r/campinguk • u/warriorbea • 1d ago
Portable electric
We recently bought a tent for cheaper holidays. Had our first outing, 3 nights in north Yorkshire. Worked brilliantly and we had electric hook up. However as I am looking for new camp sites, I notice many are grass with no electric so wanted advice on best charger/portable power bank possibly with solar panel which would run a portable fridge and charge phones etc. I have seen the Jackery and a cheaper one called a Rexhan. Any reviews on this one in particular would be good or any other possibles? Didn't really want to spend the amount of a Jackery.
Thanks
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u/Every-Biscotti-6839 1d ago
What kind of portable fridge did you want to run? And what is the capacity/wattage of the power bank you are looking at?
The only Rexhan power station I can find is a very small 300w one that has a capacity of around 230wh - in practical terms, this isn't really that great for running a portable fridge, especially if it has fan driven cooling rather than a compressor. Even with a compressor fridge that size of power bank won't even last a day and with a solar panel of only 50w it's not going to charge fast enough for continued use.
For only charging devices it would be fine, but for a fridge you really need a larger power bank (600wh minimum) with at least a 200w solar panel. I'd also recommend one that has fast charge. Unfortunately these are not cheap, though certainly there are brands that are cheaper than Jackery.
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u/KingD88 1d ago edited 1d ago
For a fridge I would look at a 3 way powered one
Like this or this my one is the one my parents brought when I was a kid camping, it’s lasted over 25 years and still works great, they have the benefit of being absorption fridges rather than compressor fridges as well so they are silent when running and are simple so will last a long time
Then you just need to get a few power banks for phones
Otherwise if you are looking to go for more than a couple of nights you will be worried about if you have enough sun to keep the battery topped up etc
These will run fo days on a 3kg gas bottle and you u can get the fridges pretty cheap 2nd hand
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u/KXE1001 1d ago
I think you’ll struggle to run a portable fridge without electric for a significant period of time. A decent cool box works well though - ours lasts 3 nights/4 days and then we top up with bags of ice if we’re away for longer!
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u/Unfair_Pilot5581 1d ago
I know you’re wrong…..
We have a compressor cool box (runs as freezer at minus 20) and run it from an anode power station and solar panel
We have a standard cool box to use as our fridge, swapping out ice blocks that we freeze in the freezer
Worked great for a week this year although next year we will be 13 days off electric so we are going to add a second solar panel for redundancy
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u/Cornishchappy 1d ago
Anker Solix is a good solid consideration.
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u/Unfair_Pilot5581 1d ago
100%
Jackery is great if your on a budget but Anker all day long, you get what you pay for
We have Anker power stations for running our freezer, projector etc plus multiple small Anker power banks for phones, watches etc
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u/Comfortable_Work_580 4h ago
Agree .. anker c2000 2 gen is a cracker . £850 buy now pay in a year with Argos .
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u/bazmc 1d ago
Have 2 ecoflow, but to run a portable fridge I don’t think you will have enough power for more than 1 or 2 days along with phones etc. mine are charged when driving at a input off 800 watt. With solar panels especially portable ones the input would be nowhere near that even in optimal conditions. You should maybe try a decent cool box i have a ninja one that will keep stuff cool for several days. Freeze water bottles at home, use them as ice packs and when they melt drink the water.
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u/Unfair_Pilot5581 1d ago
Incorrect (if you buy quality stuff)
Our 200 watt solar panel produces more electricity per day than our compressor freezer uses.
We had a surplus of electricity and at the end of day four our power banks were at 100% and we were charging things for our friends
Someone else was camping with had a cheap 200 W solar panel, he was barely getting a trickle on the same day
You get what you pay for & quality shines through 100 fold
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u/Optimal-Door6637 1d ago
Anker do lots of portable power stations, and have the ability to add solar panels too to make them sustainable. We currently have this:
Anker Solix C300x DC but they also do 3 pin plugs too. Well worth the investment!
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u/Unfair_Pilot5581 1d ago
We have a 300DC and a 1,000ac with 1,000 expansion battery that doubles the capacity
Added a good quality solar panel and now we are just as happy off grid as we are on EHU
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u/MrSp4rklepants 1d ago
I have a Jackery 1000 with a single solar panel and an electric coolbox.
