BLUETTIPortable Power Station AC180, 1152Wh LiFePO4 Battery Backup w/ 2 1800W (2700W peak) AC Outlets, 0-80% in 45Min, Solar Generator for Camping, Off-grid, Power Outage

Because of the small size and light weight, the Bluetti AC 180 is the power station we bring with us camping and Boondocking. It easily powers, our coffee maker and cooktop and charges our laptops and devices. We even recharge it with a portable solar panel, so we’re never out of power. Total game changer in the backcountry.

Came in handy for any kind of camping, had no problem running fans all night in the tent keeping phone charged I used with my little compressor cooler to have a little fridge, also for beach days using this power bank in combination with the compressor cooler to pull out frozen popsicles and cold drinks, keeping everyone’s phone charged to keep the music going, it’s awesome. Works good on road trips - plugged right into the car no problem. I did a car camping trip across 7 states and this fits perfectly into the car and lasted for my needs, I got a solar panel to charge it that works awesome too. Even worked amazing during the last hurricane we had, I took it to my grandma so she could keep her phone charged to contact us but also to pass the time playing FarmVille lol, run a fan all night for almost a week straight till she got the power back on in her area. If bluetti ever decides to send free ones out I’ll take one lol, I have this one and the Eb3a both are great no problems going strong, I’m currently trying to saving up for a bigger one. These are definitely quality and come in so many uses.

This has been a solid solar generator for quite some time !! Ive brought this on camping trips , beach outings , home outside movie night , tailgates ...... power where ever I needed it and has lasted me on plenty of occasions... I've tested it on running my full size double door fridge with nothing but great results ..... solid unit for portable power needs !!

More comprehensive review of Bluetti AC180 Power Bank, Jan 3, 2025I purchased the AC180 on Amazon on Dec 1, 2024. Price was $479 plus $49.58 in sales tax for a total of $528.58. I considered this to be a great price, lower than it appears to have ever been previously over it’s life. As of today (Jan 3, 2025) it remains at $479 when using the Amazon included coupon.The device claims to have an 1152 watt hour LiFePO4 battery. Their manual states that you need to de-rate that first by 10%, then again by another 15%. So 1152 * .9 = 1063.8 * .85 = 904.23 watt hours available (when using AC outlets via built in inverter). My testing suggests this is a pretty accurate value. Assume this has a 900 watt hour battery for planning purposes and you should be close.Overall Pros: Self contained, reasonably light weight unit with an 1800 watt continuous, 2700 watt peak, AC inverter. This is big enough to run any individual 120V appliance in my kitchen (toaster oven, microwave, coffee pot). None of those would normally be operated for more than about 5 minutes at any given time, meaning the AC180 could support their intermittent use as needed over a number of hours. It is portable and light weight enough to be moved into the kitchen when needed, and powerful enough to do the job while in there, for a while.Overal Cons: The relatively small internal battery. The other goal I had for this unit was to run my refrigerator during a power outage, and I wanted this to handle that load for 12 hours, plus intermittent heavier loads noted above for short periods of time. My fridge averages about 70 watts over time (with peaks as high as 400 watts when it goes into a de-icing cycle). So assuming a continuous 70 watt draw for 12 hours I would need 840 watt hours, very close to the maximum I could draw from the internal battery. If I added any load at all (brief use of other appliances, or even an LED light bulb), I wouldn’t make my 12 hour goal.My solution: I added an external 100 Amp Hour, 1280 Watt Hour, 12 volt LiFePO4 battery, and connected it to the Bluetti’s solar/charging input port. At 12 volts, it provided about 98 watts of input power. At 24 volts (using a 12 to 24 volt buck converter) it provided about 150 watts of input power. Using a continuous 90 watt draw (through the inverter) and the external battery supplementing the internal battery (at 12 volts), I was able to run over 16 hours and had about 10% of the internal battery remaining. Using a continuous 183 watt draw (via the inverter), and the external battery supplementing at 24 volts (150 watts), I achieved a total of 9 hours of run time (and had 3% left on the internal battery). In both cases, I drew the total 1280 watt hours from the external battery. Another con: The input charging voltage takes a hit also, it took a 107 watt draw from my external battery to produce 98 watts of charge into the AC180. So a hit on the input, and a hit on the output. With the 9 hour, 183 watt test, the overall efficiency (total input watt hours to total load watt hours) was about 77%. Acceptable, but not great. With the 16 hour 90 watt test, the efficiency was about 69%, a bit poorer than with the higher load. Internal inverter inefficiency regardless of how much load is applied took a greater hit with the lower load.Bottom line: Despite the not really great efficiency, I’m happy with the Bluetti. I’ve built a couple of my own “solar generators”, none of which matched the Bluetti for size, weight, and capability in a single package. By adding the external 12V 100AH battery, I’ve given the AC180 the run time I’m looking for with it. Individually, the AC180 and the external battery, are very portable and can be paired at the needed location. With the pair, I can use this in my kitchen to run my fridge for an extended period of time while also using some heavy draw appliances briefly from time to time. Also, this combination is much more cost effective than the newer AC180 V2 with the larger battery. I paid $150 for the external battery.

