Goal Zero Yeti 400 Portable Power Station, 400Wh Battery Powered Generator Alternative with 12V, AC and USB Outputs

This is a good to great product for its design capacity. It is a power pack only! Only AC charging in this option (other option sold separately). Solar Generator is a misnomer if you have solar panels for this, it will recharge. A more correct name would be a power pack (option for a solar recharge). It is just a 29lbs box with a 12 volt 33Ah AGM Lead Acid battery (~400 watts) with 2x 2.1 ampere USB outlet, 12 volts outlet and 300 watts pure sine AC inverter.First (is this product right for you?), you need to know what you want to power and for how long (run-time). This is true for any alternative power product. If you don't know the watts, you can buy a watt meter for less than $20, or if the manufacturer has the information, you can look on the web or call. Note most manufacturer ratings in manuals are for Max power drain.(5 Stars)Product Ratings: quality is 4; functionality 4+; customer service 4-5 (both pre and post); Cost 2; educating users i.e. ads, manual etc. 2. For an overall rating of 3+. Goal Zero can go a long way by having educational series (YouTube) preparing, how to, and best practices including when to use and not use their products. Note on the cost; it is not as much as a function of Goal Zero over charging but that the more mobile and multifunctional the more costly it becomes.This product is a low power option ~400 watts and is only good for low power items like cell phone, radios, cordless phone power base, some LED lighting or small LED TVs and some CPAPs. If you can use a portable gas generator, you can get a 2,000 watts units for less than this item. The main use most people that I have talk too about this products is as a backup for a CPAP which is one reason I use it.If your CPAP with humidifier is 90 Watts with AC (ex. ResMed S9 CPAP), then here how to work out the power. Using the AC uses about 20% to covert DC to AC so the unit (Yeti 400) now is 320 watts. 320/90 = about 3+ hours. But if you use the humidifier on low the CPAP is somewhere between 40 to 70 watts so 320/40 watts is about 8 hours. My CPAP (not a S9) has a Car DC adapter (No loss for going from DC to AC and back to DC again.). that uses only 11 watts without humidifier installed and because I am NOT using the AC; I have ~400 watts. This comes out to be about 36 hours (about 4 and a half nights). This is why some reviews looks contradictory.I also have a portable gas generator so why did I get the Yeti 400. I live in a rural area with power outages between 7 and 10 times a year. Most outages are only for a few hours and occur in bad weather and at night. Moving the generator outside and running power cords (open windows or doors for the cables) are best done in the daylight and not during bad weather. Also I use it car camping, remote photo shoots, and other mobile activities. Its' mobility and the fact that I only need about 250 watts (min mobile) is why I choose it.

After looking at numerous solar options I decided to go with the Yeti 400 as a way to power my CPAP during power outages. In my short trial it turns out to be EXACTLY what I hoped it would be. The size is great and it lasts as long as I had hoped. The number and types of outlets is ideal. Though I got this so I could also charge my phones, radios and LED lights (Goal Zero ones) during hurricanes, etc., the primary purpose was for my CPAP. I read the reviews like most people do and decided this package, with it's pure sine wave inverter and numerous outputs, was the one for me. I also periodically go camping and this will allow me to go to sites without being tethered to an electrical outlet. When the machine arrived five days ago the meter showed the 80%. I used it to run my RESMED AUTOSET II CPAP that first night. I did NOT use the humidifier. After 7+ hours of sleep it still read 80%. The numbers are a little misleading though. It reads in 20% increments, so if it reads 80% it could be anywhere from 80 to 99%. The pictures clearly show the 'meter'. I wasn't sure how much juice it really drew so I ran a longer test.I plugged in the YETI the next day and it was fully charged by bedtime. I used it for three nights straight without recharging to simulate a camping trip or short power outage. The average number of hours used each night was over 7. After the first night the meter read 80%. After the second night the meter showed 60%. After the third night the 40% was still lit. My guess is that it is actually around the 50% mark. The meter also shows how much juice the machine is using in real time. Mine varied so I didn't try to get an average.Given this, in an emergency I am confident that I could get at least 5 days out of the YETI if it was powering just my CPAP and wasn't recharged in any way. I've read that using the humidifier would greatly reduce that. Makes sense. Again, I didn't use the YETI 400 to power anything other than the CPAP. I know that these types of batteries aren't supposed to be run down completely, but in an emergency I wouldn't be all that concerned in the short term. Also, I read in one of the Q&As that Goal Zero recommends completely running down the battery every 2-3 months. I will verify before I do that.My next addition with be a RENOGY 100W folding solar panel. I decided on this rather than getting four Boulder 30 panels and chaining them together - and getting a stand to put them on. The YETI 400 can take up to 120W input, but the RENOGY panel provides close to the max in a form that works best for me. It also has it's own stand. I will not be using the panel that often and having a panel that folds out of the way is more important than getting the max number of watts.I am extremely happen with the package in the short time I've had it and look forward to using it out in the woods with a panel attached. The size and convenience make uo for the relativelyt steep price. I did also buy a Guide 10 Plus for when I am just hiking and need juice for my radios.

