Very handy extra battery storage and flexible supply. If you're charging it any time the vehicle is running, and topping up whenever you have excess solar power it will definitely expand your off grid time.
@@leopardsgowild do you have a brass monkey, if so that would be good to see how much power it uses? FYI We ran our caravan fridge through the inverter during the summer to use some of the excess solar but definitely not this time of year, did save quite a bit of gas.
Yea when you get the chance or if you need to get more solar get as much capacity as you can, we've meet people with 1100w of solar and 400 Ah lithuim costs thousands, but lest you don't have to worry about running out.
Yea these are awesome products, obviously this model would'nt be enough to do a whole house it would be fine for everything associated for camping though, charging all devices, lights etc and just recharge with solar panel. But you can get way bigger batteries that can be linked up.
If you laptop supports it try charging via USB C from powerpack C output. Losses should be lot less than via 230vac. A portable solar panel is one way to top it up if hanging around site. Has advantage that solar panel will be facing low winter sun so lot more efficient than caravans ones that face upwards. You could also use portable to help topup house batteries. Good thing about powerpack is it has lots of charging options. Car while out and about, campground kitchen power points and even cafe if you ask nicely.
Yea mate your onto it for charging, just did an hours drive had it charging up... Bp for a coffee take it in... They are gonna send me a dollar panel which will help a lot
It's a problem I don't have in Queensland Beautiful Sunny winter days, My 540 amp hrs gives me plenty of power to run everything in caravan, It's only in summer when it gets to hot , effects the battery charging, That may be only for short time, Great solution for small items , Cheers Bevan 🤠❤️🦘🦘🇦🇺
Thanks Bevan, you guys do get a lot more consistant sun hours, where we are currently it's 15hrs of light in the peak of summer and less than 8 in winter... All first world problems I guess. We're just trying to not have to fork out $$$ for a better battery system or have to lug a generator around.
Gonna find your follow up but the real test is hairdryers and kettles. Anything with a heating element. They suck power. As an aside do you also have a stove top kettle as well as the electric kettle?
I think you'd likely tap this product out with kettles. Running our 3 way fridge runs off a heating system, it would run the fridge from a full charge for a couple of hours, but should manage a compressor fridge fine... I watched someone make toast with their eco flow although that would be a high load it maxes out at 1000w of power, You can go bigger with the Eco flows which can run a house, this one is made for camping and maybe work sites using power tools etc. We have a full Gas oven and stove top in our caravan.
You will certainly have to get a bit savvy with your power use over the coming months, out of interest how much charge would the AGM's get from the HiLux on a 2 hour drive?
Yea man, every light on matters now... We can still go 3 days without plugging into power, but then we really shouldn't push our batteries another night... The anderson plug on the truck definintely brings some charge back in, If we were low I don't think it's gonna to miracles in a couple of hours, but we've been experimenting by connecting up while everyone has showers, so we are hopefully pulling power from the water pump from the truck rather than straight from the house batteries. Thats helpping.. .We also have been following good weather so give us some rain and we'll see things go, be a different story... But the Ecoflow def means I can edit when it's raining now, and when it runs low, I can connect the caravan up to the truck and plug the ecoflow into the truck as well...
In regards to house battery charge try to keep it above 50% 12.3v will greatly increase life of batteries. Occasionally going to 20-30% isn't show stop but do it regularly they will degrade quickly.
Great advice mate, we just learnt this like last week seems we haven't done to much damage luckily 😕... We got a full charge off solar today to, so that's good, gonna be cold tonight at Lake Ohau
@@karenhealey935 yeawe've gone as low as 11.1v before we knew that we shouldn't, since getting the little generator and using the Eco flow our batteries now stay around 12.2v - 12.5v over night.
Yea we have 510w of solar on the caravan roof... Our biggest issue is running our heater, because its getting cold we are often turning it on about 6pm and it will run through till about 9am, so the fan that blows the air just slowly draws the level down... It's also things like showers and having the water pump running all off battery with no solar power to put anything back in till the next morning.
@@leopardsgowild sounds like a a tricky balance, with usage and getting more charge into the batteries, maybe a portable solar panel or even a generator? That portable power unit will be great once there’s some way of charging it I guess
SO after they saw my video they want to send me their solar charger which says it will charge in 4 hours so I'll look forward to checking that out as an alternative... But yea we are limited on space and weight so we don't really want to invest in a generator.
