Excellent review. I bought one about a year ago. Live in condo and just wanted something small I can store in closet in case power goes out, to charge phones and radios to last a day or two until power comes back. Also used it on camping trips. Brought it in the tent to run fan to keep wife cool through the night! It is small but very usable. Also, purchased with the folding solar panels, they work as designed. Pack away nicely in small home.
Great review. I just picked one up for $209. Arrived in one day w/ Prime shipping. Mine does not have the odd fan noise or relay click. Also, not sure if it was a mistake, but it did ship with a solar charge cable. I picked up a "car charger" for $12. Really impressed with this little unit! And thanks again for your review.
Just picked one of these up on sale for $209 instead of buying the similar Jackery that was priced slighlty higher. For me it's pretty much just for TV and backup power for my JBL boombox during tailgating for 3-4 hours. Being able to just let my phone sit on top to charge also made it that much more convenient along with that flat top making it easy to stack stuff on top of when lugging things around. I'm really surprised there's no USB fast charging. However, that lifespan compared to Jackery really made the decision for me. So far so good!
@@randomposts6126 Actually, I returned it soon after and bought the next bigger size with more juice an outlets since they all go on sale. I'd rather have too much than not enough.
Just purchased the EB-3A before watching your review kicking myself because I paid 268 for it but your review helped me absorb the stung next I’m getting a compatible solar panel thanks I loved your video
Just placed my order and specifically used your promo code and not the one Bluetti sent me. Same discount. I wanted you to get due credit. Thank you, sir.
Excellent review (as always). I hope they incorporate these upgraded features (better display, UPS feature, no need for an external charging brick, etc) into a future EB70s update/replacement (hopefully soon)
In 2022 it amazes me that any company would still put out a product without at least ONE USB-A quick charge port. This really should be one of your requirements for a perfect power station with points added or subtracted. Like a BI-directional USB-C port, these things should be mandatory. Overall, another fantastic review Jason!
Aren't most USB devices going with USBc power delivery no days? It would have been nice to see it, but I think two USBc ports would have been even better!
For the 120$ i got it for with the Amazon coupon, which also came with the solar charging connections I'm giving it a 9.5 for sure. Great little power bank
I am thinking Bluetti should have come out with an improved EB 55 or an improved EB 70. This EB3A seems too small. I think the sweet spot for me would be either the EB55 or the EB 70. I would like to see a power station that is the size of the EB 70 and be able to take in 200 watts of solar with pass-through charging and an improved screen like the EB3A. I appreciate all your videos and you do a great job of producing them.
I bought the EB 70 and there 200 watt solar setup and got similar charging. Had some haze and it charged at 156 or so but it was also later in afternoon, so not sure why that difference. It also has pass through charging already, but the display sucks. Wish I had been a couple of months later as the EB 70 S had an even better inverter though.
@@markpashia7067 the approx. 150 watts input cap is caused by the maximum of 8 amps of the EB70. This cuts off input above the 150 watts. But nevertheless the SP200/PV200 is a better choice than the smaller SP120 because it charges the EB70 way faster...
Thanks for the review I ended up getting this on Amazon Prime day. So far so good. I do see what you mean about the noise. When I first heard it my heart sank thinking something was wrong with my brand new power station.
I own three of these and believe I've uncovered a "quirk." I say "quirk" after plugging my gateway and tv into a multi-outlet surge suppressor that I then plugged into the EB3A. The AC/UPS function became erratic and shutdown at times while indicating an overload condition. The same happened on another unit when I plugged a TV and Roku device into a multi-outlet surge suppressor. These were small loads of less than 100 watts. It was puzzling since I was running our fridge with the third at higher wattage without any problem, the only difference was the fridge unit was not connected to a multi-outlet surge suppressor, The problem was apparently the multi-outlet surge suppressors because when I plugged directly into the EB3A I no longer experienced the erratic behavior or overloads.
Would love to see this on a eb70a or eb100a configuration. Need more juice and wattage than this and still be portable. Love the Bluetooth software, no charging brick and percentage meter vs the 20% blocks on the other models.
@@Jasonoid i found 1 review who was complaining about fridges not staying on through the 12v port after someone commenting eco mode could have been on he said he turned that of but he was very anti bluetti so ik wonderinv what is true
Regarding the "fan noise" issue. I replaced my fan with a higher quality dual ball bearing fan and the buzzing is still there. The buzzing appears to be generated by the fan speed control circuit on the main board. While having the top off, I noticed one of the four screws that hold down the mylar fan tunnel were missing and the tunnel was not installed all the way down flat on all sides. Easy fix, but no noise improvement.
Hey Dr. J Just ordered a EB3a, thanks for the review. I think it's a pretty nice power station for under $300 I do believe Bluetti will give us a few Firmware updates impart to your detailed review 😉
I ended up just picking this up on an Amazon Sale. This thing is crazy good. It runs like a champ. I have the ac180, and it does great powering a 2023 Forest River Aurora Light 16BHX. You can run the 30AMP dog bone to 110v Plug and use it on the AC180. It runs all of the lights, somewhat the ac unit, not on max, but enough. This smaller one is great for a TV at 40 Watts. 12v TVs are the best to use with it. Lower wattage. Played my PS4 for a good 3 hours straight. I do have a portable ps4 monitor on it when doing so. Pretty dang neat. If you have any real questions about the AC180 or this one, ASK AWAY!
Great review. Thanks. FYI: I just purchased one on sale at $209 AND it came with a solar charge cable. Because I'm over 70 I got an additional 5% off. 198.55/268=$.74/watt hr
Just ordered a River yesterday. I have to admit, this new model is tempting me to return the River. The main reason is for those batteries. That's the one thing I didn't like about the River. Though it looks like this model has some quirks to it and need to be considered. Great review! Thanks for your work!!!
Nice review, looks pretty good. Most sub 300wh power stations limit solar charging at 60-70 watts, so imo 160 is great. Could the relay be disconnecting the battery from the charger to analyze the battery?
Wow, just (yesterday) got a Jackery 300 mainly to run my compressor fridge for a few hours while going to the beach and whatever. It's nice and got $50 off at Amazon. Now I see why. This EB3A seems to have everything one could possibly want in a small power station and more. And there is the discount too!. Fortunately these 300 W stations are in the "Free Returns" category and I'm sure once I get my EB3A the Jackery will be going back. After watching tons of videos reviewing power stations it looks like Bluetti addressed every gripe people had. The power brick, the display, the power lights. Plus now the app seems to make it perfect. I disagree on your ratings for $/W only because this and the Jackery have $50 off coupons so that kinda skews the calculation. It would be much worse without the discount. The one thing I still don't like is that dumb light. I guess they feel it needs to be there for some reason. Can't wait till they incorporate these changes into an EB70 and larger version. I'd probably get one of those too for emergency powering the fridge at the house.
Just ordered one of these for my husband for Father's day. He already has a 180 on solar panels on his Dave Cave. This one will be great for a picnic or a day at the lake. I'm sure he will buy smaller portable solar panel to go with this. Picked it up for a $199.
The magic of this little power station is when you connect it to 200watts of solar. I can run battery chargers, etc all day long with it connected to the solar. It's super helpful when I'm doing yard work and using dewalt 20V powered yard tools. I can run them down to dead and recharge on this power station in a few minutes connected to solar. I have the Bluetti 300B and the 300K whole home station as well as the AC180, I use this one the most because it's way more portable and how fast it charges on Solar. Bluetti has never let me down even in full power outages.
