BROWEY 1600W (3200W Peak) Portable Power Station, 1024Wh LiFePO4 Battery with Built-in Solar Panel, 100W USB-C PD, Solar Generator for Camping, RV, Home Backup, Emergency

Very nice power station,seems well built, easy to use functions,tons of reserved power,no issues

I bought this power station about 2 years ago. It is quite heavy. I use it for camping in my RV, instead of my marine coach battery. It seemed to not drain as fast. I hooked it to my solar panels to charge or use my generator ,when I have it on ,and when driving I plug into the cigarette lighter. It's been great & reliable. But it recently developed a problem charging from the built in solar panel and also from my rv solar panels, but would charge fine using the car jack or from my generator. I contacted the company, through their website not from Amazon 'contact seller' . I assumed it was past the warranty period, but asked if this could be a circuit board problem or something else that I could have repaired. They responded right away and asked for my order # and for a screenshot of the order. They couldn't find my info from the order # (I figure because it was bought on Amazon not from them directly) & I couldn't send the screenshot because my Gmail account suddenly lost the paperclip to send attachments. So, I figured that was that. To my shock & amazement they offered to send me another power bank free of charge!! I got it today. I can't believe it! I have bought so many things online, that aren't as described or break right away & contacting the seller doesn't do much good. It is unusual for any company to stand behind their product, anymore, even when it is still under warranty. They want you to jump through hoops. These people are great. I'm very pleased. They have won my future business UPDATE: the power station that they sent me has something wrong with it . It often shows 0 w going out when it is charging something . The fan comes on for about 2 seconds then goes off - continually. Then today I was trying to charge something it shut itself down 3 times but would restart if I pushed the power out button again. Though the display showed it had 80 percent left, it has shut down & won't come back on. I noticed today that the display has some scratches on it & it shouldn't have, It is in a stationary spot. I'm wondering if I was sent a returned or reconditioned unit . So now I have two that don't work. I take back saying they won my future business

Summary: The power station itself is pretty nice, but a bit underpowered at the price point. The built-in solar panel is really cool, but ultimately it provides such a small amount of power even under ideal conditions that in most cases it is probably more of a novelty than useful feature. This device is probably best suited for powering phones, laptops, lights and fans during a short camping trip. Full Thoughts: You can get a power station with much higher wattage and slightly bigger battery for a $100 less. You're paying extra and trading some power for the built-in solar panel. At the time of writing this, this is the only power station I could find with a solar panel built-in. A few things about solar and home power generators if you're new to it like I was: - Every other "solar generator" is just a power station (big battery with a standard power outlet) included with an external solar panel you can hook up to it. You can also hook up an external solar panel to this for extra power. In general you don't need a solar panel specifically made for the device. As long as both have the right DC input/output you should be able to use most solar panels with most power stations. In fact you can also hook up a gas generator if it has the right DC output. Solar panels for these things are not too expensive ($100-$150). To get anything close to a reasonable amount of charge you will need to get an external solar panel anyway. At 30 Watts, it would take days to charge this thing to full capacity with the built-in panel alone. Realistically, if you plan on using this in an emergency where you may need power for days, you will need an external panel as well (or some other power source). - Another thing to understand is that to get a decent charge, you really need to have the sun beating down directly on the panel. A shade tree, for example, can severely limit the amount of power you can get. With that in mind, you'll need to be very thoughtful about the placement of the panels. External panels will give you a lot of flexibility in terms of placement. On the other hand, they're a bit of a pain to setup. I live on the second floor of an apartment complex. I have a balcony which I thought would be sufficient, but there's a shade tree in front of it which blocks enough sunlight that often I get no charge. My only option is to put the panels in a window which has very little shade. With that, when the sun is facing the window with little cloud coverage, the built-in panel provides about 10 watts. The external panel provides about 20 watts. Together, I get 30 watts. It would still take days to fully charge this thing, but at least I get enough power to charge phones and maybe a laptop. - I wasn't familiar at all with the power usage of various devices so I didn't know if 600 watts was a lot or a little. It's a small to medium amount depending on the application. It's enough to power a lot of small devices, or energy efficient devices, but not enough to power anything substantial. I was hoping to power a microwave or a toaster oven or a small air conditioner, but no dice. Also understand that apparently a lot of devices draw a significant amount of extra power when they first start, so even if your device is rated at 500 watts for example, it may need 1000 to start and therefore will trip the overload protection and shut down the power bank. I was a bit surprised that this thing could power my big screen TV, but otherwise it's limited to things like fans, laptops, phones, etc. Also keep in mind that while it can theoretically power 600 watts worth of devices, it can only do that for an hour. Then you will need to recharge it which takes about 6 hours when connecting to a power outlet. With all that said I like this unit. It is well built and compact and just really well designed. The built-in solar panel is almost a novelty, but it does give me piece of mind that in an emergency I can get some power. Final Thoughts: If I were to do it over again, I might reconsider whether the built-in panel was worth the trade-offs. I would also reconsider what I hoped to accomplish with the device. I intend to use this for emergencies, probably not for camping, so that colors how I feel about all this. I would expect to power a fan and maybe a laptop and a phone for around 7 hours in an emergency, but it can only do that once with a single charge. Then, you're limited to what you can get from solar which in my case would be enough to power maybe 1 thing only while the sun is pointed directly at me. I also bought a small gas generator which I will use to charge the device when I can't get much sun. With all that, the benefit of the built-in panel (and the extra cost and trade-offs) becomes less appealing. I might buy a cheaper or more powerful or higher capacity unit and just use gas or an external panel.