Bought a $60 'solar generator' on Amazon and it couldn't even charge my phone twice

Saw this little battery pack advertised as a solar generator for grid down emergencies. Paid $60 for it, got it in the mail, and it died after powering my phone from 20% to 100% one time and then a second charge only got to 60%. Complete waste. Anyone else get burned by those tiny battery packs with fake specs?

2 comments

2 Comments

reesemiller5d ago

1200 watt hours my rear end. I bought one of those "200 watt" solar generators that was actually a 12 volt battery in a plastic lunchbox. It couldn't even run a desk fan for an hour. My phone charger pulls like 10 watts and this thing acted like it was dying. I swear they just print random numbers on the box and hope nobody checks. Lesson learned though, now I compare everything to the actual Wh rating not the fake solar panel spec.

abby_black5d ago

Caught that same trap myself @reesemiller, except I got one that claimed 500 watts but the actual usable capacity was like 150 watt hours. What nobody talks about is the voltage drop on these cheap units - my "12 volt" battery would sag down to 10 volts the second anything tried to pull current, killing the inverter before it even got going. A quality 100Ah battery would actually hold 1200 watt hours stable, but these knockoff brands use thin cells that can't handle a real load. Even my phone charger pulls through the inverter's inefficiency, so you lose another 15% just converting DC to AC and back. Check the BMS specs too, most of these have a continuous discharge limit way lower than the peak rating.