battery which is smaller than the Explorer 1500’s but not by much. But the Delta can input the full 400w that it’s rated to and can use any solar panels that you want. Plus, the Delta is quite a bit more affordable.

Price vs Value

I have come up with a way to calculate the true value of a solar generator. It includes comparing the total battery capacity, inverter output capacity, and solar input capacity vs how much it costs.

This unit of measurement I refer to as “Price per Unit Wattage” since it includes all watts and watt-hours compared to the price.

The Explorer 1500 has a Price per Unit Wattage of $1.71 which is definitely not bad at all. For comparison, the EcoFlow Delta has a price per unit wattage of $1.54. That means that you’ll get more value of the EcoFlow Delta than you would the Jackery 1500 for their current prices.

The Jackery Explorer 1500 is also very similar to the Goal Zero Yeti 1500x and the GZ 1500x has a price per unit wattage of $2.76 which is much higher than the Explorer 1500. The Titan once again has the best rating with a price per unit wattage lower than any other system on the market at $1.42!

What’s It Good For?

The Jackery 1500 I think will work well for car camping and VanLife. It’s not ideal to use Jackery solar panels but for what most power needs are for car camping and VanLife, it should get the job done.

I do not recommend it at all for emergency backup power or for RVing. It simply does not have enough battery capacity or solar recharge capability to run a fridge nonstop for days or run real RV power needs.

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The Bottom Line

In conclusion, I do not recommend the Jackery 1500. If I had to go with something of a similar size, keeping in mind that it would still be very limited, I would go with the EcoFlow Delta. But truly, I would rather save my pennies and get the Titan solar generator because it will allow me to run my house, power my RV, or run a full VanLife setup. Car camping will work too but is probably overkill for car camping unless you have lots of e-bikes that need to be charged up or something.

Jackery needs to step up their game and their honesty. Don’t tell people it can charge 500w but can only realistically do 306w, that’s just not right to do to people. Honestly, if Jackery had an MPPT charge controller that would do 500w of real-world input and could use any solar panel, this would be a pretty decent unit even with a $1,599 price tag. But it doesn’t, so I’ll pass on recommending this unit.

Continue ReadingUnbiased Review – Jackery Explorer 1500 Portable Solar Generator Power Station