I Bought Costco's CHEAPEST Solar Setup

This is Costco's cheapest solar

generator. I just bought it and I want

to find out is it any good? What can it

run? And should I add it to my

collection or is it actually a bad deal?

I was not expecting that to turn on.

This one is from Ankor, which is a top

brand, and they were somehow able to fit

a 100 W solar panel into this box.

So, they are definitely using a folding

solar panel, which I already don't love

because they never really seem to output

that much power. But hey, I will test

this solar panel. I guess this is it.

I'll test it against a normal 100 W

panel.

This is the solar generator kit. You got

a power station. It's the C800X it's

called. These are the charging cables.

These are the solar charging cables. And

then this binder right here is a 100 W

solar panel. The power station looks

standard. You can see I actually have

its bigger siblings there on my shelf,

the C1000. One fun thing about this

model though is it has builtin lights

and an extending pole that you can

connect here. Could be good for camping,

could be good for outages. Got the

standard ports and standard outlets and

then the charging ports on this side. Oh

my. Whoa. Whoa.

There is no way this thing outputs good

power. It's portable.

It's also pretty flimsy. On the back,

you can see it's got these built-in

stands for angling it towards the sun. I

really want to test out this solar

panel, but these brands typically

recommend that you wall charge the power

station first.

Okay, so Oh, that's higher than normal.

88% charged out of the box. Charging at

a rate of 473 watts, 0.2 hours until

it's full. H, that's not that fast of a

charging speed for this size power

station. So, I've got the app and I'm

going to see if I can update the

settings. Oh, interesting. It says it's

at the fastest uh battery charging

speed, but it's only at 475 watts. Maybe

that's because it's mostly charged or

it's because the first time charging. I

could turn on ultra fast charging here,

but when you click on it, there's a

warning. It says to protect the battery.

Turn on ultra fast charging only when

necessary. So, I'm just going to leave

it to charge to 100% at this rate. So,

what can this size power station run?

Well, we'll get to the bigger stuff like

an AC unit and a TV later. Let's first

start with the stuff you might bring

camping. You can charge your devices, of

course, but look at this. This is a 100

watt USBC port, which I love that they

included because not only can it charge

your devices faster, but you can run a

Starlink Mini off of it if you have the

USBC cable, which is way more efficient

than running it off an outlet. The power

draw has been bouncing around between

like 20 and 50 watts, currently 21, and

an estimated 16 hours of run time.

Oh, these charge in here. That makes so

much sense. They're magnetized.

It's like a little screw thing. You

know, maybe you don't even need to bring

extra lights if you have this. And I

will definitely find out if this power

station can run my kitchen fridge in

just a sec. But first, plugging in this

12vt mini fridge. Now, the power draw is

jumping around a lot, but it's been

between like 50 and 100 watts. There's

an estimated 9 hours remaining. Let's

see what the batter is at after an hour.

And by the way, the battery is an LFP

battery, which is the gold standard

battery type for power stations today.

And it has 768 watt hours of capacity,

which don't worry, you'll get a feel for

what that means in real life terms when

we run more devices and appliances off

of it. It's been an hour and before we

see if this thing can replace an

expensive camping stove with a cheap

electric one, let's check the battery

percentage.

Oh, 90%. That's better than I thought.

Now, I'm plugging in the electric stove,

turning on the outlets, and cranking it

up to max to see if this thing can run

it. Ooh, I hear the fan kicking on.

>> Woah, it's now using close to 1,000

watts. It's already down to 88%.

>> But keep in mind, if you plug in a solar

panel, that's going to extend your run

time even more. And I haven't forgotten

about this kit solar panel. By the way,

we will be testing it out. We're just

going to drain this power station a bit

more. First, the two cups of water are

boiling. Let's check the battery.

69%. So, it dropped by about 21% just

boiling that. So, probably not going to

replace a double burner camping stove

with this size power station, but maybe

a Jet Boil.

