The AC200P from Bluetti, or PowerOak in the UK is the most powerful portable power station I’ve tested so far. It has a massive 2000Wh Lithium Iron Phosphate battery and a 2000W AC inverter that can power large power hungry devices like heaters, coffee machines, mitre saws and even an electric lawn mower. Or it can power smaller items for hours on end.
These power stations are perfect for power cuts, camping, travel and festivals and the AC200P can charge at up to 700W off solar panels alone when mains isn’t available.
These things aren’t cheap – you can see the current price if you follow the link down below. But I’ll run through its capabilities and thoroughly test all its claims to help you decide if this is the right power station for you. So let’s take a closer look.
Overview
The AC200P comes in a huge box weighing 37kg. A lot of care has been taken with the packaging with a strong outer box with reinforced edges. I found it easiest to open both the outer and inner box and lift the power station out of the inner box.
As well as the power station, there’s one one of the largest AC adapters I’ve come across and an assortment of charging cables including an XT90 to aviation plug, a car charging cable again with an XT90 connector on one end and an MC4 to XT90 solar charging cable. I’ll discuss all these accessories shortly. These cables can be stored in the supplied drawstring bag. It does the job but I would have expected something a little more premium for the price of this power station. There’s also a user manual and warranty card.
The power station is well built, made from a mixture of polycarbonate and flame retardant ABS. It feels tough but there’s no rubber bumper like on the smaller AC50S I reviewed a while back and it’ll be easy to scuff the shiny lighter grey trim. And like every power station I’ve reviewed so far there’s no weatherproof rating. But all the ports do have rubber flaps that will at least offer some protection.
The power station is portable but only just, weighing in at 26.9kg and the AC charger is an additional 1.4kg with its mains lead. You can see the dimensions of the power station and charger on screen. This is not something you’ll be wanting to move around too often. You can just about lift it with one hand, but generally it needs two hands.
This is the first power station I’ve tested which uses a Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4) battery. These batteries do weigh more than the usual Lithium Ion batteries I’m used to, but they offer several advantages that more than make up for the extra weight. Most importantly they last longer. Bluetti claims the unit will maintain 80% capacity after 3500 charge / discharge cycles. That’s around 5 times more than the typical 500 cycles of standard Lithium Ion batteries. They also use a more stable and therefore safer chemistry and they’re more environmentally friendly too since they don’t use Cobalt or Nickel.
The AC200P has a capacity of 2000Wh and has an impressive 2000W AC inverter which can surge to 4800W. Unfortunately the battery is not replaceable. On their website Bluetti provide some examples of what you could run off this power station and how long for but I’ll cover some real life examples shortly when I discuss its performance.
The left side of the power station has the two charging inputs – the left input with the aviation port is for charging from your car’s 12V output or solar panels. The right port has a 7.9mm DC jack for use with the included mains charger. Above the ports is a fan that sucks in cool air. This cool air passes over the batteries and electronics and there’s an exhaust fan on the right side of the unit to expel this warmed up air.
From the top left on the front of the unit there’s the aluminium power button – a short press turns the unit on and a long press turns it off. Then there’s a 12V 10A car cigarette outlet, the 10.8cm touch screen display, and two 230V 2000W pure-sine wave AC outlets. The US version has 6 110V AC outlets. Even with our oversized UK plugs it would have been nice to have had at least one or two extra outlets. And the rubber flaps can interfere with some larger plugs. This UK version is branded PowerOak for some reason – in the US it’s branded Bluetti.
Underneath the power button is a 12V 25A DC output which isn’t something I’ve seen before. But you need the optional aviation to XT60 cable to use it which I did purchase. Then there are two 12V 3A DC 5525 outputs, a 60W USB type-C power delivery output and 4 x 5V 3A USB ports. It’s disappointing not to see 100W power delivery output here for more power hungry devices and it also would have been nice if you could charge via this port too like you can with the Allpowers 500W unit I reviewed recently. The USB-A outputs are a little basic too – they don’t support any of the newer fast charging standards, only Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 at 5V.