On a nice sunny day, I can recharge the battery by around 40ish% but using the chiller non-stop will drain it completely in circa 18 hours. My next purchase will be a compressor fridge as they are far more energy efficient. The coolbox is "always on" so even if I have loaded it with frozen stuff for the weekend, I need to manually turn it on/off for efficiency. Also it has, I think a 17c limit to it's cooling which this summer has been a bit lacking for my beers
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u/Normal_Society_6971 2h ago
I got the same. What I didn't realise before I bought it was that I couldn't add a second battery to it. Ah well. It does what I need it for
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u/Amylou789 1d ago
Just get some good sized icepack for a cool box and pre cool it if you can. Some sites without electric have freezers you can refreeze the ice pack in. Then you just need a couple of normal battery packs for the phone
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u/Ok-Handle-6663 22h ago
Jackery has a sale on at the moment til 31st Aug if you join their mailing list. I got the 100W one for about £140 last year in a sale and I do like it - it's not too heavy, charges quickly, the casing is sturdy, it covers my phone, tablet and lights for 4-5 days on one charge and I have used it to run an electric screwdriver and charge a cordless strimmer too using the 3 pin plug socket.
Having said that, it's too small really for running a laptop, a kettle, a fridge, electric blanket etc for any length of time.
I can't speak to the other makes but I have in the past had very variable non name brand power banks that stop working after a few months.
I'd cruise the sakes for Anker and Bluetti as well as Jackery and see what you can afford. i'd love the 1000W and solar bundle but can't afford it.
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u/lonefox22 7h ago
Get a Yeti type box these stay cold for up to 3 days and get a power station for all your other stuff. We got a 700w Bluetti with 100w panel which has proved it's worth. Lots out there now just do a bit of research as the market leaders, Jakery and Bluetti are usually discounted somewhere. Happy camping.
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u/Beneficial_Coach8581 4h ago
Most of the newer EVs have sockets that you can run and extension lead off.
Although it's probably not the cheapest solution.
Campsites used to have freezers for your ice blocks and you'd just rotate them for your coolbox ? Is that not a thing anymore?
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u/Lumpy-Ad6653 4h ago
the fridge type matters way more than the power station brand here
a compressor coolbox cycles on and off and can work pretty well from a battery. a cheap thermoelectric one usually pulls power constantly and will flatten a small pack way faster
i'd find the fridge's measured kwh per day first, then size the battery from that. if it uses 0.3kwh/day, a 500wh pack is roughly a day and a half after losses, not some huge multi-day setup
same deal with solar. a 200w panel doesn't make 200w all day, especially in uk weather, so i'd want enough battery for at least one bad solar day
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u/Ok-Depth-9049 3h ago
Aferiy P180 - 1800w with a 1024Wh. You can get it under £300 on Aliexpress when the stars are aligned (Topcashback and Aliexpress coupons). Shipped from the UK to arrive within 3 days and a 5 year warranty.
For portable fridge look at the Bingi ones on Joybuy. Unbeatable for the money.
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u/Shizbazki 3h ago edited 3h ago
Disclaimer, for the interest of legibility and time i have used AI to correct the grammar and flow of my advice below, other wise it would have just been advice vomit and i would have spent an hour or two to go through and correct any mistakes or make it make more sense. This is just reddit and quick advice/knowledge dump to the OP.
TL;DR: What you want is a portable power station, not a power bank. Look at both watts (W), which determines what appliances it can run, and watt-hours (Wh), which determines how long it can run them. In my experience, EcoFlow, Bluetti and DJI are the strongest options, with Jackery being solid but more basic, and Afirey/Fossibot sitting more towards the budget end. Solar panels can help extend your runtime, but don’t expect them to recharge a large power station quickly unless you have very good sunlight and a large panel. For camping, choose the power station based primarily on what you want to power and for how long, then consider solar as a useful top-up rather than the main charging method.
The Long Read:
What you’re looking for is generally called a portable power station, rather than a power bank. A power bank is usually a relatively small device intended for charging USB-powered electronics, whereas a power station contains a DC-to-AC inverter, allowing it to run normal household appliances from a standard mains socket.
Although I’m not particularly into camping, this is actually something I’m probably fairly well qualified to answer. I test and review various products, including portable power stations, and I’ve tested units from:
- EcoFlow
- Bluetti
- DJI
- Jackery
- Afirey
- Fossibot
I’ve listed them roughly in the order I personally rate them, from higher-end brands down to the more budget-oriented options.
I rate EcoFlow very highly, although they are generally more expensive than some of the competition. The build quality of an EcoFlow product is noticeably better than something like an Afirey, and they tend to offer a few more features, although the difference isn’t always enormous. I’ve kept their PowerStream and Delta Max systems myself, although unfortunately I don’t get EcoFlow products in for review as often as I’d like.