Now, we're getting to the bigger

appliances, and we will work our way up

to the really power hungry ones in just

a sec. But first, let's start with a

basic setup to be comfortable during a

blackout. Kitchen fridge, Wi-Fi router,

fan,

and TV.

This is not that big of a power station.

I'm not even sure if it can run all this

stuff. Let's check.

Okay, 160 watts and 2.6 hours remaining.

But even though the fridge is on, it is

not yet running. So, these numbers are

going to change. And I haven't mentioned

it yet, but speaking of blackouts,

there's a little light bar here. The

fridge started running after about 10

minutes, but when it did, the wattage

only jumped up to around 220 watts,

which was way less than I was expecting

because this fridge is rated to a max of

nearly 1,000 watts. And I noticed when I

opened the fridge door, the wattage

immediately jumped up to 320 W. But

interestingly enough, when I opened the

freezer door, the wattage only jumped up

to around 260 watts. That is not what I

would have guessed. All right,

everything's been running for an hour

and the power station has been

completely quiet this entire time and

everything's been running fine and we

are now at 33% battery. There's just one

more thing I want to show you guys

before we push this thing to its limits.

This unit does have pass through

charging. So now everything is being run

off of grid power that's being passed

through by the power station and the

unit is being charged at the same time.

And like most units of this size, it

does have a built-in UPS feature. So,

when I unplug it, it immediately

switches over to running everything off

of battery power in 20 milliseconds or

less, which is fast enough for most

devices to keep running uninterrupted as

everything here just did. So, what's the

limit then? What can't this power

station run? And I think once we find

that out, it'll be a good time to test

out the solar panel. This power station

can output up to,200 W of continuous

power. So, can it run a 5,000 BTU window

AC unit? This has a rated power draw of

450 W. So, you would think, of course,

but when these start their cooling

cycle, they can draw a surge of power.

So, let's find out.

Okay, turned on.

Oh, wow. It's already cooling. Oh, it's

drawing 360

watts. All right, that started up no

problem. Must a pass. This power station

also has a surge output of 1,600 watts,

but it says in the fine print that it's

best for devices that generate heat, and

that's typical of power stations and

their surge power output modes. So, I've

got a 1500 W space heater that I'm going

to turn on and crank up all the way to

the max heat setting. All right, it's

turning on. It's heating up fast. Ooh,

this power station is making some noise

now. 1500. All right, I'm going to let

it run for a minute. This is hot. It is

really hot. I'm going to move away. It

says.1 hours remaining. Throttled the

power down to 12,200 W. All right. I'd

say it's been about a minute, so I'm

going to turn this off. Wow. Well, we

didn't overload it. So, what happens

when you throw something insanely

powerful at it, like a circular saw that

I know from past experience draws over

2200 watts on startup.

[Music]

I was not expecting that to turn on. I

didn't even put an ear protection. Wait,

that actually worked. What? That was

very surprising. I was fully expecting

the outlets to overload. All right,

finally the battery is pretty low. We

got a mostly sunny day. Let's test out

this very questionable solar panel.

First challenge is how do I prop this

thing up?

Oh, there's Velcro

that's got to go here. This is weird.

So, I've got to unbutton both of these

in order to reveal a Velcro strap that I

velcro to this patch here.

That's not how it goes. Maybe it's just

the other way. This is how you do it. Oh

my gosh, it's coming unvel.

This is why I hate these things. Not

even going to mess with it. This is

confusing as heck. This is the best I'm

going to do. And then as far as cables,

it comes with uh some extension cables.

These are maybe 10 ft, which is a nice

touch. And then a little adapter cable.

First, I'm going to plug the extension

cables into the MC4 connectors on the

corner of the panel here. Then I'm going

to connect the adapter cable to these

connectors. And then finally, I'm going

to plug the solar charging cable in to

the solar charging port on the power

station. Starting to charge. 31 watts.