Unlike nearly every power station I’ve reviewed, there’s no torch on this unit. I would have liked a floodlight like on the smaller AC50S and looking around the power station there appears to be plenty of space to include one. But there are 2 useful 15W Qi wireless charging pads on top of the unit.
The LCD touch screen can show a wealth of information. The home screen shows remaining battery charge in the middle graphically and as a percentage. The top row shows the date and time and below that the left field labelled PV for Photovoltaic / Car displays the input from solar panels or your car’s DC output. And the right field shows input from the mains charger.
The next row shows current DC and AC usage in Watts and the DC and AC icons at the bottom have to be tapped to turn on and off DC and AC outputs respectively. Most of the units I’ve tested recently show you how long you have left – either to charge the unit or discharge the unit based on the current input or output wattage. Unfortunately you don’t get that with the AC200P so you’ll have to do the maths yourself.
But if you tap on any of the input or output icons you do get detailed information, which is particularly useful when charging with solar panels which I’ll come back to.
Under Settings you can switch between 50Hz and 60Hz, change the DC input mode from solar to car, toggle Eco mode and change the display language. With Eco mode on the unit will shut off the AC power after 4 hours if the output is less than 50W. I’d recommend turning this off if you want to run anything low powered that you want to stay on, like a phone charger or a low powered fridge.
If you tap on next, you can switch the beeping off and configure the date and time. It’s useful to have this set correctly for the fault logging.
Under Data you can see the system temperature at the top. Product Info shows the system information and Inverter and Charger Info shows the same information you get tapping the respective icons on the home screen.
Then there’s information on the Battery Management System under BMS Maintenance and a fault log under Fault History.
Finally there’s the Faults tab which highlights orange if any faults have been triggered. This defines the 55 different fault codes – and will show any currently recorded faults with an orange check.
Unfortunately there’s no app to monitor or control the unit which would be particularly useful outdoors where the display is very hard to see – especially in bright sunlight. The small font used on the home screen doesn’t help matters. .
Charging
There are three main ways to charge the AC200P: using the supplied mains charger, using the supplied car charging cable off your car’s 12V cigarette lighter output or using solar panels which you’ll have to purchase separately.
If you have mains handy, the simplest and most likely quickest way to charge the AC200P is with the AC adapter. This adapter can charge the unit at up to 470W or 58.8V at 8A, so a full charge will take around 4-5 hours. The adapter uses a standard kettle lead and there’s a fan to keep it cool that runs continuously, even after the power station reaches full charge – and it’s quite noisy. The display did show just under 470W and if you tap on the Adapter icon you can see the operating voltage and current too.
The adapter uses the same 7909 7.9mm plug that Jackery uses but after checking with my bench power supply you need at least 55V output so I can’t use the Jackery 1000’s 180W 24V charger unfortunately.
The charging speed is decent but I would have preferred direct mains charging like you get on the EcoFlow River Max I reviewed recently which does away with the need for the AC adapter.
To charge using your car’s 12V outlet you need to change the DC input from PV for solar to Car under Settings. Under this input you can charge at up to 8.2A in the range 11.5V to 14.4V and 23V to 28.8V. You need to use the supplied aviation plug to XT90 adapter and then plug the car charging lead into this. I’ve not seen this aviation plug before and it is a secure and robust connection. But personally I’d have preferred a standard XT90 input built into the unit, which I’ve always found plenty secure enough and is far more common.
I got the full 8.2A off the car outlet on the EcoFlow River Max – which at 13.5V equates to around 110W. This would charge the unit from flat in around 14-18 hours.
I also tested this input with the bench power supply. With a 24V supply you can get just under 200W on this port again at 8.2A.
Switching back to PV mode I tested charging via solar. You must remember to switch back to this mode otherwise you’ll get an over voltage fault.
Using the AC200P as a solar generator is one its greatest strengths. It can support an input voltage from 35V all the way up to 150V with a maximum current of 12A and there’s a built-in MPPT controller for more efficient solar charging.
