Best portable power stations 2023: Top picks for preparedness

Yes and no. Both are batteries with ports you can plug your devices into. Typical power banks are very portable and used to charge phones, tablets, and even laptops sometimes. They usually only have USB ports but some do have the familiar AC ports, too, that can power very small devices. A power bank, however, is typically limited to a very small capacity of 100 watt-hours or less, which is the largest you can bring on a plane legally due to fire risks. A power station typically has AC plugs that can support everything from power tools to appliances and can range from petite 250 watt-hours to 3,000 watt-hours and can weigh 70 pounds or more.

Yes. This is mostly a semantics discussion but some get irked at use of the term “generator” for a battery that stores power rather than generates it. The optional solar panels, in fact, generate the electricity, not the power station itself. All you need to know is they are the same and can be used interchangeably so long as you don’t mind the occasional brow-beating.

The traditional generator you see on a food truck or construction site generates electricity via a small engine no different than what is in your car. It requires gasoline, propane, natural gas, or diesel to run. A solar generator is a battery with a circuit to convert the stored electricity into DC or AC power that your phone or appliances can use, and can usually be charged via a wall outlet or by solar panels.

Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and it very much depends on how you plan to use the equipment and your requirements. A gas generator must be used outdoors in a well-vented area and can be deadly if not used properly due to the carbon monoxide output and fire hazards. While there are exceptions, gas generators tend to be far noisier. The benefits of a gas generator is in the ability to constantly generate electricity so long as you have the fuel to run it. Gasoline, propane, and natural gas are also very energy dense and a typical 2,200-watt inverter generator would be the equal of a 20,000 watt-hour power station storage, using just five gallons of gasoline. Gas generators tend to be far lower in cost as well.

The power station’s strengths come from the ability to be run inside your home with no carbon monoxide risks. That’s a boon for anyone who lives in an apartment, condo, or other place where outdoor space is limited. In stored capacity, the gas generator will win, but access to fuel and safe storage of that fuel can become an issue. This is especially true on an extended outing or during a lengthy outage—in which case you’re better off generating power from solar panel arrays. Fairly minimal maintenance and a minimal learning curve also favor a power station.

How long a power station lasts largely depends on how much power you’re draining from it and how large it is.

The power station spec that’s most important here is the capacity, typically expressed as watt hours. Think of watt hours similar to your car’s capacity for gas. The larger the gas tank, the longer in between fill-ups.

In a power station, a 1,000 watt-hour power station would last roughly one hour if you ran a space heater that constantly consumed 1,000 watts. If you plugged a 100-watt incandescent light bulb into the power station, it would, in theory, last 10 hours. If you plugged in a CPAP device that uses 50 watts, you could potentially see 20 hours of run time.

How long it lasts is largely answered by what you’re running off it as well as other factors such as efficiency and even the age of the power station.

The other important spec is the output wattage the circuit that converts DC to AC power (the inverter) supports. This is also expressed in watts but relates to how much power the power station can provide to what is plugged into it. For example, on a Goal Zero Yeti 1000X, each AC plug is rated for 1,500 watts, or 3,500 watt surge (or momentary spikes). 

This is enough to start or run most things found in a typical home: from a refrigerator or chest freezer to power tools to CPAP devices. Remember, when we refer to “run” this is strictly in reference to what you can run—it doesn’t refer to how long you can run it for. And as we learned earlier, that’s mostly influenced by how much capacity or watt hours that power station has.

One of the primary reasons people own power stations is to keep a refrigerator running so your expensive groceries don’t spoil. Unlike a light bulb that never uses more than its rated wattage, refrigerators have compressors that consume more power when started and then ease back down once started. For example, a refrigerator might use 1,200 watts for less than a second but then mostly consume 150 to 250 watts for the next 45 minutes.