@@leopardsgowild invest in some lithium and a decent charger about 40amp charger with 500w of solar issue with agm is you dont get a constant 12v if youre doing the south island in winter you need to sort out the battery issue
how many aH is the eco flow? looks very low. it looks like a band aid problem to a charging issue in the caravan. getting a tilting solar panel on the roof instead of a flat horizontal mount is a big improvement. how does the cost of the eco flow compare to having another panel outside on an extension
yip we are looking at our options might get another solar panel we can move around... We also need to earn some money at some point, so might park up with power somewhere to do that... The Ecoflow measures the energy in Watt hours, so they say 512Wh capacity and 500W output... Not sure if you made it to the end, but I stated this would be perfect for summer camping, but it's not a solution for full time in winter... I reckon if your go tenting or weekend missions away in a 4x4 or something, this would be perfect for that.
Looks like 512 Wh converts to 42amp hours. So on top off your 200amp AGM’s not bad. We are having similar issues with autumn charging so have just increased our factory 400w roof solar up to 800watt and also purchased a 300watt foldable solar blanket which sits on a 45 deg angle to capture the low winter sun better. So now at 1100watt total solar to charge our 240amp lithium batteries. Hope that’s enough.
@@samroyds6313 That sounds Ideal mate. I think we might get a flexi panel we can stare straight at the sun as well, managing power is a first for us...
@@samroyds6313 Yea and the advantage of any lithium based storage is you can draw up to 90% of its capacity, whereas AGM is only 50% - so 200aH of AGM means really only 100aH to use.
same as in the video. It's a great portable power bank. Just not a solution for full time winter travel unless maybe you get the Solar blanket and can aim it at the sun... they say it charges in 4 hours with the solar panel. The caravan battery system just isn't up to full time winter travel, I think most solar systems in New Zealand aren't listening to others thoughts... Everyone says you need a generator.... They ECOFlow does great at charging the devices and running the laptop for 4+hours a day though, but You'd need to charge it somehow everyday over winter... In summer prob not a problem.
@@leopardsgowild solar is a bastard at this time of year with all these cloudy days. I have seen small hydro setups online and they seem to work quite well. I'm in the process of building one but it's semi permanent.
@@stephendickson9000 Yea I'm trying to avoid buying a generator... someone sent me a link to a mini one 8kg does 1kw, which they plug their battery charger into, which is basically all we would need, 1 -2 hours a day depending on sun, and they are fully charged up for the night. I think even the cold weather has an impact on battery life and charge. We want to camp in the hoar frosts, so I might need to bite the bullet and purchase one for those heavy frosts.
@@leopardsgowild I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark and say you've never been in a frost like that before? A general rule of thumb is at least a week of fog and frosts, highs of zero and lows of -10. For that you will need a genset. 😂😂
Did you leave your laptop plugged into the battery while using it? My thought is that if you left your laptop plugged into it while charging it might use the power up faster because of it being left plugged in. However if you used it just to charge your laptop then use your laptop off it's battery the other might last longer.
So the editing software drains my battery so fast I'll only get about 30 -40 mins editing with only battery... So I'll often tour the Ecoflow off when I'm just searching for music or downloading google earth images or fiddling with the thumbnail etc...
Hey mate, a year later it's still running exactly like it did from new. We use it all the time and not had a single problem at all. Highly recommend and we even went and purchased a bigger one as my wife needs the power overnight for her work, habing 2 means we've got loads of extra power...
you should just expand your battery set up these are stupidly expensive for such a small upgrade 400ah of lithium and a good large dcdc charger would have you sorted
400ah lithium is around 3k which is a pricy upgrade but so is one of these portable power banks... We'd also need to swap solar controls as apparently you can't just swap agm for lithium due to capacity and charge rates
that battery bank is about 40ah at 12v and cost $1200 a decent 40a dcdc charger is about $500 3500 for about 10x the useable capacity and 4x what the agm, is i think you know where the value would be
@@KDT88 I'm not disagreeing with you there... That's a much better and purposeful set up, one I wish I had. I'm just talking about my situation... I was given the EcoFlow to review I think it's great for campers especially those without a caravan or motorhome... This is lite and portable easy to use, fast to charge, and gonna give you plenty of charge as well...
I think you will have to bite the bullet and buy a petrol generator to be sure you've always got power...it will charge your battery and run a microwave when needed..tip.. don't carry a petrol can it's to dangerous , just keep the generator full!!.♥️🇳🇿
I think our plan is to find some work and park up rather then spend up, and when we finish working hopefully the days are abit longer again and we're good to go... We did fully charge up today in the sun which made my heart happy.
