I am back with another product review on the SUAOKI Portable Power Station solar generator. The model number is S270, and the solar panel to recharge this particular power station is sold separately. So, we’re going to go ahead and look at this SUAOKI Portable Power Station.
Buy On Amazon: SUAOKI Portable Power Station S270
You’ve got lithium-ion batteries and an ultra-bright flashlight that’s also included. We have the specs on the box, and so it looks like this power station can put out AC at 100 watts and up to 150 watts maximum. You have a total of 4 USBs, and one of them is a type 3.0, so you will be able to charge a USB device rapidly, and it looks like the DC output is 180 watts, Max.
Now I happen to have had a situation here where the storm was moving in our area the first week that I got this, and I had to use it, and it came in very handy, and I used it for about 6 hours. We had no power, so this was nice and efficiently ran a few things, including our Internet router and one lamp In our room, and it ran it; it never even went down at all as far as that was concerned on battery life.
It has a very nice user manual, very clear, detailed, and multi-languages. There’s not much to the manual itself, but it’s pretty self-explanatory once you get the unit out—the accessories, which was surprising. SUAOKI Portable Power Station comes with quite a few accessories, so if you’re on the road, you can change this with the charging cable for your vehicle. Also, you have to purchase the solar separately for the solar panel cord connector, and it comes with a 12-volt cigarette lighter. You also get the adapter for the wall charger. I believe that’s everything in there. Now, let’s go ahead and take a look.
It also has two flashlights in there. You need to push the button, and it will turn on the flashlights. It’s got a socket for DC in. That’s where you’re going to charge it. SUAOKI Portable Power Station has a cooling fan, so when you’re pulling from the device to help keep it cool. Including the batteries, there are additional charging outputs for other adapters; if you have more of these, or if you have one, you can turn this into two to three. You can plug it into the power station and add more devices. That’s what I planned on doing. Then, of course, on the other end is a low output AC. Then you have a little bit higher output AC, which is with a three-prong. The LED will come on when you need it, and then, of course, on the other side, you have your four USB ports, including the 3.0 port. You have your regular standard 2-amp outputs, and it is nice because it has a carrying handle so you can easily carry it.
SUAOKI Portable Power Station is built with solid high, impact ABS plastic. Including the sides and the handle. It’s got some rubber feet on the bottom to ensure it does not slide easily. It feels like a solidly built unit. In my understanding, it’s only got one light output, and it is pretty good. It will be suitable if you have a roadside emergency or camping; it will last a very long time. Then, if you push the button again, you have a beacon style. If you push it again, it’ll turn off. The power switch will come on regardless if you’re using the flashlight portion for the power or turning on the power supply for the AC plugs.
That means your AC power will now be working, and you’ll be able to run a small appliance on this course, like a laptop or a small router, or anything under 150 watts. You should be OK with this; it will have a protection circuit if it does trip it. It will shut it off, so you know you’ve gone over the ability of this power supply. I had a storm moved into my area recently, and I had to use this, so it was an excellent time to try it out. I actually ran my router and one lamp in my living room, and it ran for over 6 hours, and this only dropped one battery level down. So that’s pretty impressive. I know they probably could run a lot longer than that, if not double. And also, the company says that this can also run as a battery backup if you have sleep apnea and you’re running a machine and need to breathe that night. This can also help you if you travel. You have a battery backup supply if you camp. You can sleep peacefully at night knowing that you can run your machine safely.
I’ve got to admit excellent quality overall as far as the durability seems like it’s powerful enough for some primary uses. As far as plugging in a refrigerator in this, it will not happen. It is made for smaller devices. If you are a camper and you have like a little portable igloo that plugin and run and keeps stuff cool, I believe that you could easily use this to run that for extended amounts of time when you’re camping. I don’t have the solar panel with me, but you can purchase a 60 Watt solar panel as recommended to recharge it within 8 hours.
