Buy on Amazon: Ecoflow River Pro Portable Power Station
Today, we will be looking at the Ecoflow River Pro battery station in the full review. It is an excellent product. I have been using this Ecoflow power unit for quite a while. I kept the box because I feel that the packaging and putting it in are very nice. So we’ve got a nice kind of matte finish box on top. It says eco flow on it.
This actually has a bunch of cables and some literature inside of it. Let’s set that off to the side and underneath the generously cushioned foam insert. We’ve got the battery station. We also have the primary charge cable, and then everything else in the bottom of the packaging is the same foam plus a big old bag of moisture absorbers, Silica. So, it stays friendly and safe while shipping.
So, as I said, I have been using this for a while, and it has been working well. We’ll talk about some of the specs of the battery unit. The net weight for the Ecoflow River Pro model F4 Pro is 15.9 pounds. The capacity is 720-Watt hours and 28.8 volts. The dimensions are 11.3 inches by 7.9 inches by 9.96 inches, and it uses lithium-ion cell type 18650. Lifespan is claiming 800 cycles at 80%.
The specs above should give you an idea of what this little guy can do. OK, so let’s talk about getting power into the unit and how you would charge it up. So first off, we have the household plug, and it plugs into the side. Plug that in your house, and charge it up.
We then have a 12 Volt option, so this is common to plug into your vehicle, and then it has a correspondent connector on the side that plugs into there so you can charge it up with that option, and then we have a solar panel option. So, Ecoflow River Pro uses the very common solar panel connectors that are water sealed to leave these outdoors, and then it goes down to that yellow connector there which plugs in so you could charge it again. There is a mini breaker on the side, so if there is too much going in, it will pop that little resettable breaker, which is very handy and covered by an excellent plastic cover.
We have all of our outputs, and then on the other side, we have even more outputs which are household plug type outputs, and everything is run on its switch to turn that module. On or off. So let’s talk about the USB modules in the front of the unit. I have a DSLR battery on a USB charge. It is a dual dock and has a tiny LCD to tell me what it’s doing if it’s charging or not, so the yellow button is the on-off you press and hold that in to get the power unit turned on.
You will then get a solid beep. The LCD screen lights up, showing you your percentage, power, and what’s going on. So this is kind of the Information Center of the battery, and right now, it is telling me that I have 94% battery life in there, and I have 0 output 0 input. So, let’s take the USB charger. I’m going to plug it into the USB slot, and it automatically comes on and starts charging. It tells me that I am outputting 6:00 and 7:00 watts, and at that output rate, it gives me a readout of 99 plus hours of charging time to run. So, I have over 100 hours of battery life doing that, so that’s a lot of expected battery life. It’s just a tiny battery, and as I said, we’ll give you a readout of what you’re doing on the front display—the same with everything else that you are plugin.
So, if you plug in your 12 Volt items here and I use this for a refrigerator, it gives me my full readouts. It’s really handy with that cause that is a large draw item, and that’s how it’s underneath that rubber seal. Let’s talk about the side output. So I’m going to take my battery out of that. I’m going to plug it into an actual household camera battery charger. I will turn it on the side. I plug it in one of the outlets, and then I have an on-off switch on the side. Press that it turns on, and my battery is now flashing. So I am charging that battery. The fan just kicked in, so it does have a large fan inside here to keep the battery cool when it’s outputting, so it is now outputting. So it’s only flashing one solid flash, which tells me this battery is below. It’s either at zero or below 50% life, and right now, we are outputting, and it’s giving me 50 between 58- and 63-hours runtime at 11 watts. So that is outputting 11 watts into my battery. It takes a second for the computer to kick into doing the calculation, like I said, outputting 11 watts and holding at 63 hours.
As I have mentioned above, the Ecoflow River Pro model F4 Pro has three outlets on the side. I could plug more items in there. I could plug a USB in the front while you could be charging a lot of different devices and units or running devices and units simultaneously. There are also 12-foot outputs, and there is a 5-millimeter cable. I haven’t dabbled in that too much. I’ve only been using the actual 12 Volt plug for my refrigerator and the side AC outlet. This unit can also be used as a hotspot booster by pushing a little button down the power unit.
I will say that this battery unit is handy, and I love it. I wish I had the solar panel because that would tie in the package and make it versatile. Still, there is an external attachment out here, so they do offer another dummy battery, so I want to call this an intelligent battery where it has the computer module and everything. They offer another battery that is just a battery that you can plug into the Ecoflow River Pro to dump energy from this into that source and then unplug. Continue charging this, and then you’ll have another source of battery. So, when this dies, you can plug it in and gain more power back.
So, this being the pro version, it is packed full of different features more than what I’m going to touch on, so if you are interested in more in-depth specs, you can always check out their website. I will say it is an excellent product and for me to be a photographer, being outdoors, camping off-grid, this powers everything that I need to charge or run just with this one unit, and I really do enjoy it.
OK, guys, that is the Ecoflow River Pro Portable battery station. It is a massive battery. It’s a very, very good battery. It is an intelligent battery with all the readouts making it extremely useful to know how much runtime you’re going to have. How much wattage a device is pulling, how much input is going in, how long it will take to charge, it tells you everything right on that screen, which is impressive, especially for being off-grid when you know you only know have so many hours of sunlight. If you’re using a solar charger, you can plug it in, get the actual readout from inside of your cabin or truck or wherever you are, and then if the sun changes, you can quickly look and see the input.
If that drops from, let’s say, it’s putting in 40 watts and it drops to 20, you know that you need to reposition your panels. Come back inside, take a look back up to 40. You know you’re getting your optimal input through solar. As I said, I don’t have those panels, so, unfortunately, I can’t show that to you. But in the future, I will most likely have a solar set up, and I will have this plugged into it, so check back on when I updated this review for the Ecoflow River Pro Portable battery station. So that’s all I got.
All in all, the accessories that it comes with and all the cables are convenient. The packaging was excellent, and the battery unit works fantastic, so that is my conclusion.
If you have any questions about the Ecoflow River Pro Portable battery station, I’ll do my best to answer them; drop them down in the comments section, and I hope this was helpful.