Thank you for a great review! I’m leaning towards this as a great starter for me as I’m building out my promaster city. I’d eventually upgrade to a more powerful power station in the future but for all the upgrades in this model it’s a good value to me!
Excellent informative video 👌🏼 Due to the currant increase in electricity costs & the threat of looming power cuts here in the UK i felt it would be a wise choice to purchase a portable power station so after reading & watching many reviews including yours i went ahead & purchased this Bluetti EB3A. It will be more than suitable for my power needs, to include powering my Cpap machine. Thank you for your Review, it helped me make my descion plus i saved £50 in the Bluetti Black Friday sale. 👍🏼
Been debating for months on an entry-level power station for short outages and van camping. The EB3A won me over and I ordered it through your link...thx for the discount code. Coincidentally, I'm visiting Las Vegas (live in Florida) and was able to stop at Bluetti showroom/warehouse yesterday. Like being a kid in a candy store! They were nice enough to help me acquire the 8mm car charger that I'll need for road trips. Now just need to rewatch your solar panel review videos, order one, and I'll be set for a while. Still dreaming of home backup system....😎
I just got my EB3A yesterday 10/31/22 for $239 and it did come with solar charging cable. I purchased a small ceramic heater to heat up my small teardrop trailer while camping. Can't wait to try it out
@@metthem88 I bought a year ago and it's been great honestly. No issues at all. Keep in mind, I don't run anything really heavy with it. But for what I use it for (ceramic heater, fan, charging devices, blowing up air beds, compressors).It's great 💪
Outstanding review. Grabbed one on a super sale without doing any research. Happy to see that a lucked into a good purchase. Mine did come with a solar panel cable. And as an extra bonus it works with my Jackery 12v car charger.
Love your detailed reviews. Trying to decide on a ~300 watt portable power station. This one surprised me with all it's options, but I'm still leaning towards the EcoFlow River 2. Would love to see a head to head comparison.
Hi. I'm going to Buy this power station to be prepared for possible power outages in Ukraine. But i'd like to know, is the problem with the relay fixed now ?
Great review and greeting from the Netherlands. l just received my EB3A (€279) + PV120 solar panel (€299). In Europe the EB3A comes with a 220v cable and a solar connection cable. I bought the 12v cigarette lightning cable separately (€19,99). I will take it on my holiday to Italy next week, upon which I will primalery use my Dometic CFF35 compressor cooler. Very curious how things work out.....
Silent charge mode is not silent while using it as a ups contrary to many reviews. I guess the charger keeps kicking on to top off the battery. The parasitic drain thing. Those strange fan noises starting and stopping are bothersome, especially at night. I bought a USB fan and placed it outside the exhaust vent to pull air through the device externally and it seems to be keeping the EB3A fan from kicking on. It replaces that weird fan noise starting and stopping all night with a quiet hum. One more thing I have not seen reviewed and that is the app only connects if you are using the device as a ups, or right after you activate the EB3A screen. In other words, unless you are using the EB3A, the Bluetooth shuts down after a short interval. It is not always ready for a connection.
Great review. Kind of small for my needs but great charging capabilities. Sad it doesn't come with cables which is surprising from bluetti. Probably perfect for the quick "grab N go" type station though.
Good review. Very helpful. Question, does the length of cords connected to solar panels affect or limit solar input charging capacity? Just curious if there is noticeable voltage or wattage drop based on the length of those cables? If so, what is the maximum length of mc 4 cables before getting compromised voltage drop? Seems like so many of those cables are really short. Could you use say a 50' cable without losing charging power? Thankyou for the segment.
Was not expecting a UPS mode or wireless charging pad on top. So that’s a nice added bonus. Also the “no load” power drain wouldn’t be an issue for me because I only plan to use it if I need to discharge it. I’m not sure why someone would keep this “on” but not have any load in use? Also no bi-directional USB-C charging is not really an issue. The AC and solar input is fine. I don’t see how the bi-directional charging would be useful because I cannot think of a scenario where I would not have access to either AC or solar but only had USB-C charging.
I bought EB 3A, I came with an input able.. My fan does NOT make a noise like yours, thank goodness. I have a drawer full of cables from old printers etc one dorks for Ac input
got mine on sale last week at amazon for $210 after $90 rebate ($300-$60 now) with a return date of 1/31 due to the holidays, there’s 3.5 months of time to try it out before a possible free return. now’s the time at amazon to try it, with their lonf free return period. it did come with the solar power adaptor too. the car cable was $10 extra. just charged it and updated the firmware too. so far so good.
I use eb3a as my ups back up, it’s plugged in wall at all times. Its a backup for my aquarium. Every so often I would lose power to my pumps, even though I didn’t lose power to house?
Putting aside space or cost, would you recommend two of these over one EB55? Using for Small Vanlife purposes. One small fridge and small device charging. I like the idea of redundancy and charging one at a time... Is the output technology better on these? I can see they are different than the EB55. Thanks so much!
I think that would work, having two of these and charging one while using the other. Two of these comes in at the same price as one EB55 right now since the large sale.
I agree. A lot of these reviews on TH-cam are feature reviews, not real world. Most receive these for free. It would be great if they did actual use reviews.
It was interesting to compare your review and the Hobotech review, as you basically had the results of AC and DC capacity tests reversed! The Hobotech review had 78% on DC and 86% on AC, I believe, and your results were practically a mirror image. How many watts were you pulling on the AC test? Anyway, I have one coming with the code and a $50 gift card (from Bluetti Bucks) for $189 and I'll be trying it out myself. I'm really hoping that all the next generation of Bluetti's smaller units follow many of these design details. I have an EB55 and it's great, but if it had this display and could use the app it would be even better.
If the EB70 came with this display, I'd be much more interested in that one. For the 3A, if I needed something small like it, it'd definitely be in my sights.
I did end up buying it, and I believe Bluetti is sending out the solar charging cables for free. When I bought mine on Amazon there was a code for a free solar adapter cable, and I believe it should be arriving in a day or two. I received my EB3A last week. Something I'm trying to figure out is what to do about solar charging. I have a good few Goal Zero panels that work, but they're 18V, so I won't be able to get too far beyond 150W of solar charging. I've got my eye on two BigBlue panels, one of them would be perfectly fine and charge between 160W and 170W, and the other would be able to saturate the 200W, but the problem is with the 30Voc of the panels, which goes over Bluetti's 28V rating. The 24Vmp is fine, and I'd be able to get the full 200W out of it, but I'm not sure if the EB3A has a loose enough tolerance to handle any of the 30Voc of those panels.
If it's not abused it should last for many years. It is not serviceable by the normal person, to get it repaired you'd have to ship it back to Bluetti.
Another great review, nice work on b-roll and different camera angles. Glad you focused on the standby losses fan startup sound - that’s really odd but hopefully is fixable. I didn’t have the shutoff when charging issue but maybe I just missed it?
Hello and thank you for all your hard work and videos. I am completely new to the world of solar power stations and panels and the like. I have purchased an EB3A Bluetti and I want to connect it to a glass rigid solar panel so that I can power my greenhouses. Can you please give me some advice on what you would do? Would it be better to use a power station like Bluetti and a solar panel or would it be better to use a 12V car battery and a solar panel. I need at least 600W to power a fan and or a low voltage heater for cold nights. I live in Maryland so our winters arent like the West or North. I dont understand the how the car battery equals or compares to a solar power station like a Bluetti. Please advice, Thanks a ton for all your videos and sharing what you know!
