Call it a first-world problem, but I hate it when I can’t charge my phone or other
electronics so if I go camping or on a road trip I’m usually looking for somewhere to
stay with electric hookup available.
But I might not need to any more as I can now take a whole lot of power with me in a
very small and portable package.
This is what Anker calls a Portable Power Station, the PowerHouse II 400 to be exact.
It’s essentially a huge power bank but rather than just being able to charge a mobile phone
via a USB port a couple of times, this thing is a whole different ball game with a whopping
388.8Wh battery or to use the same units as your smartphone battery, that’s 27,000 mAh.
To put that in context, the iPhone 11’s battery has a capacity of just over 3,000
mAh and my OnePlus Nord battery has a capacity of 4,115mAh.
As you’d expect, it’s quite BIG, so it’s not meant to be carried around with you on
your person - so if you’re camping and want to take extra power in your backpack for,
say, a day out you could also use it to charge up a smaller power bank like this one.
I really like the PowerHouse II 400 for several reasons, the main reason being that you can
charge lots of devices at once via the multiple USB ports on the front, one of which is a
USB-C port capable of 60W fast charging, and you can also power larger items too via an
AC mains outlet as well as items like mini fridges via a car-style 12v socket.
And that’s not all, there are also 2 DC output ports as well.
If you like glamping and holding onto some creature comforts whilst you enjoy the great
outdoors then this is definitely for you.
The PowerHouse meant that when I went camping in the Lake District recently with a group
of friends, not only was I able to keep both my phone and smartwatch fully charged for
the whole trip, I could also run my airbed’s pump and even have a fan inside my tent to
keep myself cool!
It’s great how it tells you how much power is being used in real time - that was useful
before I set off as I have two fans, so I could choose to take this one camping with
me as it uses half the power of this one!
On the other side there’s also a good display of its input power, not just in Watts but
also an estimation of how much longer it’ll take to charge and then on the right hand
side it tells you how much longer you’ve got at current usage until the battery goes
flat.
The second thing I really, really like about this aside from its charging prowess - especially
when you compare it to similar power banks from other manufacturers - is that it also
has not one but two built-in lights.
First off you have a torch on the side with two brightness settings, or if you press it
a 3rd time it’ll flash SOS in morse code.
(Probably a bit of a gimmick but you never know!)
The nice bright torch would be really useful when camping and the way it works with the
light being positioned at the end of the device and the handle up top means you can carry
it and use it like you would a torch really easily and it could also be useful if you
have to pump your car tyres up or do any other maintenance.
In fact, you could run the tyre pump off this thing, and could also keep it in the car for
emergency power to use with a battery maintainer to recharge a dead car battery if you ever
needed to!
The ambient light is what I really like though, and it’s this panel on the back side which
has 3 brightness settings and gives you a nice gentle, warm orange glow - ideal for
being able to see what you’re doing inside a tent at night because I don’t know about
you but one of the things I find most annoying when camping is not being able to see things
and only being able to shine a torch at one little area at a time!
First world problem, I know, but now at least I’ll have one less thing to be a grumpy
dad about!
You could of course plug your own light in, but having them built-in means you’ve got
one less thing to take with you and one less bit of clutter!
Now, you might think that having only 1 power outlet (especially when others have multiple)
would be a problem but it keeps it compact and you can of course just plug a multi adaptor
into it if you need to power more than one AC device.
Just make sure you don’t exceed a total power draw of 300W which at 240V is equal
to 1.25Amps.
The PowerHouse will automatically turn off if you try to pull more than 300W, or I guess
you could be extra safe and put a 1.25Amp 250V fuse into your power strip plug if you
wanted for some double protection, although you don’t really need to.
That leads me on to another cool feature, which makes this portable power station even
more useful for longer trips and that’s that it can also be charged from solar panels,
if you want to extend your off-grid time even further.
You can use any solar charger with the correct size DC barrel plug and although it supports
a maximum of 65W solar charging Anker recommends that you buy a 100W solar charger if you want
to be able to charge the Powerhouse at full speed (sunlight-permitting) as the actual
output from the panels is likely to be less depending on light intensity - if that’s
for you, I’ve put a link to a portable solar panel set in the video description.
You can also charge it from your car’s 12v socket whilst you’re driving to your off-grid
destination or if I’m charging this up at home from the mains before going out somewhere,
I can charge it much more cheaply overnight as my electricity price drops by over 80%
after 12.30am with Octopus Go.
If you’re in the UK and want cheap overnight electricity, I’ll leave my referral link
in the video description and if you switch to Octopus we’ll both get a nice little
bonus.
So I’ve been really impressed with the Anker PowerHouse II 400 so far and my only slight
criticism is that it’s easy to accidentally leave it on, which causes the battery to slowly
drain even if nothing is connected.
Surely an automatic switch off could have been implemented?
But apart from that one minor niggle, I think you’d find it really useful not just if
you like to go camping or spend time off-grid in the great outdoors but any time when you
need emergency power or power somewhere it might not be easy to get power to without
running a huge long extension lead which might not always be an option.
Well now you have an option and it’s not even dependent on the venue’s power supply!
If you want one of these for yourself there’s a link in the video description, let me know
what you think in the comments and next up you can watch another video review just here.