When my yeti 400 arrived i was super excited to open everything and to my surprise it also comes with a 4.5 mm adapter to 8mm.Solid construction and is just under 30lbs, my favourite feature is that you can turn on and off what ever connection you are plugged into on the pack. some packs when you plug it in, it begins to charge right away but if you want to just kill the switch there is a button for that.At full charge today i ran a 12v portable fridge as i am preparing to go OTG ( off the grid ) overloading camping and need a way to work remotely as well as keep a fridge going. the fridge was running totally fine all day ( 10.15 hours ) before the battery ran out. also i was charging 2 cell phones and also using my work laptop running from that pack as well at one point in the day to charge it up. the fans kicked in a few times as it was using a total of 110 watts out periodically as the fridge would kick in. I am really impressed with this generator and so glad i sold my 2 gas generators.The only real negative thins i could say would be the handle.... nothing wrong with it as it is a very sturdy handle but when driving around with it in the truck, it's all i can hear rattling around when going over bumps and rocks. i will be mounting it at some point and will use the handle as a tie down spot anyways but i wish there was a way for it to be clipped down.all in allreally really happy with this packyou can use it while being charged but keep in mind that is has about 60-65 watts coming in via the DC wall adapter so what ever you are using should be lower then what is coming in.i am doing a test tonight, running the fridge all night off of it while it charges.it takes about 5-6 hours for a full charge so lets see when i wake up how its doing as it was fully dead dead tonight.my overloading Instagram is Roadramr so i will most likely talk about it sometime there.oh and also i chose to order it from a Canadian company Microcel based out of i believe Newmarket Ontario and they have a lot of other fun tech items and battery solutions as well so check them out :)No one sponsored me unfortunately but hey i love supporting local and Canadian as much as possible :)thanksMathew ( Ottawa Canada )Any questions ? I would be happy to answer

The battery does pretty much what I wanted it to do - be the backbone of an emergency Internet connection. It has three outlet sections, each controlled by a switch (nice touch) - a USB 5V section, a block of 120V AC outlets, and a block of 12V outlets. The status display tells you exactly how much wattage you're drawing - an indispensable aid to figuring out the minimum you need to keep the connection alive for several days (I got 3 days with 4W of output) with no power input.The design flaw is inconceivably stupid. Two of the three 12V outlets use 6mm sockets. Those are incompatible with just about any readily available 12V connector - those are commonly 5.5mm. It's almost impossible to find cables that use a 6mm plug to fit those sockets.Had those sockets been 5.5mm, I would have given this product five stars.

Nice product. We did have some battery issues in the first 60 days which oddly went away with no intervention from manufacturer. Had contacted support and they were helpful. Using it to power lights and water pump. Also for charging electronic devices.Solar panels charge the yeti well in good conditions. Inverter generator used to charge it otherwise.

works great with my solar panel 100 w and my fridge.

I can charge it with my solar panels as well as with the A/C adaptor provided. I plug in a power tap with 4 outlets and can charge my laptop, cellphone, tablet, etc. at the same time. It gives me power long enough for a whole day. Charging by the sun takes a bit longer than by A/C, depending on the hours of sunlight available. I have used it for numerous cycles and it works great. Most useful when power is required outdoors such as camping, barbecuing, etc. It worths the money as it can be used many times, free if charged by the sun and cheap if charged by A/C outside peak hours.