The Bluetti AC200PL has 4 2400W AC outlets, super fast 2400W mains charging, up to 1200W solar charging and a massive 2304Wh long lasting LFP or LiFePO4 battery. It’s the most capable power station I’ve looked at so far. It’d be perfect for home backup, an RV or campervan or even a complete off-grid setup.
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
Inside the box you get the power station itself, a AC charging cable, a DC charging cable, a solar charging cable and a car charging cable. There’s also a grounding bolt and an instruction manual and all the cables can be stored in the supplied bag.
The AC200PL is an upgrade on the recently released AC200L. The P is for Premium and it has a larger 2304Wh battery, 2 wireless charging pads on top of the unit and a seemingly random change to orange accents instead of the usual blue.
Unsurprisingly with this huge long lasting LFP battery it’s a hefty unit at 28.3kg (62.4lb). You’ll need two hands to carry the unit and it’s really on the verge of what I’d call portable.
It’s mostly constructed from plastic and feels well made, but despite rubber flaps over the AC and DC outputs and rubber seals on the mains and DC inputs, it has no IP rating. The open vents around the side that reveal the internal electronics are fully exposed to the elements.
The similarly priced Bluetti AC240 does have weather sealing, but has a smaller battery and weighs even more than the AC200PL. I hope to look at that model too soon.
Charging
The left side of the unit houses the various charging inputs. You can charge via mains at up to 2400W, solar at up to 1200W or a 12V car outlet at just over 100W.
Unlike the older AC200P and AC200MAX this unit does support mains charging – you no longer need a large heavy AC adapter.
But unlike every power station I’ve tested that supports mains charging, including the Bluetti AC180 I looked at recently, Bluetti have decided to use a proprietary 3 pin connector, rather than a standard IEC mains cable. So you have to use their cable – and when I checked I couldn’t even see where you could order a spare. And as luck would have it, the cable that came with my unit came apart after only a small amount of use so I had to get a replacement from Bluetti.
The connection is more secure with a locking ring, and it has rubber seals which is a good thing, even if the rest of the unit has no waterproof rating. But I’d much prefer a standard and ubiquitous mains connection.
The DC input also has a similar proprietary connector, this time with two pins.
The other end has a standard XT60 connector which connects to the solar charging and car charging cables.
There’s also a larger battery input port for connecting to Bluetti’s various expansion batteries including the B230.
Charging off mains is very fast, although you’ll need to configure the unit via its settings menu or using the app for the fastest Turbo charging.
By default it’ll charge at around 1200W in Standard mode. This is the recommended mode to extend the life of the battery. A full charge with the battery completely drained took just under 3 hours 20 minutes in this mode.
Press and hold the AC and DC buttons for 2 seconds to access the settings menu. Cycle through to the AC charging mode using the DC button and change the mode to Turbo with the AC button. In this setting menu you can also configure Eco mode, and turn on Power Lifting mode which I’ll discuss later. It’s easier doing all this with the app which connects via Bluetooth or WiFi.
To switch to Turbo mode in the app go to Settings | Charging Mode | Turbo.
Now you can charge the unit at an impressive 2400W. Bluetti claims the unit will reach 80% charge in just one hour. It took a little longer than that in my tests – just under 1 hour 20 minutes. A full charge took 2 hours 7 minutes which is still super fast for such a huge battery.
Charging times will depend very much on ambient temperatures and the temperature of the unit itself. If the power station has been worked hard, charging speeds will be lower until the unit has cooled down sufficiently, which can take a while in my experience.
The unit also has an interesting option under the Advanced Setting menu. You can adjust the maximum mains charging current under Max Charging Current off Grid. So you could lower this value if you’re charging off another power station for example, so you don’t overload it. But there’s also a Pro Mode that lets you increase the charging Amps beyond the default 10A maximum all the way to 16A. I think this is more intended for the US market which is on a lower voltage. Here in the UK we’re at 240V and even the default 10A should achieve the maximum 2400W. I did test this up to 16A which would blow the fuse in a standard UK 13A plug. But the unit still just charges at the maximum 2400W. I ended up leaving this at 11A which did more consistently provide the full 2400W Turbo charging speed. I got just a little under 2400W at the default 10A.
You do need to contact Bluetti support to get the passcode to access the Pro Mode – but honestly in the UK and anywhere else on 240V it’s probably not worth the hassle.