Perfect video test. One question, is the ups mode some kind of special mode that i have to turn on? Or its just automatic behavior that after charging the batrery to 100% bluetti ststion enters the ups mode automatically?
It IS under 80 cents as you can get it most places for $200-220. We got one for $219 and LOVE it. We use it to power a mini fridge and string lights at nighttime markets where we sell pies. Totally does the job.
Why have Bluetti only got dual charging on the EB55 and AC200 max ? I am not sure which Portable solar station to get as I want LIFEPO4 batteries but prefer the ECOFLOW display (its annoying the Bluetti displays go off after a few seconds). Looking to run my desktop and home office / workshop (some loads and a 500W heater in winter). I service electronics / test equipment so total output would be around 1000W per hour. Would it be better to build a system with separate modules (solar charger, battery and inverter) ? Is it better to have a 2000Wh system or a smaller 1000W (or 2 smaller ones 500W each) as doing tests on cloudy day 100W panel running about 14 to 20 watts output. Perhaps these are some ideas for your channel ? I would also recommend getting a good multimeter like a Fluke 117 or 85 / 87 for your testing. TENMA 72-3530 is a cheaper alternative multimeter.
Hey Jason, enjoying your review. I plan to send this model to the Philippines for emergency use, specifically for when they have a power outage to charge their cell phone, laptop and tablet. Would this be the perfect option?
Love your power station reviews these days. You are so thorough. Maybe you need to add a external cables item to your score. It costs them so little to bundle cables but consumers can pay a lot to buy them. This is the best Bluetti design yet, but I will wait for them to add the new features to the slightly higher capacity units. I th8nk EcoFlow needs to step up their game. I love seeing all the innovation companies are adding. Great job.
I've heard from some people that the cables are now included? Maybe they already fixed that issue?! :) On another note, I went camping this last week where I had a lithium NMC battery pack explode. Very scary situation! I'm sure its a SUPER RARE occurrence (especially with a high quality company like EcoFlow or Jackery) but it might have pushed me away from lithium ion cells forever in power stations. I'll publish that video earlier next week so you guys can see it.
Jasonoid - Solar Power, Batteries, and More! Oh wow! I always worry about that happening because the inside of my car gets really hot. I would hate to burn up my car, or me. LOL. I sure wish EcoFlow would start doing LiFePO4 more. I know it is bigger and heavier, but I am willing to live with it. Where did you go camping?
Jasonoid - Solar Power, Batteries, and More! Looking forward to seeing the video. I prepping for a Glacier trip in late July. Need to figure out how to best mount a solar panel on my RAV.
Just purchased one on Amazon, on sale for $209.00 before tax, and yes mine did also come with the solar cable, for what I will use this for it was well worth it, I am now looking at the 2048 watt unit for home
It's about time that they came out with one that didn't have a break. Lol. I'm a little disappointed in the price per watt hour like you said.. Thank you again Jason for another great video
I just purchased one today I'm really hoping it can handle bougerv 12 volt 30 quart bougie RV refrigerator I also just purchased. And it should be a basic requirement to include all cables for the options it raves about
It's just like a car battery, a car battery when the engine is running is around 14 volts, and can range from 14.7v down to 11.5v. 13.2v is the perfect voltage for running 12v devices.
Thanks for the in depth review. I was wondering how well using a 12V 100AH LifePO battery that runs for around $350 would be to increase the watt hours for the EB3A? (Plus appropriate cable and a fuse) For instance could we use the combination of the two to get a longer run time for a portable fridge, etc. Or is there a better way to do this? Thanks again.
Actually my dream would be an EB 100 and better still would be one with add on battery storage for those three and four day camping trips where I am not sitting around with solar panels and can go hiking or fishing away from the vehicle. Don't trust portable panels in a campground while away from them. Just need a cheap way to charge more storage and seems silly to buy a whole other setup when the charging circuits are not in use most of the time. Seems like I could charge the EB70 at home, then charge another 500 to 1000 watt hrs of storage before I go out and all my troubles would be solved. Is that power source you had in the video something that is sold or easy to build? And what rating does it have? Would love to power my 12v refrigerator for three days or so on a charge while boondocking with no power and not able to use solar. Also sometimes in locked car with no shade and high temps like at beach in Florida, so it runs down faster. There I had power at campsite and had to charge nightly as it took me down to forty percent per day in Feb. Here in June it will be worse. Any tips would be great. That new screen on this one is vast improvement and the bluetooth app is great. As temped as I am to buy one of these, just not enough storage except for day trips.
Interested in the UPS feature. We lost power for 2 days and I was without WiFi. Want something to keep my router up. I can't imagine the router pulls much power so it should be enough for a few days? I also travel a lot and my security cameras need the network to send footage to the cloud and to alert me.
The AC inverter uses a bit of background power when enabled (think small battery big inverter) so it wouldn't last for a long time like that unless you had a solar panel to supplement the battery.
Hi Jason, Great explanation, I am getting one BLUETTI EB3A. What would be my best option on getting the solar cable and panels price wise. Any suggestions. Thank you
Thank you. Great review. Did the unit get hot with Silent 100W charging? Would this prolonge battery life in comparison to Normal charging or maybe not due to the fact that fans are not cooling the battery down.
I just received this unit for the purposes of UPS. I have my modem and router plugged in, which is a max of 28w. At first I was using it in standard mode and the fan was coming on about every half hour. When I switched to silent mode there was absolutely no difference. The fan still comes on about every half hour and is just as loud. Before updating the firmware I did get an overload error that shut the unit down. Why would it overload on 28w? Hopefully the firmware update corrects this problem. Otherwise this will not be a reliable UPS.
Very disappointed with no USB fast chargers at all. You would think in these times and ages that that would be mandatory. And with such a small power station you would think that they'd have that by directional PD charging support
@@colacurciolaw7745 quick charge is a technology used my some mobile devices to support charging faster from usb ports. Power delivery is a technology that allows devices get more power from a usb c port. (Up to 100w in this case) this allows the devices to charge much faster than with standard usb output. Most modern devices support power delivery as long as you use a usb c cable. Newer Laptops, tablets, android phones and even iphones (using a lightning to usb c cable). In this case you could use a usb c splitter that also supported splitting with power delivery intact. Or you could even use 12v car adapter that supported power delivery or quick charge to expand your options fairly cheaply. Hope this helps.
USB C is the newest quick charge method which it does have. 2.0, 3.0 QC usb is old technology and will be old news soon. So idk what you are talking about. If people still want to charge via usb many systems don't even support QC and will work fine for the usb there. Plus its hard enough to offer that for less then 300 bucks in a system this nice. You might as well buy a smaller powerbank with QC if they still make those like a anker.
Good review! I think the target market must be UPS users who might want a few extra features, although it really needs a user-replaceable battery. Otherwise the capacity is way too small. Speaking of which, I'd fail it on capacity for consumer fraud, since it doesn't meet its capacity claim, especially on DC. Not including a solar-charging cable is baffling, especially for the price.
BMS inefficiencies will cause any power station to not live up to 100% of its capacity. Some of that power has to go to the lights, buttons, display, cooling, sensors, inverter, etc of the unit itself.
@@MakeHoneySticks it isn't the bms inefficiency, it is the regulation efficiency loss. Pull that pack out of the unit and its capacity would measure over more than likely. This isn't any different from any other brand making these things. They ALL have conversion/regulation losses, not related to the bms at all.
