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Portable power stations · amazon.com

The right power station for camping, RV and home

Short answer: about 300Wh for phones and lights, 500–800Wh for a 12V fridge, and 1,000Wh or more for home backup.

Find a station

Size it before you buy

Four quick questions and we’ll suggest the station we’d start with.

1What is the job?

2What do you need to run?

3How much weight will you carry?

4Do you want solar input?

Four short questions

Tell us the job, what you’ll run, how much you’re happy to carry and whether you’ll use solar. We’ll suggest a size and the station we’d start with.

Wh class before brand

Pick the size before the brand. Runtime claims on the box assume a light load, so we’d take the watt-hours and work it out against what you’ll actually run.

~200–300 Wh

Phones, lights, a laptop

If that’s all you need, a power bank is lighter.

~500–800 Wh

A small fridge or CPAP overnight

Go by your fridge’s average draw, not the box.

~1,000 Wh

Fridge plus lamps through a short outage

Great for the essentials, but it won’t run the whole house.

~1,500–2,000+ Wh

Van galley, RV, TT-30 hookups

These are heavy, so they stay where you park them.

All stations

Here’s every station we cover, grouped by size. Each review tells you who it suits, who’d be better off with something else, and how long it’ll run.

~200–300 Wh

~500–800 Wh

~1,000 Wh

~1,500–2,000+ Wh

Use-case guides

Best of · All stations by size · How we compare

What size portable power station do you need?

Short answer: about 300Wh for phones and lights, 500–800Wh for a 12V fridge overnight, 1,000Wh for a fridge plus lamps through a short outage, and 2,000Wh for an RV or a long home outage. Pick the size first, then the brand.

Here’s the simple way to work it out. Take the station’s watt-hours, multiply by 0.85 for inverter losses, then divide by the average watts of what you’ll run. The table shows what that means for the two loads people ask us about most. If you’d rather answer four quick questions, the power station size calculator does the math for you.

Size classUsable energy12V fridge at 50WKitchen fridge at 150W
~250–300Whabout 210–250Whabout 4–5 hoursabout 1 hour
~500–800Whabout 435–650Whabout 8–13 hoursabout 2–4 hours
~1,000Whabout 870–980Whabout 17–19 hoursabout 5–6 hours
~2,000Whabout 1,735–1,960Whabout 34–39 hoursabout 11–13 hours

What’s the best portable power station for camping?

For a weekend of lights, phones and a laptop, we’d start with the Jackery Explorer 300 or, on a budget, the EcoFlow RIVER 3 Plus. If you’re bringing a 12V fridge, step up to the EcoFlow RIVER 2 Pro. The camping weekend guide walks through the math.

What’s the best power station for home backup?

For a fridge, router and lamps through an evening outage, a 1kWh station like the EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus does the job. For a longer outage, we’d go to 2kWh: the Jackery Explorer 2000 v2 if you want it light, or the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 if you want to add batteries later. More in the home blackout guide.

Common questions

How long will a portable power station run a fridge?
Multiply the station’s watt-hours by 0.85, then divide by your fridge’s average watts. A 12V compressor fridge averaging 50W runs about 17 hours on a 1,024Wh station. A kitchen fridge averaging 150W runs about 5 hours on the same station.
What’s the difference between watt-hours and watts?
Watt-hours (Wh) tell you how much energy the battery holds, so they decide how long it runs. Watts (W) tell you how much power it can deliver at once, so they decide what it can start. A kettle needs lots of watts for a few minutes, while a fridge needs fewer watts for many hours.
Is a portable power station the same as a solar generator?
Mostly, yes. A solar generator is usually a portable power station sold with one or more solar panels. The station is the battery and inverter, and the panel is just one way to recharge it.