We purchased this device for two main reasons:1) Our home is subject to intermittent but usually brief power outages, so we wanted something that could power our fridge for a reasonable number of hours;2) We were moving from camping with a small trailer in state and national parks to staying in hotels overnight and then visiting those parks during daylight hours. We wanted an inverter powerful enough to power a microwave and our Engel M17 12/120-volt fridge, so that we could cook and enjoy lunches without having to go to restaurants or needing external 120-volt power sources, and also have ready access to both hot tea and cold drinks.There were a couple of reasons for choosing Bluetti. First, we had the smaller EB3A in our other car, a Honda Element in which we sometimes camp, and the EB3A had done a good job of keeping our electronic devices powered overnight. Also, the AC180 was temporariy substantially discounted at the time of purchase. This seems to happen with several brands of power stations on Amazon.The AC180 has worked well for us. It has no trouble with the puny demands of the Engel fridge. Nor does it seem to be fazed by our microwave oven because we only need it to run for a few minutes to cook or warm up food.It may be worth saying a word about this inverter and our microwave oven. Our microwave is rated at 700 watts, so an inverter that offers 1800 watts with 2700 peak watts may look like overkill. In practice, the microwave actually draws up to 1200 watts, more on startup - the 700 watts is the amount of power directed at the food, not the overall consumption of the oven. Given that we may also be powering other 120-volt loads, we like having the headroom of the AC180.We believe the AC180 to be (at the time of writing) the largest Bluetti that can be powered from a cigaretter-lighter socket. Go to a larger size and you will probably have to figure out how to directly connect the device to your car battery (or solar panels, of course, but we don't use those). Bluetti offers a clever cable which permits direct battery connection without damaging your alternator, but we charge ours from a 12-volt socket. Each day we were on the road in a recent vacation the AC180 would start out at about 70-80% charge and reach 100% charge well before lunchtime. That's a fast enough charge for our purposes. It supports pass-through charging - that is, you can charge it at the same time as you're using it to power your devices.The AC180 is not unduly heavy, but it's certainly no lightweight, and not the sort of thing we would want flying around our vehicle in the event of an accident. We are able to stow it fairly securely on the floor behind the front passenger seat of our 2018 Pilot by lying it on its back. The seat then pushes back far enough to "trap" it between the back of the front seat and the overhang on the front of the rear seat. It is relatively easy to take out if we need it in the house during a power outage.We find it to be quiet, even when the cooling fans come on. In fact, given our use case, we never really notice it at all.A drawback to large power stations like this is their standby battery drain, which I think is around 15 watts. We forgot about this just once and drew the battery down to zero, which supposedly doesn't harm LiFePo batteries like these. It has not damaged our battery, but we have not found a way to set the device so that it shuts down completely after a certain period of time.Bluetti has a little iPhone app to control and monitor the power station. This app is simple and clear and enables us to monitor the AC180 when we're driving without scrabbling around behind the front passenger seat.There used to be complaints about Bluetti's customer service, but this seems to have much improved recently. I have used Reddit for some questions about the AC180, and it is interesting to see that Bluetti technical support often participates in Reddit discussions, in some cases offering replacement or repair. However, the current Amazon rankings for the AC180 indicate a remarkably high level of satisfaction with it: 90% of reviews are 4- or 5-star.