Solar charging is equally impressive and very flexible. The 1200W solar charging input can accept a voltage range from 12V all the way up to 145V, with a maximum current of 15A. So you can connect several solar panels in series without overloading the unit.
Initially I ran the power station off the Bluetti 350W foldable PV350. The DC charging cable plugs into the 2 pin port on the unit, and the solar charging cable with an XT60 connector plugs into this. This has standard MC4 connectors on the other end that plug into the solar panel’s integrated cable.
With some patchy sunshine I did get over 320W with this setup. In the Bluetti app if you click on the PV input you can see the power and also the voltage.
I connected the 200W Bluetti PV200 panel in series to the PV350. This is very easy to do – just connect the positive of one solar panel to the negative of another and the loose positive and negative connections to the AC200PL. I got over 400W with this setup and the voltage was around 56V.
Depending on the voltage of your solar panels you should be able to connect at least 3 even high power panels like the PV350 without exceeding the 145V limit of the input.
Or even more, cheaper, lower voltage units with lower power output.
Using my benchtop power supply I set the maximum current to 15A and took the voltage all the way to its maximum 61V to mimic two panels in ideal conditions. I could get over 700W with this setup. I don’t have a more powerful power supply to test this to its limit, but I will see if I can max out the PV input with more solar panels in series when I get a chance – I’ll update the written article at thetechnologyman.com accordingly.
Finally I tested charging the power station off a 12V car outlet using the supplied car charging cable. This again connects into the XT60 connector of the proprietary adapter. At voltages under 33V you’re limited to 8A. I got just over 100W from a 12V car outlet and just over 200W off a 24V outlet, again tested using my bench power supply.
The AC200PL supports dual charging – you can charge off AC and solar at the same time. Free solar power will take priority over the mains input.
In Standard and Silent mode if you max out the PV input you won’t draw anything from mains. In Turbo mode, the unit will still pull up to 1200W even with the PV input at its 1200W maximum.
Performance
The AC200PL has a massive 2400W AC inverter. This should be enough to power the majority of items you can run off a standard UK plug socket. In the UK the unit has 4 240V AC outlets with pure sine wave outputs, important for sensitive electronics. I confirmed their pure sine wave output with a graphical multimeter.
Using a couple of heaters and a voltage regulator to set the output more precisely, I was able to run the power station at its maximum output of 2400W until the battery was exhausted. Even more impressively, I was able to increase this all the way to 2900W for up to 2 minutes without overloading the power station. Much beyond that you’d blow your 13A fuse anyway!
Bluetti also claims the unit can surge to over 3600W briefly, so you might be able to run devices like machinery with induction motors with a high start up draw – within reason. I couldn’t do my usual tests with the machinery I own, since they are all in storage at the minute while we build on the house.
But I did try running a few household items as well as the heaters. It ran a microwave, a coffee machine and even a kettle without overloading the power station. I think unless you have extreme demands, the AC200PL should cover your AC inverter needs. And there is also the usual Power Lifting mode which you can enable for purely resistive loads, typically with heating elements and basic electronics. This will let you run these devices rated at more than 2400W by reducing the voltage – you’re not getting more power out of the unit. I’ve covered this in previous reviews and I would recommend avoiding this mode unless you’re 100% sure there are no sensitive electrics that might be damaged by operating at reduced voltages.
Next I tested the parasitic drain of the AC inverter. Ie how much power the AC inverter itself uses even with nothing connected. I turned off Eco mode and left the AC inverter on for 12 hours with nothing plugged in. The battery dropped from 100% to 89% in that time – so 11% drain in just 12 hours. This is not unusually high but I’d still recommend leaving Eco mode switched on so the unit will automatically power itself off when it’s now it use. In the app you can configure the shutdown timer and the minimum AC power between 10 and 40W.
I did also test the DC outputs for parasitic drain. I again turned off Eco mode and left the DC and USB subsystems on for 12 hours. This time the battery dropped from 100% to 95% – a little more than I was expecting. The battery remained at 100% with a similar test on the Bluetti AC180. But it’s less parasitic drain than using AC so you’re still better off running items that have intermittent power requirements like this EcoFlow Glacier fridge freezer off DC. In DC mode I often leave Eco mode off too. You don’t generally want the unit turning off – devices charging off USB for example often use less than the 5W minimum setting.
I tested the DC outputs with a load tester. The 12V car outlet is spec’d to 10A maximum. I got to just over 11A and around 138W before it shut off.
