Fundamentals · 4 min read
Wh vs W, explained
Watt-hours are the tank; watts are the tap. Why both matter.
Guides
Portable power station guides: understand the spec sheet
Short, plain-language explainers for the questions every power-station buyer runs into — what the numbers mean, which battery chemistry lasts, and why a “70% off” banner usually isn’t. Every figure here is a published constant or a plainly-attributed industry number, carried with its source and the date it was read.
Fundamentals
Chemistry · 5 min read
LFP vs NMC
Chemistry, cycle life and safety — which lasts, and why.
Chemistry · 6 min read
Battery cycles & lifespan: how long will it last?
What a '4,000-cycle' rating means in years, and why LFP outlives the device around it.
Fundamentals · 9 min read
mAh to Wh, for power stations
Why the mAh on the box is a bigger number than the energy inside.
Sizing and runtime
Runtime · 6 min read
How long will a power station run a fridge?
A fridge only draws power a third of the time. What that means for hours of backup.
Wattage · 6 min read
Can a power station run an AC, space heater, or microwave?
The running watts and startup surge for the heavy loads people most over-ask of an inverter.
Camping · 9 min read
What Size Power Station Do I Need for Camping?
Three sourced campsite energy budgets, plus weight and Wh/lb comparisons for real models.
Sizing · 5 min read
500Wh vs 1000Wh power station: which size?
Compare the runtime, carry-size, and upgrade tradeoffs between 500Wh and 1,000Wh.
Sizing · 5 min read
1000Wh vs 2000Wh power station: which size?
Compare the runtime, carry-size, and upgrade tradeoffs between 1,000Wh and 2,000Wh.
Solar
Setup and installation
Outages and emergencies
Buying decisions
Medical devices
Complete kits: everything the setup needs, not just the station
Guides explain the principle; kits turn it into a packing list. Each one names the station that fits the scenario and then the cables, adapters, and backups that make the rest of the plan hold up.
- CPAP overnight
- Refrigerator outage
- Weekend camping
- RV starter
- Starlink remote work
- Apartment outage
- Photography + drone
Which guide to read, and when
These are the pages that explain how the category works rather than which product to buy. They exist because almost every bad power-station purchase traces back to one of four misunderstandings, and none of them is fixed by comparing more models.
Read one of these before you open a single product page
If you are shopping and have not yet settled what watt-hours and watts each do for you, start there and nowhere else. Nearly every comparison on this site is unreadable without it, and the specification sheets are actively misleading if you have the two confused — they lead with a large number that answers the question you were not asking.
The chemistry pages change what "lasts" means
Cycle life is the specification most often quoted and least often understood. A rating in the thousands of cycles is a statement about a laboratory schedule, not about years in your garage, and the two chemistries in this category age along quite different curves. Read this before paying for capacity you intend to keep for a decade.
The pricing pages are the ones that save money
Two guides here exist because of a habit specific to this category: list prices that were never charged, and permanent sales dressed as events. They explain what the price record on our model pages is actually showing you and how to tell a genuine low from a manufactured one — which is worth more, in cash, than any ranking on this site.
Where a guide stops and a calculator starts
A guide gives you the principle and worked examples; it cannot know your appliances. The moment your question has a number in it — how many hours, what size, will this start — you want a tool or a sizing page instead, and every guide here links to the right one. Reading further into a guide past that point is a way of avoiding the arithmetic rather than doing it.