Overall thoughts on this product? I like it. I want that you can keep an eye on your battery level. It’s on top and pretty significant, so you can easily see it from quite a way away. I like the fact that you can use the 3.0 to rapidly charge your cell phone or device, including the other two apps that are still pretty fast on the charging. It is nice that it does have a flashlight built into it so that you can use it in emergency power outages; it’s going to provide more than enough light output. And I guess that this is probably about 150 lumens on those together, so not bad at all.
So very excellent quality overall. I do not see any issues with the SUAOKI Portable Power Station. I did try it myself, so it does work well again. It’s not too heavy, but it does have some weight to it, but it’s super convenient to have power that doesn’t require, you know, a gasoline engine of any sort now. Be advised that SUAOKI does sell bigger units, so if you want to run a small refrigerator or a more significant appliance, they make larger units of these, and you can check out their website.
So really top-notch, in my opinion, portability is a plus on this. Not too overly heavy, you can carry it around with you with the ease of the built-in handles. I like it. I definitely think this will pretty much help out anybody in an emergency. If you need a bigger power station, check out my review on the SUAOKI G500 power station below.
SUAOKI G500 Portable Power Station Review
SUAOKI G500 essentially is a gigantic lithium-ion battery, while the SUAOKI S270 is more portable and small. The 500-Watt hour translates to 137,700 milliamp hours. That’s quite a bit of juice inside a relatively small form factor device. Now I’ve been testing this out for the last 3-4 months, and there are some pros and cons before I touch upon those. Let’s just look at the device and talk about stats and features. I tell you what, folks, let me go ahead and say this. I’ve tested this out. I’ve had this for a long time. I’ve put it through its paces, and I will tell you what is good and bad about it.
I will share my thoughts and the pros and cons that I’ve observed while using this. You can make up your mind from there. That’s what this review is all about. With that being said, let’s look at it in terms of weight. This comes in at roughly 15.1 pounds.
This construction is a combination of plastic and some metal. It might be aluminum, but I’m not entirely sure. That means that the quality of this, as far as appearances go, and durability and ruggedness are excellent, but there is a con in this material, and we will talk about that in just a minute. Let’s look at the dimensions; it’s about 7 1/4 inches deep, 8 1/4 inches tall, and it’s about 11 inches wide on the side. You have a vent on the other side—nothing on the backside and the bottom.
Taking a look at the front, let’s talk about the charging ports. This is how you charge the device, and there are three ways to do this with the two ports. You can plug into the wall, plug into DC power with the cigarette port, or use solar. To turn the device on, you push and hold the power button for a second. Everything comes to life. Then you can select your outputs. Next, you have the inverter, and you have two 1-10 AC ports, 2.7 amps, 110 volts, and 300 Watt Max.
While these are a 300 Watt Max, this will allow for a 600 Watt surge so that when you turn on specific devices, it won’t turn itself off in the form of surge protection. The USB has two full-size and a type C port with 5 to 12 Volt DC and 18 Watt Max. Next, you have the two, five, and a half millimeter DC ports. Then you have the 12 Volt DC out, which is 10 amps.
Let’s focus on the screen next. As displayed on the screen, you have power coming into the device to charge it and power going out, and you have that in the form of DC and AC currents. That’s because you can run these ports at the same time. Then, you can see how much juice remains inside the device, which is broken into chunks. Instead of having a percentage, you have these bars, which are not exact. So when you look at this screen here, you will never know exactly how much power is remaining in your device. Each bar translates to 20%, and there are 5 bars.
Before jumping to the pros and cons and talking about the solar aspect of this device, let me go ahead and plug a few things in there so you can see how the screen works when it’s outputting some power. So, I’ll take the cigarette lighter charger and plug it into my phone. I’ll take a camera battery charger and LED lights to plug into the USB. This is what I use for truck camping. And lastly, I will plug in the electric blanket. Which I also use for Overlanding. I tell you what, folks sleeping inside your vehicle is like sleeping inside a tin can, even with temperatures that aren’t that cold, like 40 degrees. I will tell you what one of these blankets can make a huge difference and talk about power consumption here for a second. One of these can run all night long on high and not consume very much power. It’s pretty impressive.