The UPS companies should be trembling in their boots over this one. To get a true sine wave 600 real watt (not VA) with crappy SLA batteries will set you back about $600 from the big 2. Blue tooth and solar charging are just that much more reason to start throwing those old UPS's to the curb. I will buy 2 for sure. Great review! If there are worries about the AC noise from the charger on the output, plug in a good Tripp Lite Isobar between your load and the EB3A.
the question i don't see answered is. what happens when the battery runs out in ups mode? does it automatically go back to the ac outputs being on when power is restored? if it doesn't UPS comanies have nothing to worry about.
@@airgun1974 For the AC180, as long as it is plugged into the mains, the AC180 will turn on and start to recharge the battery once power is restored. I have not checked to see if the UPS function initiates automatically yet. To be honest, i had multiple Tripplite USP systems (with SLA batteries) and at least one would fail to restart after a power outage due to the SLA battery being damaged by the event. The difference with the EB3A, is that 250 watts of load will run about 40 minutes, where as the Tripplite ran about 4 minutes, and that was good for 2 or 3 shots before the SLA battery fried. If you are going to run one of these as a UPS, make sure that you are using standard or turbo as the charging method, otherwise you are draining the battery if the load is higher than the selected charge rate (i learned this thru experience!)
I just got my eb3a, and so far so good. One question though, is the circuit protector button supposed to kind of loose? Right away, I plugged in a 600w kettle and smelled something similar to cow manure. It first said overload, so then I enabled powerlifting mode through the app and got the water to boil. After about five minutes of boiling water, it went from 65% to 41% though.
It's loose until the breaker pops, then you have to push it back in. The battery on this power station is pretty small for a 600 watt load so you'll see if drop pretty fast. If you need to consistently run larger loads, its probably best to get a larger power station. This one shines with powering / charging small devices.
I just ordered this to power up solely my dometic CF3-45 fridge. Im hoping i can get 24hrs if i pre-chill it. fingers crossed! BTW, Amazon has them for $209 with a $90 off coupon. Good Deal.
Bluetti website says it has 2,500 life cycles. No option to purchase the missing cables. Do you have links to a solar cable and a DC charging cable that would work with this? Thanks for the review!
Capacity of the machine / watts of the device = runtime in hours 500 watt hours / 100 watts = 5 hours. Find out how much your fridges pulls in watts and you can calculate it.
anyone buying this small power station wants it for powering their digital office, so having included solar power cables is not necessarily needed; as people like myself already have these cables due to purchasing other Bluetti products. Keeping the price point to a minimum is the target consumer for this mighty device.
We received our EB3A a week ago. Because we have frequent power interruptions due to Florida storms, we bought it specifically to run wifi router in UPS mode (brand new ATT fiber optic). Performed flawlessly when initially run on AC inverter battery power (pulls less than 35 watts), but in UPS mode when battery was charging and reached 100%, the sine wave seemed different (not pure?) and router went haywire and wouldn't work. Anyone else have this problem or done testing to confirm standby UPS sine wave? Love the unit, but so disappointed it won't run sensitive equipment in UPS mode. Thinking of returning it. :(
I wish I had read this comment before I ordered mine last week. Mine is due for delivery today. Hopefully I won't have the same problem because I intent to run my router on it also. Have you contacted Bluetti about the issue? Maybe they have a firmware update that could fix the problem.
@@carl3810 I updated the firmware as soon as I received it. It seems to be working fine. No issues running my router in either mode. Pass through or inverter.
New to LiFePO4 technology. Is it advisable to use this as a UPS device? Maybe plug in my Modem and Router? And maybe an emergency light so that when I have a blackout I won't be in the dark. Or use it as a UPS on a desktop computer for data loss prevention when a power outage happens. Thanks
My unit had a few bugs with the UPS mode. It cut out often, but it was an early release. I have heard good things about the UPS mode from some others that have purchased it. It would work well to keep a router or modem going. Also a desktop would stay powered on for an hour or two off this power station.
Great review. Just bought before watching, so relieved. Currently $209 on Bluetti site, so just under $0.80/wh, so that criteria on your grading scale is currently a pass.
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Excellent review. I bought one about a year ago. Live in condo and just wanted something small I can store in closet in case power goes out, to charge phones and radios to last a day or two until power comes back. Also used it on camping trips. Brought it in the tent to run fan to keep wife cool through the night! It is small but very usable. Also, purchased with the folding solar panels, they work as designed. Pack away nicely in small home.
Great review. I just picked one up for $209. Arrived in one day w/ Prime shipping. Mine does not have the odd fan noise or relay click. Also, not sure if it was a mistake, but it did ship with a solar charge cable. I picked up a "car charger" for $12. Really impressed with this little unit! And thanks again for your review.
I just bought this unit on the prime day sale and it came in right around $200 and included the solar charging cable so I was very pleased
@@BLUExEYEDxSLICKT Cables or Solar Cables and Panel?
Mine did too. So far I love it.
About to pay 300$ witout the solar panels..😞
Paid $300 and it came with a power and solar charging cord. Going to be testing it with the PV120 solar panel soon.
@@oups4391same
I got this one yesterday. I absolutely love it. I already have the Bluetti AC200Max and I love it also!
Just picked one of these up on sale for $209 instead of buying the similar Jackery that was priced slighlty higher. For me it's pretty much just for TV and backup power for my JBL boombox during tailgating for 3-4 hours. Being able to just let my phone sit on top to charge also made it that much more convenient along with that flat top making it easy to stack stuff on top of when lugging things around. I'm really surprised there's no USB fast charging. However, that lifespan compared to Jackery really made the decision for me. So far so good!
Is your eb3a still working well? Do u use it everyday ?
@@randomposts6126 Actually, I returned it soon after and bought the next bigger size with more juice an outlets since they all go on sale. I'd rather have too much than not enough.
Just wanted to say thank you. This was the most comprehensive but also quick and to the relevant points review I've found.
Just got mine yesterday. Minimal fan noise; no relay clicking at all. I'm still learning, but so far, so good!
Thanks for the feedback!
Just purchased the EB-3A before watching your review kicking myself because I paid 268 for it but your review helped me absorb the stung next I’m getting a compatible solar panel thanks I loved your video
Yeah. I was like, awe man... could have gotten 10 bucks off..
Just placed my order and specifically used your promo code and not the one Bluetti sent me. Same discount. I wanted you to get due credit. Thank you, sir.
Excellent review (as always). I hope they incorporate these upgraded features (better display, UPS feature, no need for an external charging brick, etc) into a future EB70s update/replacement (hopefully soon)
In 2022 it amazes me that any company would still put out a product without at least ONE USB-A quick charge port. This really should be one of your requirements for a perfect power station with points added or subtracted. Like a BI-directional USB-C port, these things should be mandatory. Overall, another fantastic review Jason!
Aren't most USB devices going with USBc power delivery no days? It would have been nice to see it, but I think two USBc ports would have been even better!
The ecoflow has one
For the 120$ i got it for with the Amazon coupon, which also came with the solar charging connections I'm giving it a 9.5 for sure. Great little power bank
I am thinking Bluetti should have come out with an improved EB 55 or an improved EB 70. This EB3A seems too small. I think the sweet spot for me would be either the EB55 or the EB 70. I would like to see a power station that is the size of the EB 70 and be able to take in 200 watts of solar with pass-through charging and an improved screen like the EB3A. I appreciate all your videos and you do a great job of producing them.
