The Bluetti AC70 (UK, US) is a well priced, well spec’d portable power station. It has two 1000W AC outlets, super fast 950W mains charging, 500W solar charging when mains isn’t available and a 768Wh long lasting LiFePO4 battery.
This might just be the perfect power station for a lot of people. 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, the mains charging cable, a car charging cable, a solar charging cable, a grounding bolt and the user manual.
The AC70 has an 768Wh LFP battery that supports over 3000 charge cycles and weighs just over 10kg (10.2kg, 22.5lbs). It can be comfortably carried with one hand with the handle around the back. It measures 314 x 210 x 256mm (12.4 x 8.2 x 10.1in). It’s really a smaller, less powerful version of the AC180 I looked at recently and a welcome replacement to the EB70 I looked at in the summer with some overdue upgrades that I’ll cover in the course of the review.
It looks and feels very similar to the AC180 and is mostly constructed of a hard plastic. It feels well made but there’s no IP rating so you’ll need to be careful using it outside. There aren’t even any flaps over the AC outlets.
The front of the unit has the DC input for solar and car charging, an LCD screen and two 1000W AC outlets. Bluetti has finally ditched the less common and inferior DC 7909 connector for the DC input and now uses the ubiquitous XT60 socket, which I’m pleased to see.
Then there’s the 12V DC car outlet, two 100W USB-C power delivery outputs and two standard 5V, 12W USB-A outputs. I’m glad to see two useful 100W USB-C ports on this unit, compared to just one on the AC180.
The right side of the unit has the mains charging input and a grounding port which I’ll discuss later.
The flat top of the unit is missing the wireless charging pad of the AC180 and many of Bluetti’s power stations and there’s also no floodlight.
The unit is operated with three buttons below the LCD screen, or the smartphone app.
The power button turns the unit on and a long press turns it off. The power button also toggles the display on and off. There are separate buttons to turn on the DC and AC subsystems, which only operate with the power station turned on.
If you press and hold the DC and AC buttons with the power on you enter the settings menu. The DC button then cycles through mains frequency, charging speed, Power Lifting mode, Eco mode, and Bluetooth. You can use the AC button to choose your desired setting. You’d normally need to do this via the app, so I like seeing these options on the unit itself. Press and hold the DC and AC buttons to exit the settings menu or let it time out automatically.
Charging
The most significant upgrade over the EB70 is mains charging which is thankfully pretty standard on these power stations. You no longer need an AC adapter, just any standard IEC mains cable or so-called kettle lead here in the UK.
You can also charge the AC70 via a car outlet with the supplied car to XT60 cable or via solar with optional solar panels using the MC4 to XT60 cable also included.
The 100W USB-C ports are unfortunately only for output, you can’t charge the unit with them like you can on the EcoFlow River 2 Max for example.
Mains charging is super quick in Turbo mode which you can set in the app or via the settings menu on the unit itself.
Bluetti specifies 45 minutes to get to 80% charge which I confirmed with my own measurements. It took 1 hour and 7 minutes to reach 100%.
I checked the temperature of the unit whilst charging with my thermal imaging camera and it didn’t get much above 40°C which is encouraging to see.
It’s pretty quiet charging too. In silent mode which charges at under 300W, I measured just 38dB with my decibel meter. This increased to just over 40dB in the default standard mode that charges at under 500W and even in Turbo mode it wasn’t much above 47dB. Both silent mode and standard mode are kinder to the battery, so I’d keep the Turbo mode for when you really need it. You can hear how much noise the power station makes in the accompanying video.
It’s worth noting that the unit needs to be completely cooled down to obtain the fastest charging speeds. I had to leave it a good few hours after my discharging tests to get these maximum speeds.
The LCD display on the AC70 is bright and clear, and shows total charging and output power in Watts and the remaining battery capacity graphically and as a percentage. You get an estimate of remaining charge time when it’s charging and run time when it’s powering your devices, adjusted in real time.