Anyways, let’s go ahead and turn this on with all of these devices connected. My phone is charging, and It’ll be done in 19 minutes for the DC side. Now let’s flip over to the AC. It’s on oh. My battery is charging, and the electric blanket is in high usage. Looking at the screen, I saw that the DC port is outputting 11 watts. The AC port with the electric blanket is putting out around 94 to 96 watts, it kind of jumps around with the electric blanket once you turn it on, it searches to warm up, and then once it gets to that level that you put it on it kind of levels out and it doesn’t consume that much power already. The blankets are warming up the lights are going. My batteries are charging on my camera for my camera, and my phone is charging. That means that you can use all of these ports combined, and the fact that it shows the output on the screen is fantastic.
Pros for the SUAOKI G500
Let’s go ahead and jump to the pros for this SUAOKI G500; the overall quality of this device is excellent. I’ve gone hands-on with some units from other companies that have a lot of plastic. They feel very fragile, but not this one. The construction’s good and the materials are good as well. As far as power goes, it’s a good capacity while presenting you with a device that is still portable and manageable. It’s not super heavy.
It’s a good form factor as well. The next pro is three ways to charge the device from the wall socket, solar, and DC from the cigarette lighter port. We will also talk about a negative there that you need to consider before purchasing this if you’re interested in it for overland use. I like that the screen shows you input and output, but it’s not perfect. There is a con, and I will come back to that. To fully charge the device from the wall takes roughly 8 hours, which isn’t bad.
Also, you could charge the device in roughly 8 hours with a 120 Watt solar panel. Of course, when it comes to setting via solar, it is all about the conditions. For myself here in North Carolina, on average, it takes me about two days to charge this device, and that’s because the sky is always full of clouds. Very rarely do we have a just 100% sunny day. If you live out in Big Sky country, where it’s nice and dry, you have the sun shining down, so you could charge it much faster in optimal conditions. I would say that you could charge this via solar in roughly 5 hours.
Cons for SUAOKI G500
One is that some devices will not show up on the output, such as the camera battery, and on the screen, it shows that there’s no output at all, but it is still charging. But if you go ahead and turn the light on. It begins to read because there’s enough power being drawn from the device. There is no reading if the lights are off, but the battery is charging.
I mentioned before that there is a con in this aluminum material as it will condensate. So, if you’re sleeping in the back of your truck with this device, it’s humid. Condensation will form on the outside and, more than likely, on the inside. So, I’ve had those nights where it’s been nice and cold, around 20 degrees. THINGS WERE DAMP when I woke up, and the power station was covered in moisture. That wouldn’t happen if the device materials were 100% plastic. So it is a tradeoff. You have the higher-quality aluminum. The finish is good, and it’s going to handle more abuse. But it can condensate in certain situations.
Next up, we have to talk about—the bar system on the screen for the battery percentage. Instead of having percentages, it’s those bars. So, as I mentioned before, you never know exactly what the power level is. While the previous con is somewhat essential, this one is huge, in my opinion, and it involves cigarette lighter charging. So you plug this. Into your vehicle, and it’s a 2011 Tundra in my case. This device doesn’t charge, and it’s because my truck features 12 Volt ports. You have to have a 24 Volt port for this to charge, which is unfortunate. Maybe 24 Volt cigarette lighter ports are becoming more common, but I don’t have them in any vehicles.
I’ve never seen them before, and for Overlanding, this is especially important unless you have a solar panel set up on top of your vehicle. You can’t charge this device while cruising down the road unless you have that 24 Volt port. That is a huge drawback, in my opinion, for this device when it comes to the application of Overlanding. Talking about Overlanding for a second means that you cannot charge this device while cruising down the road with a refrigerator plugged in. For example, if you have the 24 Volt port, you’re good to go, but if you have a 12 Volt, this will not work.
