Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We recently had a couple of minor tornadoes (if there is such a thing) race through North Atlanta, and it left us without power for 24-hours. It seemed like an eternity! I was very close to losing about $400 worth of food. I had an inverter that was rated at 275 watts, and tried to use it to power my freezer, but the initial power surge was too strong for too long for that inverter to handle it. So I bought this inverter with hopes of not only being able to occasionally power my freezer, but also possibly my main fridge in the kitchen during an extended outage. It was not only able to do both, but both at the same time, which is amazing. The freezer surges to 595W, and then after about 10 seconds drops to 125W where is just hums along. The refrigerator (25cu/ft Frigidaire) surges initially to 705W, and then after about 10 seconds drops to 205W continuous. I measured all of this using a Kill-A-Watt device. I attached the freezer first and waited until it was only drawing 125W, then attached the fridge. I did this while the inverter was attached directly to my car battery with my car running. When I attached the fridge, the car sounded like it was going to stall, but it recovered and powered everything nicely. In the event of an actual outage, I would probably just power each appliance individually for 30 minutes or so every 4 hours to keep things cold. I like knowing that this unit provides enough power to be able to handle either appliance, plus run an LCD TV, or some lights, etc. Great inverter at a great price. If you're struggling with whether to buy a portable gas generator so that you're prepared for extended outages, this unit may prevent you from having to do that. It obviously won't do everything a generator can, but it's a lot cheaper, and can handle a lot of the basics.