@@caravanstuff2827 Your completly right... But that will cost us a couple of grand, the more we spend the less time we have to travel as we are currently not working and living off savings to pay for our travels for hopefully another year, once we've picked up some work. So to buy a generator potentially puts us back 3 weeks of travel... But I'd buy a generator before I'd stay in campgrounds for 2 weeks.
Thanks for the review; really useful info. So good to have you run through some real world use cases rather than just give the specs like so many people do. Is it made in China; trying to avoid that? I was looking at these as a possible option for when I want to take my electric camper off grid but might not have enough battery power to run everything from the van’s big battery. So rather than have to come back sooner than I want because I don’t want to run out of battery and can’t move, I could maybe take one of these and get another couple of days in the wilderness 😁
Yea Ive found it really helpful... We currently don't have the capacity to use our inverter in the caravan it just drains to much power from the house batteries, so when it's raining like tonight, I can atleast still do some stuff... It's not a perfect solution at all, but nothing rarely is... I'd love it to go double the time on a charge, but I also love it can charge in an hour.
@@leopardsgowild Thanks for clarifying. I'm lucky in that my van battery is 24kwh! So it'll take a wee while to run out. However, if it's winter and I run the van heater all night, plus I'm a fair way away from an EV charger, then it's possible that I'll need more battery power from this kind of gadget. It'll be fun trying out different scenarios 🙂
Before watching this video I was unsure this was the one Ecoflow for me. Now I'm sure it is. Thank you. :D
Cheers mate. Definintely good product.
Very handy extra battery storage and flexible supply. If you're charging it any time the vehicle is running, and topping up whenever you have excess solar power it will definitely expand your off grid time.
Yea the best time to edit is when the weather is bad which is also when we get the least power right... So this definitley gives me some more options.
Nice review Mike, great to see some real examples being used.. 👍
yea I tested stuff I would want to use, I think I will test the fridge next time... got any other ideas?
@@leopardsgowild do you have a brass monkey, if so that would be good to see how much power it uses?
FYI We ran our caravan fridge through the inverter during the summer to use some of the excess solar but definitely not this time of year, did save quite a bit of gas.
Great review, really helpful. We will definitely need to get something to boost our power options!
Yea when you get the chance or if you need to get more solar get as much capacity as you can, we've meet people with 1100w of solar and 400 Ah lithuim costs thousands, but lest you don't have to worry about running out.
This is good timing also. Looking for something to power home office off grid.
Yea these are awesome products, obviously this model would'nt be enough to do a whole house it would be fine for everything associated for camping though, charging all devices, lights etc and just recharge with solar panel. But you can get way bigger batteries that can be linked up.
If you laptop supports it try charging via USB C from powerpack C output. Losses should be lot less than via 230vac.
A portable solar panel is one way to top it up if hanging around site. Has advantage that solar panel will be facing low winter sun so lot more efficient than caravans ones that face upwards. You could also use portable to help topup house batteries.
Good thing about powerpack is it has lots of charging options. Car while out and about, campground kitchen power points and even cafe if you ask nicely.
Yea mate your onto it for charging, just did an hours drive had it charging up... Bp for a coffee take it in... They are gonna send me a dollar panel which will help a lot
Must. Have. Coffee Machine!
mmmmmm Coffee.
It's a problem I don't have in Queensland Beautiful Sunny winter days, My 540 amp hrs gives me plenty of power to run everything in caravan, It's only in summer when it gets to hot , effects the battery charging, That may be only for short time, Great solution for small items , Cheers Bevan 🤠❤️🦘🦘🇦🇺
Thanks Bevan, you guys do get a lot more consistant sun hours, where we are currently it's 15hrs of light in the peak of summer and less than 8 in winter... All first world problems I guess. We're just trying to not have to fork out $$$ for a better battery system or have to lug a generator around.
SPONSORED & 2.99k subs LETS GO!!!!!!
lol... Bring on more sponserships, although I only have so much room in the caravan lol...
@@leopardsgowild u can sleep in the truck if u get too many 😂🤔🤙❤️
Gonna find your follow up but the real test is hairdryers and kettles. Anything with a heating element. They suck power. As an aside do you also have a stove top kettle as well as the electric kettle?
I think you'd likely tap this product out with kettles. Running our 3 way fridge runs off a heating system, it would run the fridge from a full charge for a couple of hours, but should manage a compressor fridge fine... I watched someone make toast with their eco flow although that would be a high load it maxes out at 1000w of power, You can go bigger with the Eco flows which can run a house, this one is made for camping and maybe work sites using power tools etc.
We have a full Gas oven and stove top in our caravan.
You will certainly have to get a bit savvy with your power use over the coming months, out of interest how much charge would the AGM's get from the HiLux on a 2 hour drive?