+1 on that... I bet we' ll see upgraded versions of the EB55 and EB70 soon...
+2 on that... great review Jason... wonder how long it takes for them to put out an EB70 Orr as Jason said EB100 with these improvements
@@rickwilson478 I recently bought the EB70... but an "upgraded" (Display, App ...) EB100 would force me to pull out my wallet again...
I bought the EB 70 and there 200 watt solar setup and got similar charging. Had some haze and it charged at 156 or so but it was also later in afternoon, so not sure why that difference. It also has pass through charging already, but the display sucks. Wish I had been a couple of months later as the EB 70 S had an even better inverter though.
@@markpashia7067 the approx. 150 watts input cap is caused by the maximum of 8 amps of the EB70. This cuts off input above the 150 watts. But nevertheless the SP200/PV200 is a better choice than the smaller SP120 because it charges the EB70 way faster...
Thanks for the review I ended up getting this on Amazon Prime day. So far so good. I do see what you mean about the noise. When I first heard it my heart sank thinking something was wrong with my brand new power station.
Very well done. Informative for existing power station owners and newbies. You likely pushed my to buying one.
It's a great little unit.
I own three of these and believe I've uncovered a "quirk." I say "quirk" after plugging my gateway and tv into a multi-outlet surge suppressor that I then plugged into the EB3A. The AC/UPS function became erratic and shutdown at times while indicating an overload condition. The same happened on another unit when I plugged a TV and Roku device into a multi-outlet surge suppressor. These were small loads of less than 100 watts. It was puzzling since I was running our fridge with the third at higher wattage without any problem, the only difference was the fridge unit was not connected to a multi-outlet surge suppressor, The problem was apparently the multi-outlet surge suppressors because when I plugged directly into the EB3A I no longer experienced the erratic behavior or overloads.
Would love to see this on a eb70a or eb100a configuration. Need more juice and wattage than this and still be portable. Love the Bluetooth software, no charging brick and percentage meter vs the 20% blocks on the other models.
Ac180 presale starting tommorow
My review goes live tomorrow
@@Jasonoid sweet
@@Jasonoid i found 1 review who was complaining about fridges not staying on through the 12v port after someone commenting eco mode could have been on he said he turned that of but he was very anti bluetti so ik wonderinv what is true
Regarding the "fan noise" issue. I replaced my fan with a higher quality dual ball bearing fan and the buzzing is still there. The buzzing appears to be generated by the fan speed control circuit on the main board. While having the top off, I noticed one of the four screws that hold down the mylar fan tunnel were missing and the tunnel was not installed all the way down flat on all sides. Easy fix, but no noise improvement.
Hey Dr. J
Just ordered a EB3a, thanks for the review.
I think it's a pretty nice power station for under $300
I do believe Bluetti will give us a few Firmware updates impart to your detailed review 😉
I ordered this one a few days ago. Waiting for it to be delivered 😊 thanks for sharing
Did you end up receiving it yet? How is it doing?
I ended up just picking this up on an Amazon Sale. This thing is crazy good. It runs like a champ. I have the ac180, and it does great powering a 2023 Forest River Aurora Light 16BHX. You can run the 30AMP dog bone to 110v Plug and use it on the AC180. It runs all of the lights, somewhat the ac unit, not on max, but enough. This smaller one is great for a TV at 40 Watts. 12v TVs are the best to use with it. Lower wattage. Played my PS4 for a good 3 hours straight. I do have a portable ps4 monitor on it when doing so. Pretty dang neat. If you have any real questions about the AC180 or this one, ASK AWAY!
Great review. Thanks. FYI: I just purchased one on sale at $209 AND it came with a solar charge cable. Because I'm over 70 I got an additional 5% off. 198.55/268=$.74/watt hr
Wow, 209 is a good price. I just paid $240. Oh well. Mine also came with a solar cable and no AC power cord. That works. Have plenty of those.
from eBay??
Just ordered a River yesterday. I have to admit, this new model is tempting me to return the River. The main reason is for those batteries. That's the one thing I didn't like about the River. Though it looks like this model has some quirks to it and need to be considered.
Great review! Thanks for your work!!!
I grabbed this instead of the river seems like the better option... Did you watch the hobo review
Nice review, looks pretty good.
Most sub 300wh power stations limit solar charging at 60-70 watts, so imo 160 is great.
Could the relay be disconnecting the battery from the charger to analyze the battery?
Wow, just (yesterday) got a Jackery 300 mainly to run my compressor fridge for a few hours while going to the beach and whatever. It's nice and got $50 off at Amazon. Now I see why. This EB3A seems to have everything one could possibly want in a small power station and more. And there is the discount too!. Fortunately these 300 W stations are in the "Free Returns" category and I'm sure once I get my EB3A the Jackery will be going back. After watching tons of videos reviewing power stations it looks like Bluetti addressed every gripe people had. The power brick, the display, the power lights. Plus now the app seems to make it perfect. I disagree on your ratings for $/W only because this and the Jackery have $50 off coupons so that kinda skews the calculation. It would be much worse without the discount. The one thing I still don't like is that dumb light. I guess they feel it needs to be there for some reason.
Can't wait till they incorporate these changes into an EB70 and larger version. I'd probably get one of those too for emergency powering the fridge at the house.
Just ordered one of these for my husband for Father's day. He already has a 180 on solar panels on his Dave Cave. This one will be great for a picnic or a day at the lake. I'm sure he will buy smaller portable solar panel to go with this. Picked it up for a $199.
The magic of this little power station is when you connect it to 200watts of solar. I can run battery chargers, etc all day long with it connected to the solar. It's super helpful when I'm doing yard work and using dewalt 20V powered yard tools. I can run them down to dead and recharge on this power station in a few minutes connected to solar. I have the Bluetti 300B and the 300K whole home station as well as the AC180, I use this one the most because it's way more portable and how fast it charges on Solar. Bluetti has never let me down even in full power outages.
Thank you for a great review! I’m leaning towards this as a great starter for me as I’m building out my promaster city. I’d eventually upgrade to a more powerful power station in the future but for all the upgrades in this model it’s a good value to me!
@Timothy Mckee I agree...the faster charging sold me!
Hello
This is how a review is supposed to be. Very god indeed. Thanks.
Thanks!
Excellent informative video 👌🏼 Due to the currant increase in electricity costs & the threat of looming power cuts here in the UK i felt it would be a wise choice to purchase a portable power station so after reading & watching many reviews including yours i went ahead & purchased this Bluetti EB3A.
It will be more than suitable for my power needs, to include powering my Cpap machine.
Thank you for your Review, it helped me make my descion plus i saved £50 in the Bluetti Black Friday sale. 👍🏼
Is it still charging up to 100% and how long does power last
Been debating for months on an entry-level power station for short outages and van camping. The EB3A won me over and I ordered it through your link...thx for the discount code. Coincidentally, I'm visiting Las Vegas (live in Florida) and was able to stop at Bluetti showroom/warehouse yesterday. Like being a kid in a candy store! They were nice enough to help me acquire the 8mm car charger that I'll need for road trips. Now just need to rewatch your solar panel review videos, order one, and I'll be set for a while. Still dreaming of home backup system....😎
I need to hit up that showroom sometime. It's nice to have someone to talk to in person :)
I just got my EB3A yesterday 10/31/22 for $239 and it did come with solar charging cable. I purchased a small ceramic heater to heat up my small teardrop trailer while camping. Can't wait to try it out
How did it do with your ceramic heater?
