These days, extreme weather events are more extreme and frequent. After an unusual ice storm knocked out power to my house for days this year, I felt strangely vulnerable without a way to heat my home, so I decided to look into backup power options.
NEVER fear power outages with the Anker SOLIX F3800!!!
While a whole-house solution wasn’t in the budget, I knew I wanted at least enough power to keep myself warm and to power my phone, laptop, and modem (in case the internet went down). While portable power stations and solar generators are options, they’re somewhat limited in how many volts/watts they can output and for how long. To really get to something that could sustain me for a few days, I needed to go bigger – to a power station. Luckily, Anker was willing to let me try out their new F3800 unit , and it may be just what I’m looking for, but it does come with a hefty price tag.
The first thing to know about the F3800 is that it’s only portable in the loosest sense of the word. UPS had a hard time getting the box to my door, I had a hard time getting it out of the box, and I really had a hard time moving it from my front door to my power panel. Sure, it has wheels and a handle, but it still weighs over 130 pounds. If you ever dream of hauling something like this while camping, forget it.
The unit is tall and compact, though, so it fits neatly into a cabinet and looks great in a closet, for example. There was no setup required either. You can plug it in and charge it straight out of the box. It also comes with cables to daisy chain it with extra batteries. All you really need to do is open the Anker app and pair the unit, although the device works fine without that. The app just adds a few handy features, like fine-tuning the unit’s operation and remote monitoring.