45 60. Keep going. Come on. 71. Maxing

out at 71 watts for 9.2 hours to a full

charge. That's pretty average power

output from a 100 W panel, but I'll

leave it here for an hour so we can see

how much it charges the battery by. And

afterward, we'll see how it compares to

my favorite 100 W budget panel. and we

will test its solar charging limit with

these two 200 W panels.

All right, the panel has been charging

for 1 hour. I wonder where we are with

the battery.

32%

only 7% charge and 59 watts from the

solar panel right now. Will my favorite

budget 100 W panel do better? Let's make

sure I got the angles right. This is

saying 26.

Now this one

is 27. There we go. Okay, now it's 26.

And one more power output check before I

switch this to the new panel. 56 watt.

So I'll disconnect these solar charging

cables. I can just plug them right into

this third party solar panel. I know for

a fact this one is compatible. Should

start charging. 31 47 55 56.

Oh wow. The exact same output. It is

quite rare actually that two panels,

even if they're rated for the same

wattage, output the same amount of

power. So, it's a good thing for this

panel. It's outputting more power than I

was expecting it to honestly. Uh because

I know this panel has good output for a

100 W panel. But I mentioned that this

one is a budget panel. We will talk

about the cost of this one in just a

sec. And before it gets too late here, I

want to test the solar charging limits

of the power station first with a 200 W

solar panel.

Lights fading fast and we're only

getting 110 watts from this 200 W panel.

So, I am quickly going to connect these

two in series. This way, I can connect

400 W of solar panels to the power

station. So, I've definitely connected

more than the 300 watts max solar

charging limit, but it's so late in the

afternoon. We are not going to be

getting close to that with these panels.

I got to wait for this cloud to pass.

All right, the cloud is starting to

pass. It's creeping up. 67 73 90 Oh,

130. Ooh, 154 217. Looks like it's

maxing out. Maxing out at 222 W, which

puts it at 2.4 hours until it's fully

charged. Now, before you get too excited

about this solar generator kit, because

yeah, the solar panel, it surprised me.

It did. I'll admit it. Uh, I think it's

finally time that we talk about cost.

And while we're doing that, I am

actually going to test out the ultra

fast charging speed to see how long it

takes to charge up to full from 36%.

Turning on ultra fast charging.

I'll go ahead and start the timer. Wo.

Okay. 1,000 plus watts charging speed in

an estimated.5 hours until it's full.

So, Ankor doesn't even sell this

particular panel by itself, but the 100

W panel they do sell is currently $200.

And the 100 W budget panel that I used

is currently on Amazon for $80. And

sure, it folds up nicely. It's portable,

whatever. But you can get a folding 100

W solar panel on Amazon for a little

over $100. So any way you look at it,

this is an overpriced panel, which begs

the question, is this solar generator

kit from Costco, the land of good deals,

is it actually a bad deal? 5 minutes of

ultra fast charging and the battery has

already charged by 11%. This solar

generator kit cost me $768

from Costco. It's not cheap. And if I

went through Amazon and bought similar

parts and used the budget panel instead

of the expensive one, it would cost me,

I kid you not, $767,

essentially the exact same price. So, at

first, you might think this is a good

deal. You get a little bit of a nicer

solar panel for essentially the same

price. But we have to put it all into

context. You could buy the bigger

sibling, the C1000, for $429

currently. And there's a new version of

this. It's called the C1000 Gen 2, which

is currently $449.

No, it doesn't make sense. These are

bigger, more powerful power stations

with bigger batteries for cheaper. And

the full setup with this bigger power

station would cost me nearly $200 less

than what I paid for all this. This

makes Costco's cheapest solar generator

a bad deal in my eyes. So, I will put

links down below where you can get all

these individual parts as well as this

bigger one on Amazon and save a ton of

money. But to be able to use cheaper

third party solar panels, you need to

know how to pick ones that are

compatible with your power station. So,

I'll put a link to a video here that

will teach you how to do that. And I

recommend watching it because it could

potentially save you hundreds of dollars

on your solar equipment. But now, I've

got to go to Costco because I've got a

return to make. Just finished fast

charging.