BLUETTI Elite 30 V2 Portable Power Station 288Wh 600W LFP Solar Generator

Why it's worth it

The Bluetti Elite 30 V2 holds 288Wh and puts out 600W continuous, enough to keep a router, a laptop and phones alive through a short outage. At 9.5 pounds it fits in a go-bag or a car trunk without much thought.

Think of this as a UPS with a much bigger battery. Owners overwhelmingly use it that way — plugged into a router and modem so the internet stays up when the grid doesn't, or under a desk keeping a laptop and monitor running through a work call. The 10-millisecond switchover means nothing reboots. For a lot of people, that's the actual emergency scenario, not powering a refrigerator.

Six hundred watts of continuous output is unusually generous for a battery this small. Most units in the 300Wh class cap out around 300W, which rules out anything with a motor or a heating element. The Elite 30 V2 doubles that, and a power lifting mode pushes to 1,500W for stubborn loads. You still can't run a fridge for long on 288Wh, but you're not blocked by the inverter.

From our review of 8 portable solar generators for emergencies, by Genevieve Dubois, Home & Living Expert

What we like

• +Think of this as a UPS with a much bigger battery
• +Six hundred watts of continuous output is unusually generous for a battery this small
• +It charges fast enough to be useful on short notice: Bluetti rates 0 to 80 percent in 45 minutes and full in 70 minutes on a…
• +At 9.5 pounds this is the one that actually goes in the bug-out bag or lives in the trunk year-round

What to know

• –Two hundred and eighty-eight watt-hours is genuinely small
• –Bluetti's warranty support has drawn complaints