With enough solar panels and good enough conditions you can charge the unit at a maximum of 700W which is very impressive. That could make it possible to charge the unit off solar alone in 3-4 hours. Unfortunately the minimum input voltage of 35V means that in most cases you’ll need at least two solar panels connected in series, which increases the voltage whilst the current remains constant.
If your solar panels have MC4 connectors it’s easy connecting them in series. You plug the XT90 to MC4 cable into the aviation to XT90 adapter. Then for two panels you connect one solar panel’s red cable to this cable’s red cable and the other panel’s black cable to this cable’s black cable. Then the two loose red and black connectors to each other to complete the circuit. It’s hard to go wrong since the MC4 male and female connectors can only pair with each other. You can add further solar panels in exactly the same way, starting off with the two panels at the end of the array and then matching male and female connectors for the other panels.
Bluetti recommends a minimum of 3 of their 120W SP120 or 2 of their 200W SP200 solar panels but you can use whatever you have from any manufacturer. I’ve not tried them but this pair of panels on Amazon should work and are pretty cheap if you don’t need a portable solution. And they’re more weather proof than most portable panels.
Initially I connected together a Bluetti SP120 120W panel, an Allpowers AP-SP-027 100W panel and EcoFlow’s 160W panel.
On a day with sunny spells in April in the UK I got a maximum of just under 280W off this setup. If you tap on the PV icon you can see the voltage was around 60V and I was getting around 4.5 to 5A.
So if the conditions stayed the same that configuration would take around 8 hours to fully charge the power station from flat.
The Bluetti SP120 panel actually failed during this test – a crack suddenly appeared on one of the cells. I contacted their support who offered a replacement without any quibble, but couldn’t offer any explanation of what might have happened.
When this replacement arrived I used it together with 2 more SP120’s to see how three of these panels compared to my original setup. I got around 250W although with better conditions and more room to arrange the panels I’m sure I could get this higher. When the sun went behind the clouds this dropped to around 170W.
I briefly reviewed the SP120 panels in my video on the AC50S so please take a look at that if you want more information. I also plan to do a round up of all the solar panels I’ve accumulated – the AC200P will be useful to compare them. So look out for that video hopefully coming soon. I’ll add a link on screen and down below if it’s already out.
I did try just one panel and although you can see its voltage on the power station, you won’t get anything from it. Two panels provided around 40V and was enough to charge the unit.
I did try switching again to Car as the input source and connecting one panel via this input since its range appears to cover the output of one solar panel. But although it recognised its input with the voltage displayed, the power stations still didn’t charge. I tried this with the Bluetti SP120 and the Allpowers and Ecoflow panels. Again looking into this with my bench power supply it looks like this input needs 8A of current to charge the unit – so in bright enough conditions with the right single panel you might get this to work.
You can use both the Car/PV input and the mains input at the same time so with enough solar panels and using mains you could charge the AC200P from completely flat in under two hours at just under 1200W. You could also purchase a second mains adapter and a DC7909 to XT90 cable to use both inputs simultaneously off mains. Even using the 24V car charging input at 200W I was able to speed up charging considerably.
And although I don’t have a second mains charger, I did use my bench power supply to charge it together with the mains charger at just under 1000W.
Performance
I tested the 12V DC outputs with an electronic load tester from Kunkin – the KP184. I’ll have a link down below if you want to test your power station. All these ports are regulated so their output won’t decrease as the battery level depletes.
You need to turn on the DC subsystem by tapping on the DC icon on the home screen. Starting with the 12V 10A car standard car outlet I wound up the current to the full 10A without any issues – the output on the LCD was around 135W. As I went over 10A the voltage dropped and then the DC output shut off with a DC Output Short Circuit fault not the Over Current fault I would have expected.
As a more practical example I charged the EcoFlow River Max off this car outlet with just under 110W displayed.
Moving on to the 2 12V 3A DC5525 ports I was able to increase the current to its 3A limit – around 40W on the display. But anything over did result in an Over Current fault and the DC shut off. When the DC or AC shuts off you need to turn the unit off and on again with the power switch before it lets you turn on DC or AC.
I also tried plugging in a 12V LED light strip and a smart battery charger which both worked fine.