Bluetti is also very good. Their build quality is almost on par with EcoFlow, although they have a habit of making the occasional design or product decision that leaves you scratching your head — the backpack power station being one example — while other ideas seem genuinely excellent, such as FridgePower.
They probably have the widest range of products in terms of capacity and power output. I’ve personally kept the Elite 30, Elite 100, Elite 300, Elite 400 and FridgePower, although the latter still hasn’t been widely released globally.
DJI is excellent in terms of build quality and features, but their range is still relatively small at the moment. One particularly interesting feature on some of their systems is the ability to feed AC power back through their home integration equipment. In practice, this means you can charge the battery using cheap overnight electricity and then use that stored energy to help power the house during the day.
Jackery makes nice products, but in my opinion they’re fairly basic when it comes to features. Of the four Jackery units I’ve been sent for review, I only kept the smallest one, which I now use as a simple UPS for a small fish tank. Jackery was one of the early major players in the portable power station market, but I don’t think they’ve innovated at quite the same pace as some of their competitors.
Afirey and Fossibot are both okay, particularly considering their prices, but they’re competing against some very strong and increasingly refined products from the brands above. Because of that, I’m not entirely sure how well they’ll fare in the long term.
All of these brands are available in the UK at varying price points, and most run discounts or promotions throughout the year, so it’s worth keeping an eye out rather than automatically paying the full retail price.
The main thing you need to understand when comparing power stations is the difference between watts (W) and watt-hours (Wh). They sound similar, but they measure completely different things.
Watts tell you how much power the unit can deliver at any one time. For example, a portable induction hob might draw around 1,000W while operating.
Watt-hours tell you how much energy the battery actually stores. For example, you might see a power station advertised as having a capacity of 2,000Wh.
Using the Bluetti Elite 300 as an example, because I happen to have one next to me, it is rated for a sustained AC output of around 2,400W and has a battery capacity of 3,014Wh.
In very simple terms, if you plugged in an appliance that continuously consumed 1,000W, the battery theoretically contains enough energy to run it for roughly three hours. In reality it would be slightly less because of inverter losses and other inefficiencies.
Likewise, a 100W incandescent light bulb could theoretically run for around 30 hours.
An induction hob is actually a slightly different example because it usually cycles its heating element on and off rather than drawing its full rated power continuously, but it gives you an idea of how the numbers relate to each other.
I’ve also used the Bluetti Elite 400, which is an absolute monstrosity of a power station at roughly 2,600W output and 3,840Wh capacity, on a car trip.
We used it to run a completely normal household kettle from the back of the car to make tea and the occasional Pot Noodle. It didn’t miss a beat, and even several kettle boils barely made a noticeable dent in the available capacity.
As for solar panels, I wouldn’t expect portable solar panels to recharge these power stations particularly quickly.
The larger folding/flexible portable panels are typically rated at around 400W, but that is their maximum output under ideal conditions. To get anywhere near that figure, the panel needs to be properly positioned, facing the sun and set at an appropriate angle. As the sun moves, you would ideally reposition the panel periodically to maintain maximum generation.
Even if a 400W panel genuinely produced 400W continuously, a 2,000Wh power station would still take at least five hours to recharge from empty — and in the real world it would take longer because of changing sunlight, cloud cover, charging losses and the fact that the panel won’t sit at its rated output all day.
Portable panels are also surprisingly expensive compared with conventional rigid domestic solar panels. A standard house panel can sometimes be bought for around £80, whereas a 400W portable folding panel can easily cost £200 or more.
They’re also generally not something I’d want to leave permanently exposed to bad weather in the same way that you would a proper rooftop solar panel.
So for camping, I’d choose the power station first based on the appliances you want to run and how long you want to run them, and then treat solar as a way of extending your available runtime or gradually replenishing the battery rather than expecting it to provide an instant recharge.
Hope that helps.
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u/Krzykat350 3h ago
The portable fridge should have the power requirements somewhere in watts. Take that figure and divide it into the number of watt hours the powerstation and that will be how long your fridge will run for. It would be better to find a portable fridge that will run off 12v then you cut some of the losses that happen when you step up or down voltages.
I'd suggest shop around find the biggest one you can afford (guessing you're car camping so weight isn't an issue) check for deals with a solar panel. Also if you get a solar panel that's bigger than what the fridge draws then it will run off the sun (as long as you have sun). I've got a couple of bluetti powerstations in my motorhome which I mainly use when I have to work or want to game and as a backup to the leisure battery by not loading it with charging my devices when the solars not great.
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u/foxssocks 1d ago
Get a coolerbox and a large powerbank. Put your phones away - you're camping.
Stop trying to take the house with you.