The Best Portable Generators for Power Outages

Reliability is the whole point of a generator, and Honda's is the best documented here. Consumer Reports' owner-satisfaction survey put the five-year major repair rate for Honda and Yamaha inverters under 5%, against 18 to 22% for budget conventional brands. Wirecutter's long-term reporting found the EU2200i started on the first or second pull after a year and a half in storage with stabilizer in the tank. That's the number that matters at two in the morning during a storm.

Noise is the other thing you'll notice immediately. Honda rates the EU2200i at 48 dB(A) at quarter load and 57 dB(A) at rated load, about the level of a quiet conversation. A conventional generator of the same output runs 65 to 75 dB(A), which your ears read as roughly four times louder. If your houses sit close together, that gap decides whether you can run it overnight without an argument.

The tank holds just under a gallon, and Honda quotes 3.2 to 8.1 hours on it depending on load. Tom's Guide clocked 8.1 hours at a quarter load on less than a gallon, where similar conventional units averaged 5.8. Eco Throttle is why: the engine drops its speed when you're only asking it for a fridge and a couple of lamps. Less fuel burned, less noise, fewer trips to the gas can.

Inverter power is clean enough for the electronics you actually care about. Inverter generators keep harmonic distortion low, so a laptop, a router, a smart TV or a CPAP machine sees something close to what the wall gives it. CO-MINDER watches carbon monoxide levels and shuts the engine down before they get dangerous. Honda's Bluetooth app lets you check fuel and stop the unit from inside, which beats standing in the rain to do it.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Twenty-two hundred starting watts doesn't go far. You'll cover a refrigerator, lights, a modem and phone charging, plus maybe a small window unit if nothing else is running. A well pump, a sump pump and an air conditioner at the same time are out of reach. You can pair two EU2200i units for double the output, but that means buying a second generator and a parallel cable.

It's gasoline only, so after a regional storm you're hunting for fuel at stations that may have no power to pump it. There's no electric start — you pull a cord. And it's the most expensive way here to get 2,200 watts, by a wide margin.

The EU2200i comes with a three-year residential warranty.

Yamaha and Honda are the two brands the reliability data actually favors. The same Consumer Reports survey grouped them together with major repair rates under 5% over five years, while budget conventional brands ran four times higher. Choosing between them is mostly a question of which panel you'd rather use in the dark. Yamaha's illuminated LED display shows voltage, output and hours at a glance, day or night.

The extra output is small, but it's real. Yamaha rates the EF2200iS at 2,200 watts, a bit above the Honda's continuous figure, and published numbers put it near 10.5 hours at a quarter load. That can be the difference between getting up to refuel and sleeping through. The 79cc engine and Smart Throttle drop the revs when demand falls, the same way Honda's Eco Throttle does.

The standard RV outlet keeps mattering in small ways. Plug a travel trailer straight in without hunting for an adapter, then use the same unit at home for the fridge and a box fan. The Smart Dial handles choke, run and stop with one knob, so there's one less thing to get wrong with cold hands. A DC outlet is there for charging a battery.

Yamaha's muffler work puts it in the same quiet class as the Honda, close enough that most people won't hear a difference from across a yard. At 55 pounds it's a few pounds heavier, which you'll feel on stairs and nowhere else. Both are a two-person carry if you're going any real distance.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Like the Honda, this is a small machine. Twenty-two hundred watts covers essentials and nothing more, and there's no propane option, so your outage plan depends on gasoline you stored ahead or gasoline you can find afterward. It's pull start only.

The listing doesn't mention a carbon monoxide shutoff, and the Honda has one. That's not a reason to run either machine indoors — you never should — but it's a layer of protection you're giving up for no obvious gain.

This is the size most people should actually be shopping at. Thirty-four hundred running watts handles a refrigerator, a chest freezer, lights, your router and a laptop, with room left for a sump pump cycling on and off. The small Hondas and Yamahas make you choose between those. This one mostly doesn't, and it's still an inverter, so nothing you plug into it is at risk.

Independent lab measurement put the 56380i's total harmonic distortion under 1.2% at half load, well below the 3% line generally considered safe for laptops, smart TVs and CPAP machines. That's clean power from a machine that costs a fraction of the Honda. The digital panel shows load, fuel and hours, so it's easy to see how close you're running to the limit.