@@metthem88 I bought a year ago and it's been great honestly. No issues at all. Keep in mind, I don't run anything really heavy with it. But for what I use it for (ceramic heater, fan, charging devices, blowing up air beds, compressors).It's great 💪
Outstanding review. Grabbed one on a super sale without doing any research. Happy to see that a lucked into a good purchase. Mine did come with a solar panel cable. And as an extra bonus it works with my Jackery 12v car charger.
I wanted to see the UPS mode demonstrated. Otherwise a very fine review! Thanks!
Love your detailed reviews. Trying to decide on a ~300 watt portable power station. This one surprised me with all it's options, but I'm still leaning towards the EcoFlow River 2. Would love to see a head to head comparison.
Hi. I'm going to Buy this power station to be prepared for possible power outages in Ukraine. But i'd like to know, is the problem with the relay fixed now ?
It definitely needs a greater ranger of cables included, but excellent unit.
For my needs this works better than I could imagine. At 200.00 perfect.
Just purchased mine. And this unit did come with the solar charging cable. Humm awesome.
Great review and greeting from the Netherlands. l just received my EB3A (€279) + PV120 solar panel (€299). In Europe the EB3A comes with a 220v cable and a solar connection cable. I bought the 12v cigarette lightning cable separately (€19,99). I will take it on my holiday to Italy next week, upon which I will primalery use my Dometic CFF35 compressor cooler. Very curious how things work out.....
Great review. I really appreciate all of the scenarios that you put the power station through.
Glad it was helpful!
Coming from the 2 smallest jackery this is still an upgrade for me lots of useful features and can use my.jackery panels
Silent charge mode is not silent while using it as a ups contrary to many reviews. I guess the charger keeps kicking on to top off the battery. The parasitic drain thing. Those strange fan noises starting and stopping are bothersome, especially at night. I bought a USB fan and placed it outside the exhaust vent to pull air through the device externally and it seems to be keeping the EB3A fan from kicking on. It replaces that weird fan noise starting and stopping all night with a quiet hum. One more thing I have not seen reviewed and that is the app only connects if you are using the device as a ups, or right after you activate the EB3A screen. In other words, unless you are using the EB3A, the Bluetooth shuts down after a short interval. It is not always ready for a connection.
Good catch on that UPS mode with the sine wave. Very interesting.
Just a little noisy while charging, other than running communication equipment it should be fine
thanks for the review. Are the LiFePO4 batteries so good as they say?
Great review. Kind of small for my needs but great charging capabilities. Sad it doesn't come with cables which is surprising from bluetti. Probably perfect for the quick
"grab N go" type station though.
Good review. Very helpful. Question, does the length of cords connected to solar panels affect or limit solar input charging capacity? Just curious if there is noticeable voltage or wattage drop based on the length of those cables? If so, what is the maximum length of mc 4 cables before getting compromised voltage drop? Seems like so many of those cables are really short. Could you use say a 50' cable without losing charging power? Thankyou for the segment.
I made a whole video on that here
th-cam.com/video/AZIBmFBzBGs/w-d-xo.html
Was not expecting a UPS mode or wireless charging pad on top. So that’s a nice added bonus. Also the “no load” power drain wouldn’t be an issue for me because I only plan to use it if I need to discharge it. I’m not sure why someone would keep this “on” but not have any load in use? Also no bi-directional USB-C charging is not really an issue. The AC and solar input is fine. I don’t see how the bi-directional charging would be useful because I cannot think of a scenario where I would not have access to either AC or solar but only had USB-C charging.
I bought EB 3A, I came with an input able.. My fan does NOT make a noise like yours, thank goodness. I have a drawer full of cables from old printers etc one dorks for Ac input
Must heard us on the solor charging cable... Just bought mine and it came with the A/C cable as well as the solor connector.
Just got mine today (5th April 2023), it's the UK version and I can report no strange fan noises.
got mine on sale last week at amazon for $210 after $90 rebate ($300-$60 now) with a return date of 1/31 due to the holidays, there’s 3.5 months of time to try it out before a possible free return. now’s the time at amazon to try it, with their lonf free return period. it did come with the solar power adaptor too. the car cable was $10 extra. just charged it and updated the firmware too. so far so good.
I use eb3a as my ups back up, it’s plugged in wall at all times. Its a backup for my aquarium. Every so often I would lose power to my pumps, even though I didn’t lose power to house?
Great. Can’t wait for the inbuilt power brick and better display to be added to the larger capacity power stations.
Putting aside space or cost, would you recommend two of these over one EB55? Using for Small Vanlife purposes. One small fridge and small device charging. I like the idea of redundancy and charging one at a time... Is the output technology better on these? I can see they are different than the EB55. Thanks so much!
I think that would work, having two of these and charging one while using the other. Two of these comes in at the same price as one EB55 right now since the large sale.
In a case of a power outage you should test things that are truly used to see how helpful this product is
I agree. A lot of these reviews on TH-cam are feature reviews, not real world. Most receive these for free. It would be great if they did actual use reviews.
It was interesting to compare your review and the Hobotech review, as you basically had the results of AC and DC capacity tests reversed! The Hobotech review had 78% on DC and 86% on AC, I believe, and your results were practically a mirror image. How many watts were you pulling on the AC test?
Anyway, I have one coming with the code and a $50 gift card (from Bluetti Bucks) for $189 and I'll be trying it out myself.
I'm really hoping that all the next generation of Bluetti's smaller units follow many of these design details. I have an EB55 and it's great, but if it had this display and could use the app it would be even better.
Not sure why his was different. These smaller power stations always do better with DC output so I wasn't surprised with my results.
If the EB70 came with this display, I'd be much more interested in that one. For the 3A, if I needed something small like it, it'd definitely be in my sights.
I did end up buying it, and I believe Bluetti is sending out the solar charging cables for free. When I bought mine on Amazon there was a code for a free solar adapter cable, and I believe it should be arriving in a day or two. I received my EB3A last week.
Something I'm trying to figure out is what to do about solar charging. I have a good few Goal Zero panels that work, but they're 18V, so I won't be able to get too far beyond 150W of solar charging. I've got my eye on two BigBlue panels, one of them would be perfectly fine and charge between 160W and 170W, and the other would be able to saturate the 200W, but the problem is with the 30Voc of the panels, which goes over Bluetti's 28V rating. The 24Vmp is fine, and I'd be able to get the full 200W out of it, but I'm not sure if the EB3A has a loose enough tolerance to handle any of the 30Voc of those panels.
Thanks for sharing. What is the estimated lifespan if use it properly,
And is it worthy to have it repaired ?
If it's not abused it should last for many years. It is not serviceable by the normal person, to get it repaired you'd have to ship it back to Bluetti.
@@Jasonoid not possible here. Most resellers ordered it overseas
Do you think this is a good starter portable power station for phones and such? Looks great.
I'd say it's a good way to learn how solar panels work and such :)
Another great review, nice work on b-roll and different camera angles. Glad you focused on the standby losses fan startup sound - that’s really odd but hopefully is fixable. I didn’t have the shutoff when charging issue but maybe I just missed it?
The charging issues didn't happen that often but I noticed it and think it deserves to be fixed. An annoyance more than anything. Thanks Todd!
