Power station for camping: a weekend of lights, cooler and laptop
Two nights: a 12 V compressor cooler, camp lights, phone charging, a laptop and a fan. Choose a unit you can comfortably carry from the car to camp. Start with BLUETTI Elite 200 V2 for enough capacity without carrying a much larger battery.
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Best for camping3.7/5 overall
Score from the maker's figures and 3 independent reviews
Why it’s here Holds 3,072 Wh against the 2,066 Wh needed for two nights of camping. $1,399 ($0.46 per Wh), a lower-cost way to cover two nights of camping.
19 of 56 current units hold enough over 2 days. The watt-hours include inverter losses and 20% spare; the start-up figure is what the largest motor draws for an instant. See the arithmetic.
What decides a camping unit
Weight, then solar input. This job runs a 12 V compressor cooler, lights, phones, a laptop and a fan for two nights, which lands in the compact-to-mid range where price per Wh is highest and each pound counts, so the table on this page is ordered by weight. The second question is whether a folding panel refills it between days: a unit's maximum solar input caps that, and a 100 W panel in real sun delivers 60 to 80 W. The solar page has the hours-of-sun arithmetic.
The cooler is the load that quietly decides everything: it runs all night, and a compressor cooler averages far less than its rated draw but cycles more when the box is warm. Run it from the 12 V socket, not the inverter, and pre-chill it at home.
The load, device by device
Over 2 days. Device watt-hours ÷ 0.85 for the inverter, × 1.2 for headroom, gives the 2,066 Wh above; the start-up peak adds the largest single surge among these devices to the running total. 1 device in this job's preset is not in the device table and is left out rather than guessed.
Devices in this job
Device
Watts
Hours a day
Wh a day
Start-up W
Camp LED light set (4 chainable lights) (rated)
6
5
32
–
Smartphone charger (USB-C) (rated)
20
2
40
–
Laptop (MacBook Air, charging) (rated)
40
3
120
–
Box fan, 20 inch (rated)
90
6
540
–
Every unit that clears it
Listed lightest first, because this unit gets carried.
19 units
19 units that hold 2,066 Wh and clear 157 W at start-up
Tick appliances from the device table, or add your own appliance using its label or a plug-in watt meter. Keep a preset only if it matches the equipment you plan to run.
Any picks earlier on this page use the starting appliances. Your changes update the calculator and its table below.
For a well pump, furnace or house inlet, check the connection before choosing by watts. The home-backup guide explains what an electrician needs to check.
Home
h/dayrated 90 W
h/dayrated 180 W
h/dayavg 41 W · start-up 1,300 W
h/dayrated 10 W
h/dayrated 1,500 W
h/dayrated 1,116 W · start-up 2,900 W
h/dayrated 89 W
Medical
h/dayrated 45 W
h/dayrated 53 W · start-up 104 W
h/dayrated 120 W
Camp and outdoors
h/dayrated 6 W
Work and tools
h/dayrated 1,800 W · start-up 2,300 W
h/dayrated 40 W
h/dayrated 20 W
h/dayavg 88 W
h/dayrated 24 W
Add your own appliances
Your entries stay in this tab. They are not saved in a link or sent with calculator events.
Use running watts while the appliance is on. For a cycling fridge or pump, enter the hours connected and the percentage of that time it runs. If your watts are already a daily average, leave duty at 100%. Startup watts must include the full startup draw, not just the extra watts.
Rated capacity you need
2,066Wh
AC running peak
157W
AC start-up peak
157W
Devices draw 1,463 Wh over2 days. 1,463 ÷ 0.85 × 1.2 gives the rated Wh to buy.
The loss allowance is an estimate. Headroom adds 20% to the energy requirement. All selected appliances can run together; copies in the same custom row can start together.
DC rows use this separate estimate. The default keeps the same loss allowance as AC; change it only if you know the efficiency of your cable and converter. Port voltage, current and shared limits still need checking.
19 of 56 tracked units fit
Units that fit the requirement above, sorted by price per Wh
They are arithmetic: capacity × 0.85 ÷ device watts. Real hours depend on temperature, battery age and the exact device; the constants are stated so you can adjust them, and every device draw in the calculator can be changed.
What if nothing fits?
Shorten the hours, drop a device, or move it to DC. The calculator recomputes as you change it, and the checkbox under its table shows every unit with the reason it fails, which usually points at one device.
Why is the pick not the biggest unit?
Because the job is fixed, and once a unit clears it, more capacity is weight and money for nothing. Choose the weight, recharge time and expansion options you will actually use.