WEN quotes about 8.5 hours at half load from the 212cc engine. The fuel shutoff lets you burn the carburetor dry before storage, which is the single best habit for a machine that sits unused eleven months of the year. A gummed carburetor is the most common reason a stored generator won't start, and that switch is how you avoid one.

It's RV ready too, with a TT-30R outlet next to two household receptacles, a 12V DC socket and a USB port. So the generator that backs up your fridge in January runs a travel trailer in July without an adapter. Electric start means you're not yanking a cord in the rain, and two units can run in parallel if you outgrow one.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It weighs close to 100 pounds, double the Honda. Getting it from the garage to the driveway is a two-person job or a hand truck job, and that's worth sorting out before the storm rather than during it.

The warranty runs two years, shorter than the three you get from Honda, Westinghouse and Champion. WEN's long-term reliability record also isn't as well documented as Honda's or Yamaha's. And it's gasoline only, with no propane option.

The 56380i comes with a two-year warranty.

This is the first size that backs up a house instead of a room. Seventy-five hundred running watts covers a well pump, a sump pump, a refrigerator, a freezer, a window air conditioner and lights all at once. This Old House puts the practical floor for that kind of load near 5,000 watts and warns that most homeowners underestimate their starting watts by 30 to 40%. The headroom here absorbs that mistake.

Popular Mechanics ran it on a load bank at its full 9,500-watt peak for four hours with no voltage sag, while several budget conventional units dropped 8 to 12% under peak load. Sag is what makes a motor stall and a compressor overheat. It shows up in exactly the moment you're asking the generator to do the most, which is why the margin is worth paying for.

Dual fuel is the feature that saves outages. Gasoline goes stale in months and vanishes from stations when the power's out across a whole county. Propane keeps for years in the tank sitting next to your grill. CNET's fuel comparison found propane burns 10 to 15% less energy-equivalent per hour and produces measurably less carbon monoxide. You give up roughly a tenth of the peak output on propane. Take the trade.

The details are right, too. Push-button electric start with a remote key fob lets you fire it up from the porch. The L14-30R twist-lock feeds a transfer switch or interlock kit, which is the only safe way to get power into your panel. Low-oil and CO shutdowns, a digital hour meter, a fuel gauge and a 6.6-gallon tank round it out.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It weighs about 202 pounds, which puts it in a different category of hassle. This isn't a generator you bring to a campsite. It lives in the garage and gets moved twenty feet to the driveway, and you should figure out how you'll do that before you need to.

It's a conventional generator, not an inverter, so the power is dirtier than what the Honda, Yamaha, WEN or Champion put out. Run anything sensitive through a surge protector or a small UPS. It's loud, too — conventional units this size sit around 65 to 75 dB(A). And under heavy load you'll burn something like half a gallon to a gallon of fuel an hour, which adds up fast across three days.

Westinghouse backs it with three years of limited service, labor and parts coverage.

No fuel means no carbon monoxide, and that changes where you're allowed to put it. Every gas generator on this page has to sit well outside, away from windows and doors, in whatever weather caused the outage. This one sits in the hallway. EcoFlow rates it as low as 30 dB, quiet enough to sleep beside. If someone in your house runs oxygen equipment or keeps refrigerated medication, that settles it.

The switchover is the other reason to want it. Ten milliseconds is fast enough that a desktop, a router, a NAS or a CPAP never registers that the grid went away. Put your essential circuit behind it and outages stop being events you scramble for. You get a notification on your phone and keep working.

Capacity used to be where batteries lost, and this one pushes back hard. 4,096Wh keeps a fridge going for a couple of days on its own, and you can stack extra packs up to 48kWh. The 4,000-watt output handles a 240V load like a well pump, and X-Boost stretches it to 6,000 watts for stubborn starts. Solar, a wall outlet or even a gas generator can refill it.

The cells are LFP in an IP65-rated pack, which is the chemistry you want in something that sits near full charge for months between uses. EcoFlow covers it for five years. There's no oil to change, no carburetor to drain and no stabilizer to remember to buy in the fall.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

A battery only holds what you put into it. Run a window AC alongside the fridge and 4,096Wh disappears in well under a day. Without solar panels, which are sold separately, or a generator to top it off, a three-day outage means rationing hard: fridge, phones, medical gear and not much else.

It's expensive, more than most of the gas generators here, and it weighs 115 pounds. Portable means a handle and a hand truck, not a carry. Expansion batteries add up quickly, both in cost and in the space they take up.

EcoFlow covers the DELTA Pro 3 with a five-year warranty.