The last 12V output is not something I’ve seen before. It can deliver up to 25A or around 300W but it has an aviation plug socket so you need a special cable to connect anything and this isn’t included. I didn’t find the cable easy to get hold of either and it took a while to arrive.
It has a female receptacle unlike the male receptacle on the charging port so you can’t just use that cable unfortunately. The cable I ordered has an XT60 connector on the other end and the first thing I tried was using it as a DC power supply for my Hota D6+ RC car LiPo charger. This charger is able to draw up to 650W off DC and I could easily max out the 25A port charging two 4S LiPo batteries. It should be more efficient running DC devices directly off DC rather than converting to AC and then back again.
With the load tester it ran happily at the full 25A drawing over 320W according to the LCD display, although I did find the cable started to get a little warm.
I did keep increasing the current all the way to just over 28A when the unit shut off with an Over Current fault. But after around 26A the voltage started to drop anyway.
Moving on to the USB ports which are also operated under the DC subsystem, the USB-C 60W port supports USB Power Delivery at up to 20V and 3A and will power even decent sized laptops and lots of other tech. As I mentioned earlier I would have expected 100W like on the EcoFlow for more power hungry devices like the latest MacBook Pros, and I’d have preferred an extra USB-C port even if it sacrificed a couple of the standard USB ports.
But it’s still plenty for many devices like this Chromebook and I was able to draw the full 60W charging the Allpowers 500W power station.
The 4 USB-A ports are still useful and testing them with a load tester I was able to get over the spec’d 3A before the voltage started to drop.
The AC outlets are really what you purchase a unit like this for and with its built in 2000W inverter which will support a brief surge of 4800W, this is the most powerful unit I’ve tested to date.
I confirmed their pure sine wave output, which is important for sensitive electronics, with a graphical multimeter.
I needed to find some fairly hefty equipment to really put this inverter to the test. I started off mowing the lawn with this 1500W Flymo lawnmower which worked fine.
My Bosch 1800W sliding mitre saw cutting thick oak didn’t overload the power station either, despite peaking at just under 3000W.
I could also run a 1.1KW portable compressor but my larger workshop compressor was too much and triggered the Inverter Overload fault – which isn’t surprising since it trips its 13A fuse in cold weather. I had the same issue with other stationary woodworking machines in my workshop. My table saw, planer thicknesser and bandsaw all tripped the AC200P.
Even though they’re all 2KW or less they have induction motors which can draw over 5 times that when they start up which is more than the 4800W surge the AC200P is capable of. But it handled almost every handheld machine I tried including a powerful 2000W router.
In the house could run both a Nespresso coffee machine and frother simultaneously and I could run a 2KW heater.
I also tried running a 4 slot toaster which was at the limit of the power station drawing just over 2000W. The AC200P can deliver over 2000W and under 2500W for up to two minutes but will beep continuously to warn you and then does shut off when two minutes is up.
A kettle was a little too much for it, running at just over 2500W before overloading the power station, but a 1550W hairdryer ran fine and I couldn’t find many more household items that would overload the unit so it could prove very useful in a power cut.
Unlike the EcoFlow this AC200P doesn’t have a UPS function where it can run off mains directly and then switch to battery in the event of a power outage. But it does support pass-through charging so you could use it in a similar fashion to power essential items whilst plugged into the mains and then the fully charged battery would power these items if the power goes out. This wouldn’t be ideal longer term for battery health but I used it like this to plug in all my broadband and WiFi equipment when we were having regular power cuts recently.
This may well depend on ambient temperatures but the unit is almost silent up to around 1000W when the fan kicks in. Measuring with a decibel meter 1 metre away I measured around 36dB background noise which jumped to around 42dB when the fans first turned on. When you get over around 1400W the fans increased in volume to a much more noticeable 52dB. You can hear how noisy the fans are in the accompanying video. But it’s good to know you could have it running lower powered devices overnight camping or in a campervan without hearing the power station. Although I couldn’t see any way of turning off the display or the green LED circling the power button when the unit is on, which could be distracting if you’re sleeping nearby. And with no accompanying app this is not a feature that can be simply added as a firmware update.