Yea man, every light on matters now... We can still go 3 days without plugging into power, but then we really shouldn't push our batteries another night... The anderson plug on the truck definintely brings some charge back in, If we were low I don't think it's gonna to miracles in a couple of hours, but we've been experimenting by connecting up while everyone has showers, so we are hopefully pulling power from the water pump from the truck rather than straight from the house batteries. Thats helpping.. .We also have been following good weather so give us some rain and we'll see things go, be a different story... But the Ecoflow def means I can edit when it's raining now, and when it runs low, I can connect the caravan up to the truck and plug the ecoflow into the truck as well...
In regards to house battery charge try to keep it above 50% 12.3v will greatly increase life of batteries. Occasionally going to 20-30% isn't show stop but do it regularly they will degrade quickly.
Great advice mate, we just learnt this like last week seems we haven't done to much damage luckily 😕... We got a full charge off solar today to, so that's good, gonna be cold tonight at Lake Ohau
Pleased you mentioned that because we were thinking the exact same thing when the house batteries were at 11.6v
@@karenhealey935 yeawe've gone as low as 11.1v before we knew that we shouldn't, since getting the little generator and using the Eco flow our batteries now stay around 12.2v - 12.5v over night.
Off video topic question... does your webasto diesel heater have the digital controller? Did yours come with it or did you put it in? Thanks!
Hey mate, caravan came with the heater, it does have a digital control, which we can set the temp on, otherwise default was just on, or off.
Hi Mike, nice review, you mentioned 200ah AGM house batteries, do you know how much solar you have on the caravan?
Yea we have 510w of solar on the caravan roof... Our biggest issue is running our heater, because its getting cold we are often turning it on about 6pm and it will run through till about 9am, so the fan that blows the air just slowly draws the level down... It's also things like showers and having the water pump running all off battery with no solar power to put anything back in till the next morning.
@@leopardsgowild sounds like a a tricky balance, with usage and getting more charge into the batteries, maybe a portable solar panel or even a generator? That portable power unit will be great once there’s some way of charging it I guess
SO after they saw my video they want to send me their solar charger which says it will charge in 4 hours so I'll look forward to checking that out as an alternative... But yea we are limited on space and weight so we don't really want to invest in a generator.
@@leopardsgowild that sounds like a good idea, look forward to your review on how their solar panel works out too
@@leopardsgowild invest in some lithium and a decent charger about 40amp charger with 500w of solar issue with agm is you dont get a constant 12v if youre doing the south island in winter you need to sort out the battery issue
Hi, what type of batteries are you using in your caravan and what total amp hours capacity do you have?
We have 2x 100amp hour agm batteries
how many aH is the eco flow? looks very low. it looks like a band aid problem to a charging issue in the caravan. getting a tilting solar panel on the roof instead of a flat horizontal mount is a big improvement. how does the cost of the eco flow compare to having another panel outside on an extension
yip we are looking at our options might get another solar panel we can move around... We also need to earn some money at some point, so might park up with power somewhere to do that... The Ecoflow measures the energy in Watt hours, so they say 512Wh capacity and 500W output... Not sure if you made it to the end, but I stated this would be perfect for summer camping, but it's not a solution for full time in winter... I reckon if your go tenting or weekend missions away in a 4x4 or something, this would be perfect for that.
Looks like 512 Wh converts to 42amp hours. So on top off your 200amp AGM’s not bad. We are having similar issues with autumn charging so have just increased our factory 400w roof solar up to 800watt and also purchased a 300watt foldable solar blanket which sits on a 45 deg angle to capture the low winter sun better. So now at 1100watt total solar to charge our 240amp lithium batteries. Hope that’s enough.
@@samroyds6313 That sounds Ideal mate. I think we might get a flexi panel we can stare straight at the sun as well, managing power is a first for us...
@@samroyds6313 Yea and the advantage of any lithium based storage is you can draw up to 90% of its capacity, whereas AGM is only 50% - so 200aH of AGM means really only 100aH to use.
What's your thoughts on it now you've had it for a bit?
same as in the video. It's a great portable power bank. Just not a solution for full time winter travel unless maybe you get the Solar blanket and can aim it at the sun... they say it charges in 4 hours with the solar panel. The caravan battery system just isn't up to full time winter travel, I think most solar systems in New Zealand aren't listening to others thoughts... Everyone says you need a generator.... They ECOFlow does great at charging the devices and running the laptop for 4+hours a day though, but You'd need to charge it somehow everyday over winter... In summer prob not a problem.
