Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is my first review on Amazon, and I thought I'd post this for anyone else thinking of using it for Amateur Radio use (or anyone else looking for more details) when making a decision on this product. I will be brief at first with some background info and then go into details in the ---Details--- section. First of all, I ordered the Suakoi 400W portable solar battery the night of 4/10/17, it shipped on 4/11/17, and I received it on 4/13/17. The battery meter was on level 2/5 so I plugged it in with the included power supply and let it charge until the battery meter stopped flashing and the input power was down to 0W. Then I checked the battery voltage on the high power (EC5) connector and it was at 12.46V. It sat until later today (4/15/17) when it was time for some testing. The build date on a slip of paper was 11/14/16 and it was tested on 11/22/16 per included documentation. The reason why I picked this model was that as of today, it's the only battery/inverter/cigarette lighter/USB all in one device that has a high power connector on the side (that EC5 connector.) The latest expensive Yeti models for example don't have such a connector unless you go with something older that is lead acid. So for the money, this is going to be tough to beat for powering your HF radio or 50W+ mobile VHF/UHF radios. It's not perfect yet and I will explain why in a moment, but here's quick summary of the pros and cons first: Pros: . The warranty card I have says it's warrantied for 2 years. This easily beats more expensive units. Nice bonus. . A high power connector that works whether or not you have the unit on or off through the EC5 connector. Buy your own EC5 (battery side) connector through any hobby store and I soldered my connector to a MFJ-1117 that I've had for years. . The solar power connector uses the typical Anderson PP connector (make your own solar connectors if you like) and even comes with a MC4 connector if you buy something commercially made already. . I verified the capacity after a single charge and even with that time it sat in storage was ~381W-h. Although this was only one test, 400W-h seems to be honest. . The inverter is 110V @60Hz and handles overloads just fine--likely able to start small motor and computer loads. It really is a sine wave, too. . When the unit is dead, it will charge at full power to over 75% on a typical 12V car that is running. The peak charge does depend on input voltage, as they state. . There's a nice backlight on the display that actives when you press any button for a short time. I didn't see this anywhere. Cons: . My unit arrived with two small nicks on the right side under the outlets, on the bottom. Although this is minor and I'm sure to add a few more, I have to subtract something. -1/2 star? If this were made of plastic and costs $50 I would not care, but feel I have to subtract something. See the third photo, lower-right. Maybe I'm just picky. :) . I saw another review that said that the included power supply generates RF noise. I checked it out good, and it doesn't appear to be the power supply. It is coming from the unit's charger itself. My JTPS45 is really clean, and when I use it to charge this unit there is a lot of noise in the VHF band...see the details section. I have a charger for my R/C LiPo batteries that does the same thing and I have a work-around in mind (see details). Still, the noise is there. -1/2 star. For non-hams or non-scanner enthusiasts, this is a non-issue. . The output is 110V and would be better at 120V, but no biggie either way. No star deductions here since everything else looks good. --Details-- Ok, so here's some detailed info on what and how I tested this unit. This is probably more than most need to know, but I wanted to know if I can use this on my public service events and for Field Day. The answer is yes, with some precautions. To test the unit, after it sat from a charge for ~2 days I plugged it into a resistive load of mine and the second outlet into my GDS-1102A-U oscilloscope, which is how I made that screenshot. The load tested out at 80.55 ohms (at the end of the test where it reached operating temp) and the input to it was around 109.2V off my 34410A. It ran for 2hr, 24min, 27s so if you go through all of the math I ended up with 381W-h adding another 10% for the inverter; they are usually around 90% efficient. Good deal. The battery meter itself is typical of a UPS. It drops one bar off quickly, the second a little later, and by the time I reached bar 2 of 5 that one took over an hour to drop at which point the last one lit and started flashing shortly after. When the unit was dead, I found that with 13.2V input I was getting about 92W input and at 13.5V 115W input which eventually peaked at 121W as spec'd. As the unit charges and gets near the top, the charge rate slows unless you have a higher input voltage, and my JTPS45 will only output about 14.6V. My resistor bank can only handle about 200W continuous so I tried an overload only briefly. It did 564W for a good amount of time (enough to make me nervous) and briefly even 800W+ before giving the E13 code. Resetting is easy and I think you could start larger loads safely. I tested the 12V outlets and 5V USB outlets using basic items like a flashlight and my Android phone, they all worked. Regarding the RF noise, there is some on HF that I found on 36MHz and 48Mhz, but nothing that I found in the Ham bands. I do not have a spectrum analyzer and wish I did, but where I did find a lot of noise is on my scanner in the VHF bands oddly. i.e. 157MHz, and on several repeater frequencies such as 145,21, 145,37, 146.73, 147.375, 146,650, 146.73, 146.97, and even WX 164.400 and 162.550 where I checked. This noise is only present when charging--it is not there while the unit is on but not charging, or of course when it is off (the EC5 plug is always on.) It says "FCC" on the side and I'm guessing that refers to testing done on the outputs and not while charging the unit. The way around this is to add a linear solar DC regulator on the output that is less than the fully charged voltage i.e. 12.46V in my case [EDIT: FYI, it is 12.6V exactly right off a charge], or get a better switching DC-DC converter that is clean. You could in theory hook a solar panel directly to the output if your battery is down a bit and your draw is more than the panel, but this is risky as I don't know what safety features are built into the battery when it is directly connected. If you're still reading, good luck in your decision and let me know in the comments section if you have any other comments and/or things you've found. As of this writing, considering what you get with a little work-around for VHF it is the best high-power lithium battery out there. If anything changes, I will update this review in the future. '73