ROCKPALS Rockpower 300 Portable Power Station review
The ROCKPALS 300W Portable Power Station brings 280 watt hours of power wherever you need it in an under eight pound package.
I’ve been working with this for about two weeks at this point along with a solar panel that we’re going to do a separate review of. It delivers the power, it appears to function as anticipated and advertised, and it’s currently $100 off on the Rockpals site (as of 12/12/2022).
This was a hard review to do because there’s nothing really wrong with the unit that I could nitpick at. Maybe it charges a little slower than other portable power stations than I’ve worked with but that’s generally not a use case I’m really worried about. I tested the charger they included on another and yeah, other power stations charge faster even on their charger. We’re talking maybe 7% slower charge. That literally is the only thing I could nitpick on the Rockpower 300.
So, decent unit, might have notes on solar charging later but two weeks of rain sort of have put a damper on that part of the review.
Why would you want a ROCKPALS 300W Portable Power Station?
You’re in the woods and don’t want to scare the bears with your snoring and would not like to be killed by your camping buddies and need to power a CPAP. This’ll do it (although turn off the humidity and hose heat portion as that is a major power drain.)
Your power’s out in a storm and you want to power your phone and a heating blanket. You just want to power your phone for a very long time. You’re running a school event and need to power a speaker / DJ station for a bit.
My personal favorite use case scenario with it has been outdoor movie night with my XGIMI Elfin projector. I mean, it’s overkill, but it prevents me from having to run 300 feet of extension cords to power a projector.
You just want to be ready when the power eventually goes out.
You want to fast charge a bunch of devices at an outdoor event. This is great for that.
What the ROCKPALS Rockpower won’t do (understand your power)
This is the case with any portable power station, so don’t think I’m picking on ROCKPALS here. These are just some notes if you’re just getting into power stations.
You have a set maximum wattage – that is how much juice you can pull at one time. That is 300 with this unit (peaks at 500, but we’ll say 300 as that’s what it’s rated.) You will not power a toaster. A toaster is 1200+. You will not power a space heater. That is 1500 watts. You probably will not power a coffee pot. This is ok, that’s not what this is designed for. Your refrigerator? Not unless it’s a camping or RV fridge. You want to power those things, you’ll need to add a comma to your budget, 40 pounds to the unit, and probably drop the word “portable.”
It will also not last forever on a single charge. 280 Watt Hours is what’s capable of being contained in the unit. If you’re pulling 100 watts an hour, you’re going to run a little over two and a half hours before the unit is drained. Less wattage means longer life, more means shorter. Think of watt hours as gasoline and watts as speed.
Neither of these things changes brand to brand other than how big the tank is and how fast the car goes.
Overall
The batteries contained within for 0.28kWh cost between $40 and $80 if I’m reading correctly. You have a manufacturing cost for the assembly, container, inverter, shipping, packaging, promotion, free units for reviewers, etc. Based on my now 5-year dated OEM production knowledge that should put their price point to profit at about … $40-50 under where the price is on the flash sale.
On Amazon currently it seems a overpriced comparing watt hours to watt hours with other manufacturers. I’m not going to put them down, I don’t know the quality or use cases the other units want, but I’d grab this on the Rockpals site and not regret it, but it’s $100 more than my regret bar on Amazon.
Should be noted I make money on an Amazon link, nothing on the Rockpals site. So take that as you will. At $189 the ROCKPALS Rockpower 300 is coming in at an acceptable price. That retail price and what they want on Amazon right ($289,) now is just too high in my opinion.
You can find the ROCKPALS Rockpower 300 at Amazon (where we earn a commission,) or on the ROCKPALS website. I advise you go to the ROCKPALS site if you’re buying this, unless the Amazon price drops to match or below $190 and then I’d say use it and earn us $11.64 or so.
It’s a good unit. I’ll update if I manage to kill it, and we’ll get the solar panel tested if the sun ever comes out again… I can tell you I managed to get 14 watts one day but that was I think lucky.