Strangely, as with the AC180, the smartphone app doesn’t provide these estimates but does show technical information if you tap on the mains or DC icons – the latter is particularly useful when solar charging.
The app home screen also lets you remotely toggle the DC and AC outputs. In settings, as well as adjusting charging speeds, you can toggle Power Lifting mode which I’ll cover shortly and you can configure Eco settings to customise timeouts for the AC and DC subsystems, configure the screen timeout under Auto Sleep and upgrade the firmware.
In Advanced Settings you can toggle the AC frequency and turn on Grid Self-adaption which should be used if you’re charging off an unstable AC source like a generator.
The AC70 can charge off your car’s 12V output with the supplied cable. With the engine running in my car, I got over 110W which would take around 7 hours to completely charge the battery.
If your vehicle has a 24V output you could charge the unit at around 200W which I confirmed with my bench power supply. It’d take around 4 hours for a full charge if you have a 24V output.
The DC input supports a voltage from 12V all the way up to 58V which is great for solar charging. Bluetti also specifies a maximum current of 10A but testing with my bench power supply you’re limited to 8A at 32V and lower. I ramped the bench power supply all the way up to 58V, and set the current limit to 10A. At 50V, 10A you reach the 500W maximum DC input. As you increase the voltage further, the current dips holding this 500W limit.
The AC70 has a built-in MPPT controller for more efficient solar charging and with its wide input voltage range, you can use pretty much any solar panel with MC4 connectors to charge the unit, from any manufacturer – even a couple of lower voltage panels in series should be still under 58V.
Bluetti recommend either one of their 350W PV350s, or 2 of their 200W PV200s. It’s approaching winter here in the UK and it’s been raining almost non stop, but in a brief dry spell I tested solar charging with the PV350. I have no doubt that in decent conditions you could easily get 300W out of this panel as I’ve seen with the AC180, but I barely saw 10% of that.
The AC70 supports dual charging – you can charge off AC and solar at the same time. Free solar power will take priority over the mains input. I tested this out with my bench power supply. The combined maximum input will again be governed by the charging speed you’ve set in the app or on the unit itself.
Performance
The AC70 has a 1000W inverter with two AC outlets. These both have a pure sine wave output, important for sensitive electronics, which I confirmed with a graphical multi-meter.
If you turn on Power Lifting mode you can power purely resistive loads like heaters and hair dryers at up to 2000W. It does this by lowering the voltage, so use this mode with care and only if there isn’t another option.
I can run this 2kW heater with Power Lifting on, but notice the voltage drops and the actual output is less than just running the heater in its lower 1000W mode. I turned off Power Lifting for the remaining tests.
The power station is fairly quiet. At lower outputs it’s silent – the fans don’t come on at all. At maximum output I measured around 45dB one metre away. And again the units stays pretty cool.
I couldn’t run a 1250W Nespresso coffee machine on Bluettit’s EB70 which also has a 1000W inverter, but the AC70 powered it ok, even though it did exceed 1000W for a short amount of time. And it ran the milk frother just fine too.
Out in the workshop I could run my Bosch 720W grinder with no soft start and impressively it could run my 1250W Titan SDS drill that briefly exceeded 1500W – which again the EB70 wasn’t able to do.
Unfortunately my small compressor did overload the AC70 – it’s rated at 1100W but compressors have a substantial initial draw. If you do overload the unit, you can just turn off your device, and turn the AC subsystem on the AC70 off and on again to reset it.
It’s important to turn off the AC subsystem when it’s not needed. It’s hard to measure precisely, but I found the unit dropped around 1.5% per hour if it was left on with nothing plugged in. Fortunately you can configure Eco mode in the app so that the AC subsystem shuts off automatically after between one and four hours when the output power is less than between 10 and 30W.
