Anker Solix C1000

Our journey with Anker began with a 100w wall charger for USB C. We were blown away by the quality build, feel, and performance of this, so when Anker sent an e'mail advertising their 1000W power station was going on special at $699 we decided to step right up. We go road adventuring lots, and usually pack a small gas stove - the type that sits atop a little cylinder. In our offgrid setup at our second property we use a Sunbeam 1800W 1L kettle. By chance our generator at that property has a max continuous output of 1800W, so the whole thing works well. This power station has a surge capacity of 2400W and a continuous rating of 1800 ... it duplicates our other setup perfectly. Gas stove drops to redundant status! The unit has also powered our plug-in 240V stovetop, but can only continuously run one of the two elements - 1500W or 750W. We find these stoves very inefficient however, and though it CAN power it, it won't be in our situation.

These power stations can be purchased through either Anker Australia ... or the likes of Bunnings and Harvey Norman. When arranged via these 3rd party sellers the pricing stays the same, and the goods still come direct from Anker ...BUT you get the option of using Afterpay ... which we love! Anker seems to spare no expense with packaging for their stuff, and we've actually retained its box and foam supports to store it in while touring.

Like the wall plug, the unit is sturdy and beautifully built. Not especially heavy, considering what it does - probably about the same as a car battery. It's rugged looking, with meaty plastic handles one at each end. Very easy to carry it with just one hand if you wanted to carry the esky with the other!

There are outlets for USB A and C (high power), no less than four 240V AC outlets, and a 12V cigarette lighter type. The display - activated when powering up or via a soft press of power button is brilliant - showing power draw of your combined load in watts, the expected length of remaining operation at that load, and remaining capacity as a percentage of total (total capacity incidentally is 1056W). Above the display a neat LED bar light (warm white) runs virtually the entire span of the station with 3 different levels. Again the draw of the light is displayed on the readout - 1W, 2W and 3W. We don't use the light often ... but certainly would if camping in a tent for example. Note that the light can only be turned on if the unit is in standby mode.

Input wise, there is a choice of charging via 240V from a normal domestic outlet, or DC from either a car's 12V cigarette lighter outlet, or a solar panel/blanket. The plug for this attaches via an XT60 fitting - which I'd never heard of. Quality leads for both charging options are supplied with the unit. Should you wish to recharge from a solar setup - in our case we used our 100W solar blanket, you'll need a lead that terminates with the compatible XT60 plug. Ours has an Anderson plug, so we simply purchased an Anderson to XT60 adapter from Anaconda for a few bucks, and it worked a treat! Our blanket output is 100W ... and sure enough, at peak sunlight the power station was reporting 100W of input. If you were running a camping fridge and a solar blanket this setup could arguably keep you running indefinitely, given the right conditions.

Yet another aspect of functionality is the ability of this model to accept a 100% battery capacity increase via addition of a separately available Anker battery pack. Input is via a proprietary plug on the end opposite the charging input plugs. This may be useful to some people, but the high cost of the addition makes the concept of perhaps buying a larger capacity model from the outset come to mind.

The power station has wifi capacity to link with the Anker app, and we trialled this very successfully initially. We aren't really tech people though ... we haven't used it since, but most folks would likely find this functionality useful.

Performance has been better than expected. We use it very regularly with the 1800W kettle. Incidentally the display reports that our kettle in fact draws 1656W ... and the same type at our other property draws 1612W. In fact it's been an interesting exercise to see the draw of lots of our appliances using this pathway! When running at this high level of draw the inverter/cooling fan activates, and the unit makes an electromechanical hum. Not at all intrusive to us, especially since it's only happening while the kettle's boiling. Lighter loads don't activate the noise, so more often than not it doesn't make any appreciable sound at all.

A couple of points ... the Solix C1000 now has a "2nd generation" model. It's apparently very similar, but has a slightly larger continuous output capacity - which didn't interest us since 1800W was the highest total output we needed, the ability to add more battery capacity is gone, AND the next gen model loses the light. This may be important to some people. It's most certainly NOT on a special pricing offer, so this too may be important to some people! It's unclear whether Anker is intending phasing out the old C1000 and just sticking with the next gen ... this may explain the "runout" type pricing structure though.

Which leads us to pretty well the only fault we can find with this model: the displayed power parameters/usages are not linear. For example, when we boil our kettle when the station is fully charged it claims to have used 6% capacity. When we use the same kettle at the same level when the unit is displaying 30% remaining capacity, it uses 24%!! I realise that getting this right with batteries can be a real challenge ... but it's very misleading and may even catch some people out. So bear this in mind.

Notwithstanding, the thing is rugged, and seems to have been designed with us exactly in mind. As an added bonus it runs with lithium iron phosphate batteries instead of what we consider to be the less stable and very different lithium ion format. An aspect that was critical in our purchase decision.