BLUETTI AC180 Solar Generator with 350W Solar Panel (Ships Separately), 1152Wh Portable Power Station w/ 4 1800W (2700W Surge) AC Outlets, LFP Power for Outdoor Camping, Trip, Power Outage

I love the quality of Bluetti products. They just work! I like how this unit shows you exactly how much power is coming in, and how much power is going out. It has an easy to understand display, and the operation of the unit is simple, with 3 easy to understand buttons:- Unit ON- DC Output ON- AC Output ONThe unit charges in just a few hours when attached to home power, and should get a full charge during a day attached to the included 200W solar panel.It is important to note that in real life, you will not get 200W of charging from your solar panels! That is their theoretical limit, and any slight deviation from perfect sunlight will cause the output power to be lower. (This includes, clouds, humidity, pollution, latitude, altitude, time of year, angle of the panels)In my case, I did some tests using the included stands set to a "good" angle trying to get the sun exactly perpendicular to to the solar panels and got the following results:- Fully cloudy day with slight rain - 57 W- Clear day - 161 W(Early April, 40 degrees latitude, 4200 feet elevation)*The reason date/latitude/altitude matter is because the amount of solar power you receive is dependent on upon how much atmosphere the light must travel through, and the angle it hits from the sun (because more energy from the sun bounces off to the side, the larger the angle it hits the atmosphere. Part of why it's colder at the poles and in winter because that angle is larger.)All this to say that you shouldn't be angry and think your unit is defective if you don't get the full 200W advertised.The unit uses up to 20 W of power when turned on, for running the display/bluetooth/power conversion circuitry, so keep it off when not in use. Also, only turn on the AC/DC buttons when actually using that output, so it doesn't waste power trying to convert when nothing is using it. Thankfully, it has an auto power off function to keep from wasting power. And the display shuts off after a few seconds to preserve electricity as well.Speaking of bluetooth, the system has an accompanying app which uses bluetooth to connect your phone to the unit from up to 100 feet away. Using this, you can do 4 important things:- Check how much power is coming in and how much power is going out (on both DC and AC)- See what % of the battery is left- Turn on/off the AC and DC outputs- Turn on/off the whole unitIn short, everything you can do from the box itself can be done via the app, from the cozy comfort of your tent on a cold morning when you want to start the water boiling before you get up out of your warm sleeping bag.

I have always thought that it was a good idea to have backup power in case of an extended power outage, and recently my wife started working from home, so it was time to spend the money and get it done. After extensive reading and debating, I decided that a battery backup with a solar panel is a better fit for us rather than a conventional generator, and if you've done some research too, you'll know that Bluetti is usually a pretty recommended brand, so that's why you're here. I went with the AC180 because it had comparable specs to the another brand I was considering, and I'm not going to bore you with all the specs, but this unit had 100 more watts than the other one, the price, and Bluetti's support is supposed to be better (more on this at the end.) So that is ultimately why I went with the AC180.When my unit arrived it was packaged well with no damage, and had 55% charge on it, which is right where you want it to be before storing it long term. I couldn't wait to test it in a real world application, so I unplugged the power strip in the living room with a smart TV and PS4 on it and started them up. The Bluetti worked like a champ. Now obviously it was only running like 150w of electronics, but it's still amazing to see that you can play for hours on this honestly pretty small (about 30 pound) battery generator when it's only half charged!I unplugged the unit and plugged it into the wall to charge it to full so I could fully cycle the battery, and I came to a problem. For some reason my unit was only charging at about 300w. I thought that this couldn't be right from everything that I had read, so off I went to do research. I downloaded the app to make sure I was on the most up to date firmware, and everything looked right. After doing more research, some people recommended to drain the unit to 0 with turbo charge turned on and then it should charge at normal speed. This is what I did and it worked. After draining the unit to 0, I was able to charge from my home plug at over 1000w. Then came the fun of playing the ps4 for a few more hours to drain the battery back down again for storage! I honestly had to plug more into it because it was taking so long.....I know that this unit has more than enough power to run my wife's PC, modem, the fridge, and some lights for hours if the power went out, which is all we really need. We aren't living rural, and outages usually don't last long, so this sized unit is perfect for us. I also bought a 160w portable solar panel to accompany the AC180, and hooking it up was simple and will allow us to extend our usage even further if needed, or bring this little powerhouse camping with us.Lastly, 2 days after buying this unit, Bluetti added an additional $50 coupon to this unit which they honored when I asked them about it. So far, their customer service has been great to me, and the unit other than the charging issue has performed amazingly, so I am extremely happy with my purchase.