Hello and thank you for all your hard work and videos. I am completely new to the world of solar power stations and panels and the like. I have purchased an EB3A Bluetti and I want to connect it to a glass rigid solar panel so that I can power my greenhouses. Can you please give me some advice on what you would do? Would it be better to use a power station like Bluetti and a solar panel or would it be better to use a 12V car battery and a solar panel. I need at least 600W to power a fan and or a low voltage heater for cold nights. I live in Maryland so our winters arent like the West or North. I dont understand the how the car battery equals or compares to a solar power station like a Bluetti. Please advice, Thanks a ton for all your videos and sharing what you know!
I’ve got two of these, they’re brilliant 😊
Perfect video test. One question, is the ups mode some kind of special mode that i have to turn on? Or its just automatic behavior that after charging the batrery to 100% bluetti ststion enters the ups mode automatically?
UPS mode is automatic whenever the power station is charging from grid power.
It IS under 80 cents as you can get it most places for $200-220. We got one for $219 and LOVE it. We use it to power a mini fridge and string lights at nighttime markets where we sell pies. Totally does the job.
Prices change on a daily basis, when the video was filmed it was more expensive. Glad you got it for such a great price!
Why have Bluetti only got dual charging on the EB55 and AC200 max ? I am not sure which Portable solar station to get as I want LIFEPO4 batteries but prefer the ECOFLOW display (its annoying the Bluetti displays go off after a few seconds). Looking to run my desktop and home office / workshop (some loads and a 500W heater in winter). I service electronics / test equipment so total output would be around 1000W per hour. Would it be better to build a system with separate modules (solar charger, battery and inverter) ? Is it better to have a 2000Wh system or a smaller 1000W (or 2 smaller ones 500W each) as doing tests on cloudy day 100W panel running about 14 to 20 watts output. Perhaps these are some ideas for your channel ? I would also recommend getting a good multimeter like a Fluke 117 or 85 / 87 for your testing. TENMA 72-3530 is a cheaper alternative multimeter.
Hey Jason, enjoying your review. I plan to send this model to the Philippines for emergency use, specifically for when they have a power outage to charge their cell phone, laptop and tablet. Would this be the perfect option?
It would work well to charge smaller devices like a cell phone and tablet. With a small 100w solar panel you could charge it up pretty quickly too!
Thank you for replying. I appreciate it.
Love your power station reviews these days. You are so thorough. Maybe you need to add a external cables item to your score. It costs them so little to bundle cables but consumers can pay a lot to buy them. This is the best Bluetti design yet, but I will wait for them to add the new features to the slightly higher capacity units. I th8nk EcoFlow needs to step up their game. I love seeing all the innovation companies are adding. Great job.
I've heard from some people that the cables are now included? Maybe they already fixed that issue?! :)
On another note, I went camping this last week where I had a lithium NMC battery pack explode. Very scary situation! I'm sure its a SUPER RARE occurrence (especially with a high quality company like EcoFlow or Jackery) but it might have pushed me away from lithium ion cells forever in power stations. I'll publish that video earlier next week so you guys can see it.
Jasonoid - Solar Power, Batteries, and More! Oh wow! I always worry about that happening because the inside of my car gets really hot. I would hate to burn up my car, or me. LOL. I sure wish EcoFlow would start doing LiFePO4 more. I know it is bigger and heavier, but I am willing to live with it. Where did you go camping?
@@litnoregrets7551 near upper stillwater reservoir this last week. Fun trip, I'll have a video about the fun stuff.... Then the battery exploding haha
Jasonoid - Solar Power, Batteries, and More! Looking forward to seeing the video. I prepping for a Glacier trip in late July. Need to figure out how to best mount a solar panel on my RAV.
I think this is the best bluettie product I’ve seen. I may get this one. Great review.
Just purchased one on Amazon, on sale for $209.00 before tax, and yes mine did also come with the solar cable, for what I will use this for it was well worth it, I am now looking at the 2048 watt unit for home
It's about time that they came out with one that didn't have a break. Lol. I'm a little disappointed in the price per watt hour like you said.. Thank you again Jason for another great video
I just purchased one today I'm really hoping it can handle bougerv 12 volt 30 quart bougie RV refrigerator I also just purchased. And it should be a basic requirement to include all cables for the options it raves about
Great review! DC is 13.3V not 12V?? The advertised spec is 12V. 13.3V is 10% deviation. Is that normal?
It's just like a car battery, a car battery when the engine is running is around 14 volts, and can range from 14.7v down to 11.5v. 13.2v is the perfect voltage for running 12v devices.
can you charge it through both AC and DC at the same time?
Since AC charging is so fast, it's not needed
Jason, I just bought the EB3A last Friday July 22 and I paid $209.00 for it.
Excellent price!
Thanks for the in depth review. I was wondering how well using a 12V 100AH LifePO battery that runs for around $350 would be to increase the watt hours for the EB3A? (Plus appropriate cable and a fuse) For instance could we use the combination of the two to get a longer run time for a portable fridge, etc. Or is there a better way to do this? Thanks again.
I have a video about that process coming soon. I think you'll find it helpful! DIY expansion options.
Just plug in another battery to the charge port.
Actually my dream would be an EB 100 and better still would be one with add on battery storage for those three and four day camping trips where I am not sitting around with solar panels and can go hiking or fishing away from the vehicle. Don't trust portable panels in a campground while away from them. Just need a cheap way to charge more storage and seems silly to buy a whole other setup when the charging circuits are not in use most of the time. Seems like I could charge the EB70 at home, then charge another 500 to 1000 watt hrs of storage before I go out and all my troubles would be solved. Is that power source you had in the video something that is sold or easy to build? And what rating does it have? Would love to power my 12v refrigerator for three days or so on a charge while boondocking with no power and not able to use solar. Also sometimes in locked car with no shade and high temps like at beach in Florida, so it runs down faster. There I had power at campsite and had to charge nightly as it took me down to forty percent per day in Feb. Here in June it will be worse. Any tips would be great. That new screen on this one is vast improvement and the bluetooth app is great. As temped as I am to buy one of these, just not enough storage except for day trips.
Interested in the UPS feature. We lost power for 2 days and I was without WiFi. Want something to keep my router up. I can't imagine the router pulls much power so it should be enough for a few days? I also travel a lot and my security cameras need the network to send footage to the cloud and to alert me.
The AC inverter uses a bit of background power when enabled (think small battery big inverter) so it wouldn't last for a long time like that unless you had a solar panel to supplement the battery.
Which side is the air intake, and which side is the fan exhaust? I can hear the fan ramp up, and I guess I feel some breeze, but it's hard to tell.
Great review!….. others released 1st but yours is more organized and complete….. sure hate the 7 pm release date…..
Hi Jason, Great explanation, I am getting one BLUETTI EB3A. What would be my best option on getting the solar cable and panels price wise. Any suggestions. Thank you
Excellent review. One question is how much power can you pass thru when in ups mode? For example the oukitel p2001 let's you pass 1100 watts thru.
No more than 600 watts.
On sale right now 6/14/23 for $209
Would be nice to have an expansion unit for the battery on this device that will triple the capacity and keeps the same size
Just ordered one today. I'll let you know how I like it. Very nice review.
Two thumbs up for the review. I'm waiting for the UPS delivery of my RB3A tomorrow.
Hope you enjoy it!
Thank you. Great review. Did the unit get hot with Silent 100W charging? Would this prolonge battery life in comparison to Normal charging or maybe not due to the fact that fans are not cooling the battery down.
