EcoFlow RIVER 2 Portable Power Station
EcoFlow RIVER 2 Portable Power Station Review – With ultra-fast 60m charging, you’ll always be ready for the next getaway. Charge 0-100% using an AC outlet in only 1 hour. It’s 5 times faster than the industry norm and 38% faster than the previous generation.
With over 3000+ battery 100% cycles, you can use RIVER 2 almost every day for pretty much ten years. LFP battery chemistry doesn’t just offer long life. It’s more reliable, efficient and safe even in high temperatures. RIVER 2 has one of the longest warranties in the industry, so we’ve got you protected for the next 5 years.
With four versatile charging options, we’ve made sure you can charge RIVER 2 pretty much anywhere you are. Charge using an AC outlet for ultra-fast 1-hour charging, charge on the go with car charging, and go off-grid or green with fast solar charging. RIVER 2 has an all-new charging option, USB-C. Plug in and conveniently charge anywhere that has an outlet.
EcoFlow RIVER 2 Portable Power Station Review
With a 300W output, RIVER 2 has most of your essentials covered. But why not take power to another level with X-Boost mode? Turn it on to power appliances with an output of up to 600W, including a desktop computer or blender. With a lightweight of only 3.5 kg and an easy-to-carry design, RIVER 2 makes on-the-go power plain sailing. Prepare your appliances for unexpected outages. With a fast 30ms switch-over speed, RIVER 2 keeps your must-have-power appliances running.
Use the EcoFlow app to control and monitor RIVER 2 from the convenience of your phone. Connect using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to use nearby or remotely.
The unit arrived with care the protect the unit with the power station itself being triple-boxed (an outer amazon box and two Ecoflow boxes.) Overall the unit itself feels sturdy, but there is some minor flex (and a little creaking noise) with the handle. It weighs about as much as a gallon of water, making it easy to move and carry. Charging the unit is as simple as plugging in the provided AC power cord. It also comes with a car lighter adapter, but sadly there is no included adapter for solar charging. The display is bright and easy to read, could probably read it outside unlike the display on my Bluetti EB200P. I like the flattish top, but the handle placement does make it awkward to pick up and has the front panel facing the ground when picked up by the handle, not great. I allowed it to finish charging and did a load capacity test.
EcoFlow RIVER 2 Portable Power Station Review
Like some other reviews got, I only got around 74% of the stated battery capacity using the AC output, which is not great. I’ve read the DC outputs have considerably better efficiency, but I don’t have the equipment to easily test that. Hopefully, the AC inverter efficiency will be improved with a firmware fix. I should point out here that the usable capacity that you get will never be the stated battery capacity. To start off with, usually, 10 per cent of the battery is reserved to prevent damage from over-discharge. Then there are parasitic draws of things such as the inverter, DC output regulators, and power consumed by just keeping the unit on. This applies to all power stations. I haven’t tested this out myself yet, but apparently, solar charging is limited to only 110 watts. For a product that is marketed as being fast to charge (and it does charge fast over AC), it would have been nice for the unit to be able to take at least 200 watts with solar.
EcoFlow RIVER 2 Portable Power Station Review
The Ecoflow app, it’s a love/hate thing: The Ecoflow app is needed to change settings such as turning X-boost on/off (recommend setting it to off), reducing the AC charging power (presumably limiting the power may help to better extend the life of the batteries), and have it stop charging at a certain percentage (useful if it’s going to be used as a UPS and thus shouldn’t be kept at 100% charge for months on end.) It’s also needed to upgrade the firmware.
The app appears to be well-polished BUT there are three things I really hate about it. Number one, it forces you to create an account just to use the app (less privacy) vs. it being optional. Number two, it forces you to turn on location services to pair the power station (even less privacy.) I tried turning on location services without GPS, but it still complained about location services being off until I turned on GPS, not cool. I should note that this may be an issue with Android’s permissions for the old phone I’m using, so this may not be Ecoflow’s fault. Number three, in order to do firmware updates, it forces you to directly connect your power station to your wireless network vs. just pushing the update over Bluetooth.
Overall, for the price the EcoFlow RIVER 2 Portable Power Station is an awesome portable power station.
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