Finally I measured the capacity of the unit both using DC and AC. The claimed capacity is 2000Wh but the manual does state that the Depth Of Discharge is 10% – so the unit will power off with 10% of battery remaining to protect the battery. Also taking into account the efficiency of the unit which the manual specifies as 88% we should be able to get at least 2000 x 0.9 x 0.88 = 1584Wh of usable capacity.
First I ran the test off DC with the load tester set at 15A connected to the 12V 25A port. The capacity of the battery is displayed on the Kunkin load tester in Wh but the display resets back to zero at 1000Wh so you can see the final measured capacity is 1544Wh which is very close to the value we estimated.
I also measured the capacity with an AC load running a 2KW heater at half power at around 970W. I used an energy monitoring plug and measured 1904Wh. We should get less capacity under AC due to inverter losses so I imagine the monitoring plug is over estimating usage. I did try with another energy monitoring plug and this time got 1808W but this still seems high. These measurements are useful to compare to other portable power stations I’ve tested, but the electronic load tester provides the most accurate measurement so I’d consider 1544Wh the true capacity of the unit.
During both these tests I ran both the DC 25A and 2000W AC outlets at full power for 20 minutes to check if the power station was capable of running at its full rated DC and AC output continuously, which it was. I also checked the temperature of the unit under this heavy load with a Flir thermal imaging camera and the power station remained remarkably cool.
Conclusions
The AC200P is the most powerful power station I’ve tested so far. It will power most household items quite happily and it even ran some pretty heavy machinery in my workshop. It’s worth remembering though that at its maximum 2000W output the sizable 2000Wh battery will still only last just under an hour.
I’m pleased to finally test a power station with a Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo4) battery which should last a lot longer than your standard Lithium Ion battery. I can’t confirm the battery’s longevity but in my capacity tests it fared well – at least in line with Bluetti’s claims. Although the battery isn’t replaceable and it does contribute to the weight of this power station. It is very heavy which is a real consideration if you need to move this around a lot.
The touch screen shows a wealth of technical information but it’s not particularly user friendly and there’s some basic information missing like an estimate of remaining usage time based on current output. There’s also no accompanying app which would have been particularly useful considering how difficult it is to read the screen outdoors.
The most impressive feature of the AC200P is its charging capabilities, particularly off solar. I didn’t have enough solar panels or sun to realise its 700W maximum input off solar, but being able to mix and match whatever solar panels you have makes it very flexible. You could start with 2 or 3 panels and add more panels over time. It’s just a shame that you’ll typically need at least 2 panels to satisfy the power station’s minimum voltage requirements.
Mains charging is reasonably quick, but it’d be faster and more convenient if you could charge directly off mains without an adapter like you can with EcoFlo’s range. And the included mains adapter is very large and noisy.
Overall I’d have no trouble recommending the AC200P. The only power station that I have that comes close in spec to the AC200P is the Jackery Explorer 1000. This has around half the output and capacity and has more modest features, but is far more portable at almost a third of the weight of the Bluetti. It really depends on what you need to run, what features you need and how much you can spend although none of these power stations are cheap.
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
Affiliate links to items in article:
Bluetti / PowerOak AC200P: Amazon, Bluetti UK, Bluetti US (worth checking Bluetti for any promotions)
Bluetti SP120 solar panels: Amazon, Bluetti UK, Bluetti US
AC200P + 3 x SP120: Amazon, Bluetti UK, Bluetti US
Renogy 100W pair solar panels: https://amzn.to/3lg9Lu7 (budget option)
Kunkin KP184 load tester: https://www.banggood.com/custlink/DDGEqQPFIS
Jackery Explorer 1000 power station: https://amzn.to/3Prix69
EcoFlow River Max power station: https://amzn.to/3t31L43
Allpowers 500W power station: https://amzn.to/3wkuB1w
Bluetti / Power AC50S power station: https://amzn.to/3wns8Uo
Jackery Explorer 500 power station: https://amzn.to/3wlwpaQ
Leave a Reply