I didn't ever notice any heat when using silent charging. The internal heat sinks seemed to work well.
I just received this unit for the purposes of UPS. I have my modem and router plugged in, which is a max of 28w. At first I was using it in standard mode and the fan was coming on about every half hour. When I switched to silent mode there was absolutely no difference. The fan still comes on about every half hour and is just as loud. Before updating the firmware I did get an overload error that shut the unit down. Why would it overload on 28w? Hopefully the firmware update corrects this problem. Otherwise this will not be a reliable UPS.
@@AlexandraNevermind On my unit also ventilator kicks in when charging in Silent mode
Good, clear review, thank you!
Very disappointed with no USB fast chargers at all. You would think in these times and ages that that would be mandatory. And with such a small power station you would think that they'd have that by directional PD charging support
Just connect a splitter to the superior usbc port
@@bradskrypto9212 Can you translate that for the rest of us? Thanks in advance.
@@colacurciolaw7745 quick charge is a technology used my some mobile devices to support charging faster from usb ports. Power delivery is a technology that allows devices get more power from a usb c port. (Up to 100w in this case) this allows the devices to charge much faster than with standard usb output. Most modern devices support power delivery as long as you use a usb c cable. Newer Laptops, tablets, android phones and even iphones (using a lightning to usb c cable). In this case you could use a usb c splitter that also supported splitting with power delivery intact. Or you could even use 12v car adapter that supported power delivery or quick charge to expand your options fairly cheaply. Hope this helps.
USB-C is the way to go.
USB C is the newest quick charge method which it does have. 2.0, 3.0 QC usb is old technology and will be old news soon. So idk what you are talking about. If people still want to charge via usb many systems don't even support QC and will work fine for the usb there. Plus its hard enough to offer that for less then 300 bucks in a system this nice. You might as well buy a smaller powerbank with QC if they still make those like a anker.
Good review!
I think the target market must be UPS users who might want a few extra features, although it really needs a user-replaceable battery. Otherwise the capacity is way too small.
Speaking of which, I'd fail it on capacity for consumer fraud, since it doesn't meet its capacity claim, especially on DC.
Not including a solar-charging cable is baffling, especially for the price.
BMS inefficiencies will cause any power station to not live up to 100% of its capacity. Some of that power has to go to the lights, buttons, display, cooling, sensors, inverter, etc of the unit itself.
@@MakeHoneySticks it isn't the bms inefficiency, it is the regulation efficiency loss. Pull that pack out of the unit and its capacity would measure over more than likely. This isn't any different from any other brand making these things. They ALL have conversion/regulation losses, not related to the bms at all.
@@toddyork5698 you're arguing with the wrong person. We are both saying all these units have these problems and that's ok and expected.
@@MakeHoneySticks yes, we are both saying there are losses. I am correcting you in that it isn't the bms causing the losses.
@@toddyork5698 BMS uses 0 power? Cool!
The UPS companies should be trembling in their boots over this one. To get a true sine wave 600 real watt (not VA) with crappy SLA batteries will set you back about $600 from the big 2. Blue tooth and solar charging are just that much more reason to start throwing those old UPS's to the curb. I will buy 2 for sure. Great review! If there are worries about the AC noise from the charger on the output, plug in a good Tripp Lite Isobar between your load and the EB3A.
the question i don't see answered is. what happens when the battery runs out in ups mode? does it automatically go back to the ac outputs being on when power is restored? if it doesn't UPS comanies have nothing to worry about.
@@airgun1974 For the AC180, as long as it is plugged into the mains, the AC180 will turn on and start to recharge the battery once power is restored. I have not checked to see if the UPS function initiates automatically yet. To be honest, i had multiple Tripplite USP systems (with SLA batteries) and at least one would fail to restart after a power outage due to the SLA battery being damaged by the event. The difference with the EB3A, is that 250 watts of load will run about 40 minutes, where as the Tripplite ran about 4 minutes, and that was good for 2 or 3 shots before the SLA battery fried. If you are going to run one of these as a UPS, make sure that you are using standard or turbo as the charging method, otherwise you are draining the battery if the load is higher than the selected charge rate (i learned this thru experience!)
I just got my eb3a, and so far so good. One question though, is the circuit protector button supposed to kind of loose? Right away, I plugged in a 600w kettle and smelled something similar to cow manure. It first said overload, so then I enabled powerlifting mode through the app and got the water to boil. After about five minutes of boiling water, it went from 65% to 41% though.
It's loose until the breaker pops, then you have to push it back in. The battery on this power station is pretty small for a 600 watt load so you'll see if drop pretty fast. If you need to consistently run larger loads, its probably best to get a larger power station. This one shines with powering / charging small devices.
@@Jasonoid Ty
I just ordered this to power up solely my dometic CF3-45 fridge. Im hoping i can get 24hrs if i pre-chill it. fingers crossed! BTW, Amazon has them for $209 with a $90 off coupon. Good Deal.
I just bought one on sale on Amazon. Question: do you put a solar charge controller between the panels and the unit?
The solar charge controller is built into the unit, no external one needed.
Bluetti website says it has 2,500 life cycles. No option to purchase the missing cables. Do you have links to a solar cable and a DC charging cable that would work with this? Thanks for the review!
Glad to hear it is rated at more than 2000 cycles!
Bought this for my little Ford transit connect build. Got mine for $220 which I can’t complaint too much about it
Just need to know if it will run my fridge and for how long. Teach me how to calculate that please. Nice video!
Capacity of the machine / watts of the device = runtime in hours
500 watt hours / 100 watts = 5 hours. Find out how much your fridges pulls in watts and you can calculate it.
anyone buying this small power station wants it for powering their digital office, so having included solar power cables is not necessarily needed; as people like myself already have these cables due to purchasing other Bluetti products. Keeping the price point to a minimum is the target consumer for this mighty device.
We received our EB3A a week ago. Because we have frequent power interruptions due to Florida storms, we bought it specifically to run wifi router in UPS mode (brand new ATT fiber optic).
Performed flawlessly when initially run on AC inverter battery power (pulls less than 35 watts), but in UPS mode when battery was charging and reached 100%, the sine wave seemed different (not pure?) and router went haywire and wouldn't work. Anyone else have this problem or done testing to confirm standby UPS sine wave?
Love the unit, but so disappointed it won't run sensitive equipment in UPS mode. Thinking of returning it. :(
I wish I had read this comment before I ordered mine last week. Mine is due for delivery today. Hopefully I won't have the same problem because I intent to run my router on it also. Have you contacted Bluetti about the issue? Maybe they have a firmware update that could fix the problem.
@@troyyarbrough I'm about to order ut for the same reason. Did it work? Thanks
@@carl3810 I updated the firmware as soon as I received it. It seems to be working fine. No issues running my router in either mode. Pass through or inverter.
@@troyyarbrough thanks!
New to LiFePO4 technology. Is it advisable to use this as a UPS device? Maybe plug in my Modem and Router? And maybe an emergency light so that when I have a blackout I won't be in the dark. Or use it as a UPS on a desktop computer for data loss prevention when a power outage happens. Thanks
My unit had a few bugs with the UPS mode. It cut out often, but it was an early release. I have heard good things about the UPS mode from some others that have purchased it. It would work well to keep a router or modem going. Also a desktop would stay powered on for an hour or two off this power station.
Great review. Just bought before watching, so relieved. Currently $209 on Bluetti site, so just under $0.80/wh, so that criteria on your grading scale is currently a pass.