Before I summarize my review, let’s go ahead and talk about what you received. If you purchased this device, so you get the battery station. You get the cigarette lighter charger. Of course, comes with this box is the wall charger. It’s a pretty good size power brick. You receive the adapter cable so you can plug into other types of solar panels.
My Verdict on SUAOKI G500
It works very well over three-four months, and I’ve had no issues. This thing is never shut off, and It’s never glitched out. It’s worked perfectly when it comes to the value of this device; it’s not bad at $490.00.
For this power station, which is very comparable to other devices out on the market, the construction and size are good. The weights are manageable, and the functionality is good. However, it’s not perfect. I wouldn’t say I like the power level indicator. In my opinion, that isn’t very helpful. Also, I wouldn’t say I like the fact that it doesn’t show how much power is being used by smaller devices such as the battery charger, and ultimately the biggest issue with this device is that this will not charge on a 12 Volt connection. That is a massive shame for an emergency.
You can quickly charge it with solar, and it does charge very quickly. I have the SUAOKI 120 watts solar panel, and it works very well with the 120-Watt solar panels. Those run roughly 290 dollars. They come in at almost 11 pounds, and approximately it’s 21 inches by 21 inches by about 2 1/2 inches thick. It is super easy to clean and easy to use. It’s small when it folds up. You can stash them away, and my only complaint is that the stands on the back aren’t the best. They could be a little bit more rigid and supportive.
I like that the solar panel has a built-in charge controller so that you can charge devices directly from the solar panels, camera, batteries, etc. You can even set your car battery with the alligator clips included.
I want to touch upon one more essential topic is communication with this company. I have not found an excellent way to contact their customer service for an actual telephone conversation. You could go on their website. You can send an email, but that’s it. I’ve looked through the instructions. I’ve looked on the box and looked online, but you cannot find a phone number for this company, which concerns me somewhat. When you purchase a device like a portable power station, you want to ensure that you get an outstanding warranty. And with this brand here, I have to admit I’m not all that familiar with it. I got it in because the price is reasonable, and again, the quality has been excellent, but as far as a warranty goes, who knows. I have no idea. I did a little bit of searching, but I haven’t seen any reports of people having problems or people not being able to contact the company.
From what I understand, the company is relatively new to the market, and they are still building their reputation, but from what I know, their reputation is good. Everyone, that is my review of the G500. Make sure to comment down below shared thoughts. What do you all think about this device? Do you have any experience with this company? If so, please comment down below for everyone else to see.
All in all, SUAOKI G500 Portable Power Station is a good device, but it is lacking in some areas. Because of the limitations, namely in terms of charging, it may not work for everyone and their needs for Overlanding if you don’t have that 24 Volt charging port, you may not want this. You may want to go with something else. Also, it should be mentioned with the inverter 300 Watt Max, 150 watts each. There are other products out on the market that feature higher levels than this, so if you need more power, there are devices that can deliver more, but they may cost extra.
Comparison Between SUAOKI G500 and SUAOKI S270
| SUAOKI G500 | SUAOKI S270 | |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity | 500Wh 137700mAh,3.7V, 720Wh | 150Wh, 40500mAh,3.7V |
| Dimension | 7.5 x 11 x 8.3 inches | 7.26 x 4.31 x 4.67 inches |
| Weight | 15 lbs | 2.9 lbs |
| Car Charger | 24 V | 12 V |
| Rated Power | 300W | 100W |
| Surge Power | 150W | 600W |
| Recharging Ways | wall outlet/solar panel/ 24V cigarette lighter socket | wall outlet/solar panel/ 12V cigarette lighter socket |
| DC Output Port | 2x+1x12V Car Port | 4x |
| USB-A Output Port | 2xQC 3.0 | 3x+1xQC 3.0 |
| USB-C Output Port | None | 1x |
| LCD Display | None | Yes |
| Charging iPhone | 42 Times | 10 Times |