If you’re looking for a power station to run a refrigerator, first you’ll want one with an adequate output on the AC ports to support the surge when it starts. Some very small power stations may only support a surge rating of 500 watts, which isn’t enough. Your refrigerator will typically have a label inside or on back that lists how many amps it requires. If it, for example, says it needs 9.5 amps, you can simply multiply 9.5 amps x 120 volts to roughly determine how many watts it needs to start, which is 1,140 for the example here. Remember it’s just 1,200 watts for a second or two while the compressor motor starts. Most fridges use far less power after the initial start.

The second important spec to look for is capacity or how many watt hours the power station has. This dictates how long the power station can last between charging.

We’d set the floor at no smaller than 1,000 watt hours if you’re intent on running a refrigerator, with a 1,500 or 2,000 watt-hour unit being strongly recommended a if you want to get a full day of use from it. Even then, we’d strongly encourage a plan for charging the power station via solar or by lugging it to an available power source if you’re expecting a longer outage.

The vast majority of power stations today are based on lithium ion batteries, but not all lithium ion batteries are the same. Two popular chemistries today are Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) or Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP). NMC batteries’ main advantage is energy density, which means they can pack more into a smaller size. LFP batteries’ main advantage is in cost (although NMC can also be lower cost), but also lifespan. For example, EcoFlow’s original NMC-based Delta was rated for 800 full power cycles before capacity would drop to 60 percent. EcoFlow’s new LFP-based Delta 2 is rated for 3,000 full cycles before capacity drops to 80 percent.

That’s a huge difference, but it may be a little overkill depending on your use case. Since most power stations sit on a shelf 95 percent of the time, the average use during emergencies or camping trips is likely to keep an NMC battery lasting for years and years of service.

Those who use a battery in a full-time off-the-grid situation, however, will likely want as many full cycles as possible, which a properly built LFP battery can provide.

If you buy a portable power station with a 1,000 watt-hour rating, you probably expect to get 1,000 watt hours of capacity but that simply isn’t true and it isn’t some marketing sleight of hand (at least most of the time.) Portable power stations state the actual capacity of the batteries such as 1,024 watt hours. When you plug in your fan or fridge, the energy in the battery must be converted to usable AC through an inverter that wastes some of the energy during the conversion. Depending on the design of the inverter in a portable power station, as well as the load put on it, the efficiency can vary dramatically. One final reason you’ll never get 100 percent of what the label says is to preserve the battery. Lithium ion batteries can suffer damage when stored without any charge so each power station maker will cut off power well before it is empty to preserve battery longevity. Each vendor has different reserve levels, which also means your 1,024 watt hours of power is less than what you expect. So yes, it may seem like false advertising for a power station to state that you have 1,000 watt hours while only giving you 800 watt hours of usable capacity under a 200-watt AC load, but the reasons are technical, not marketing.

This might be one the more important categories to look at if you really want to stretch your dollar. Most companies will market on total capacity of the batteries such as 1,000 watt hours or 2,000 watt hours, which you can think about as the size of the power station’s gas tank. If the watt-hour capacity of the battery is the size of the fuel tank, the efficiency is akin to the MPG you get out of it. A higher efficiency means more power for your money. In our testing, under medium load of 200 watts, most units range from 80 percent to 83 percent but we have seen one unit reach 87 percent efficiency, too. Under heavier loads of 800 watts, we’ve seen a range of 71 percent to 84 percent. So what does that mean? A 1,024 watt-hour battery with a 71 percent efficiency under an 800-watt load gives you only 725 watt hours out of that 1,024 power station you paid for. A different unit with a 1,152 watt-hour battery and 84 percent efficiency means you can extract an impressive 970 watt hours from it. These results, however, will vary based on the load, as how each power station reacts under a 100-watt, 200-watt, or 500 watt load will be different.

While guidance varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, we’d say most units don’t recommend being left plugged in all of the time. It’s actually one of the features we appreciate about the Goal Zero’s Yeti 1000X and 1500X: The company actually wants you to keep it plugged in all of the time to maintain the battery. This means when the lights suddenly go out, the unit will be at 100 percent capacity and ready to go.