The DC outputs have negligible parasitic drain so I’d recommend using the 12V car output for devices like this fridge freezer (above) that will be left on for hours on end. The DC subsystem does also have an Eco mode that can be configured between 5 and 10W, but in most situations I’d leave this off so the unit doesn’t power off when you don’t want it to.
I tested the DC outputs starting with the 12V car outlet which has up to 10A regulated output, which I confirmed with a load tester. The voltage and power dropped if I increased the current further.
I tested the two 100W USB type-C power delivery ports charging the River 2 Max at its rated maximum 100W output. But these ports are useful for anything from smartphones to the latest MacBooks.
I also checked the standard USB-A ports with a load tester – I got a little over their rated 12W output. It is a shame these don’t have any fast charging support like Qualcomm Quick Charge.
You can use all AC and DC ports simultaneously and the unit supports passthrough charging so they can be used whilst the power station is charging.
I measured the usable capacity of the 768Wh LFP built-in battery. I ran a heater via an energy monitoring plug at around 1000W until the power station turned off. The heater ran for 40 minutes and consumed 669Wh. Power stations like this will always have some conversion losses and anything over 80% is pretty good. The Bluetti works out at 669Wh / 768Wh which is around 87%.
I did a similar test using the DC output with a 10A electronic load attached. I measured 672Wh, or 88% efficiency. These are good results – especially considering I was running the power station at close to its maximum outputs where heat loss may decrease the efficiency.
As a real life test it was able to run my EcoFlow Glacier in dual fridge freezer mode for around 36 hours off the AC70’s 12V car outlet.
The AC70 also supports a UPS mode with a transfer time of less than 20ms according to Bluetti. If Grid Self-adaption is turned on it might add a small amount of delay to the UPS switching so I’d recommend ensuring it’s off.
Here I have my desktop plugged into the power station and the power station charging off mains. In this setup the desktop computer is effectively running directly off mains via the power station. If there’s a power cut – in this case I’m just disconnecting the mains plug, the AC70 switches across to its internal battery and the switchover is fast enough that the desktop computer doesn’t notice.
Like the AC180 the AC70 has a grounding port, and the manual has strong wording about it only being used grounded. There’s a grounding bolt included. And you’ll need a length of 14 gauge wire and if you were in a field, a metal spike to connect it to.
Whether you need to ground the unit will depend on local regulations so please check, but the likelihood is you’d only need to ground the AC70 for a more permanent installation. If you have the unit plugged into mains, it will be grounded – although this is unlikely to be practical. I’ll provide a link down below with further information.
Conclusions
Bluetti have come up with another great all-round power station and for a very attractive price. It’s currently around $550 but you can check the current price down below. For that price you’re getting a very portable power station with pretty much every feature you’re likely to need.
It has fast charging, a good range of outputs including two 100W USB-C sockets and very flexible solar charging options.
It also comes with a 5 year warranty, although that is one area I can’t test so please do let myself and others know down in the comments what sort of experiences you’ve had with Bluetti customer support.
If I was being picky I’d like at least one 140W USB-C charging port to really future proof the unit and a powerful floodlight and a wireless charging pad wouldn’t go amiss. And I do still wish manufacturers would add some weather proofing and ruggedness rating to these units that are going to be used outdoors.
But if the output and capacity are enough for you, it should definitely be on your shortlist.
If you need a little more output I’d look at Bluetti’s AC180 or EcoFlow’s Delta 2. If you don’t need as much output the EcoFlow River 2 Max is cheaper, has two-way USB-C charging and weighs a lot less.
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!
You can order directly from Bluetti using my link below. It doesn’t cost you any extra, and I get a small commission which helps support the channel! I’ll also any codes I have that might give you some money off!
Use my code techAC70 for $20 off!
Bluetti have a Mother’s Day sale on the AC70 with $250 off, from 10th May 2024 – 22nd May 2024:
Bluetti US: Bluetti AC70
Bluetti UK: Bluetti AC70
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