@@leopardsgowild solar is a bastard at this time of year with all these cloudy days. I have seen small hydro setups online and they seem to work quite well.
I'm in the process of building one but it's semi permanent.
@@stephendickson9000 Yea I'm trying to avoid buying a generator... someone sent me a link to a mini one 8kg does 1kw, which they plug their battery charger into, which is basically all we would need, 1 -2 hours a day depending on sun, and they are fully charged up for the night. I think even the cold weather has an impact on battery life and charge. We want to camp in the hoar frosts, so I might need to bite the bullet and purchase one for those heavy frosts.
@@leopardsgowild I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark and say you've never been in a frost like that before?
A general rule of thumb is at least a week of fog and frosts, highs of zero and lows of -10. For that you will need a genset. 😂😂
@@stephendickson9000 The bro's not seen enough videos.... Editting is less than average bro...
th-cam.com/video/pCmx5qW8_jY/w-d-xo.html
Did you leave your laptop plugged into the battery while using it?
My thought is that if you left your laptop plugged into it while charging it might use the power up faster because of it being left plugged in. However if you used it just to charge your laptop then use your laptop off it's battery the other might last longer.
So the editing software drains my battery so fast I'll only get about 30 -40 mins editing with only battery... So I'll often tour the Ecoflow off when I'm just searching for music or downloading google earth images or fiddling with the thumbnail etc...
@@leopardsgowild oh, That's a little bit unfortunate. I guess you don't realise how much power things use until you do something like this.
how is it a year later?
Hey mate, a year later it's still running exactly like it did from new. We use it all the time and not had a single problem at all. Highly recommend and we even went and purchased a bigger one as my wife needs the power overnight for her work, habing 2 means we've got loads of extra power...
you should just expand your battery set up these are stupidly expensive for such a small upgrade 400ah of lithium and a good large dcdc charger would have you sorted
400ah lithium is around 3k which is a pricy upgrade but so is one of these portable power banks... We'd also need to swap solar controls as apparently you can't just swap agm for lithium due to capacity and charge rates
that battery bank is about 40ah at 12v and cost $1200 a decent 40a dcdc charger is about $500 3500 for about 10x the useable capacity and 4x what the agm, is i think you know where the value would be
@@KDT88 I'm not disagreeing with you there... That's a much better and purposeful set up, one I wish I had. I'm just talking about my situation... I was given the EcoFlow to review I think it's great for campers especially those without a caravan or motorhome... This is lite and portable easy to use, fast to charge, and gonna give you plenty of charge as well...
I think you will have to bite the bullet and buy a petrol generator to be sure you've always got power...it will charge your battery and run a microwave when needed..tip.. don't carry a petrol can it's to dangerous , just keep the generator full!!.♥️🇳🇿
I think our plan is to find some work and park up rather then spend up, and when we finish working hopefully the days are abit longer again and we're good to go... We did fully charge up today in the sun which made my heart happy.
@@leopardsgowild you buy a generator you have power for life..buy a good one (Honda or Yamaha) you'll be handing on to your kid's!!.♥️🇳🇿
@@caravanstuff2827 Your completly right... But that will cost us a couple of grand, the more we spend the less time we have to travel as we are currently not working and living off savings to pay for our travels for hopefully another year, once we've picked up some work. So to buy a generator potentially puts us back 3 weeks of travel... But I'd buy a generator before I'd stay in campgrounds for 2 weeks.
@@leopardsgowild safe travels..look forward to your next post.♥️🇳🇿
Thanks for the review; really useful info. So good to have you run through some real world use cases rather than just give the specs like so many people do. Is it made in China; trying to avoid that? I was looking at these as a possible option for when I want to take my electric camper off grid but might not have enough battery power to run everything from the van’s big battery. So rather than have to come back sooner than I want because I don’t want to run out of battery and can’t move, I could maybe take one of these and get another couple of days in the wilderness 😁
Yea Ive found it really helpful... We currently don't have the capacity to use our inverter in the caravan it just drains to much power from the house batteries, so when it's raining like tonight, I can atleast still do some stuff... It's not a perfect solution at all, but nothing rarely is... I'd love it to go double the time on a charge, but I also love it can charge in an hour.
Also I wasn't sure where they were made, But they are made in China, technology developed in San Fransico.
@@leopardsgowild Thanks for clarifying. I'm lucky in that my van battery is 24kwh! So it'll take a wee while to run out. However, if it's winter and I run the van heater all night, plus I'm a fair way away from an EV charger, then it's possible that I'll need more battery power from this kind of gadget. It'll be fun trying out different scenarios 🙂