Below the 12V car outlet there’s a 48V 8A proprietary DC output for connecting to the optional D40 battery charger which I don’t currently have so can’t test. I could confirm its output – I measured 52V with a multimeter. But if I tried to pull even the smallest load from the port the voltage dropped to zero. I did notice this port was active even with the DC and USB subsystems switched off.
The AC200PL has 4 USB outputs – 2 100W PD 3.0 USB-C outputs and 2 18W Qualcomm QC3.0 USB-A ports.
I loaded both 100W ports at their maximum 20V 5A output without any issues. I also load tested both the USB-A ports to their maximum 18W. It’s decent range of outputs, but I would have liked at least one of the USB-C outputs to support USB PD 3.1 at 140W for more demanding laptops like the 16” MacBook Pro for example.
The AC200PL also has two 15W wireless charging pads that charged my iPhone 15 Pro Max at around 10W.
I measured the usable capacity of the 2304Wh built-in battery. I ran a heater via an energy monitoring plug at around 1000W until the power station turned off. The unit ran for 2 hours and 7 minutes and consumed 2189Wh. That’s a very impressive 95% efficiency which is about the best I’ve seen for any power station.
I got less impressive results off the DC output with a 10A electronic load attached. I measured 1658Wh or just 72% efficiency which is a very disappointing result. When I get a chance I will repeat this test at a lower output and update my written article accordingly.
I tried loading up the AC200PL to its limits to see how it coped. With 2400W via the AC outlet, over 100W via the DC 12V car outlet, 100W off the USB-C port and a phone charging on the wireless charging pad, I let the unit run for 5 minutes without any issues. In total the AC200PL was delivering over 2600W. And checking temperatures of the unit with my thermal imaging camera it didn’t get too hot either.
The hottest part of the unit around the exhaust fan never got much over 50C° – although that will depend on your ambient temperatures. Even charging the unit at 2400W on top of the maxed out load, the temperature remained at around 50C°.
And the unit is also remarkably quiet. It takes a fair load for the fans to even come on. But charging at Turbo speeds and running a 2kw electric heater on an extension lead in another room so as not to interfere with the test, the fans are barely noticeable. My usual test one metre away from the unit with a decibel metre barely registered above room noise at around 38dB. You might notice the fans if you’re sleeping immediately next to the exhaust vent, but otherwise it’s unlikely they’ll bother you.
The AC200PL also makes an excellent Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS. If you run any AC devices whilst it’s connected via mains, these devices will bypass the battery and run directly off mains until there’s a power outage. At this point, in less than an imperceptible 20ms, they’ll switch to battery power. I tested this running my desktop computer and it worked perfectly.
In the Bluetti app you can customise the UPS function. For example in the Timed Control mode you can use mains to charge the AC200PL while electricity is cheap, and then switch to battery during peak hours when electricity might be more expensive.
I’ve covered a few of the options available in the app throughout the review. The app lets you connect directly via Bluetooth or you can remotely control the unit over WiFi. This connects the power station to Bluetti’s Cloud over WiFi and then so long as you have an Internet connection, you can control the unit wherever you are. I did have a few issues with this WiFi connection and often had to resort to connecting directly via Bluetooth. But overall the app makes customising and monitoring the power station much easier. And you can of course upgrade the firmware too via the app. I do still like that some of the main functions, like charging speed and Eco mode are configurable directly from the unit itself though.
Conclusions
The AC200PL is one of the most capable power stations I’ve tested so far and I’ve tested a few! It has a huge long lasting LFP battery backed up with a 5 year warranty, super fast charging either via mains or solar, and an AC inverter that should power even the most demanding devices. There’s also expandable battery options, a useful range of USB ports and wireless charging and it’s very quiet, even fast charging or under a heavy load.
I’m not keen on the proprietary mains and DC charging cables, the lack of any IP rating and it is heavy – the downside of a high capacity integrated LFP battery. It’s also quite expensive compared to the AC200L. I’m not sure the wireless charging pads and larger battery are worth the current extra cost – but keep an eye on prices. If they’re closer in price I would pay the extra for these features.
If you can cope with a smaller battery the AC180 I reviewed recently is a bargain, at the moment at least. It still has a decent 1800W inverter and is far more portable.
And from EcoFlow I particularly like the similarly spec’d Delta 2.
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and again please 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!
Bluetti AC200PL:
UK: https://shrsl.com/4mbj6
US: https://shrsl.com/4mbj9
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