BLUETTI AC60 Portable Power Station: greatness claimed, is it though?
The BLUETTI AC60 Power Station would be absolutely great if it performed as claimed for the average user in their advertising. As it stands there’s nothing to sneeze at, its a really good product, but it’s a victim at the very least probably overoptimistic claims on the advertising side about charging abilities.
TL;DR – you’re probably going to like it, Paul just nitpicks advertising for consumers, probably burns bridges.
After telling a spokesperson for BLUETTI that asked me if I wanted to test this that I didn’t think it would particularly perform well with our audience, they said they wanted to try it and sent me a unit to review. Ballsy, I’ll give them that. Not a lot of companies are that sure of their product.
As anyone who reads me regularly knows, I seem to never pass up a chance to not make money on a review by nitpicking until people walk away, and there’s where we’re going to start (after the specs).
BLUETTI AC60 Specs
- 403 Watt Hour LiFePO4 Battery (18Ah)
- 2 600 Watt outlets with 1200W “heavy lifting” mode. 600 Watts total/shared.
- Water resistant / dust proof
- 1×100 Watt USB-C
- 2x3A USB A
- 1 12v/10A car outlet.
- 15 Watt wireless charging pad
- Inputs: Wall (standard computer plug,) solar VIC 12-28V/8A, 12/24V car charger
- Pass through charging
- LED panel on back for flashlight use
Unboxing the AC60
Overly optimistic advertising claims
Update to the below portion – their technicians claim that the environment needs to be at 25C/75.2F with 120V Utility Power to achieve claimed charging. I charged in an environment where it was 23.3C/74F with 120volt North American standard/Nashville Electric Service.
The most eye-catching thing about this unit was the first thing I discovered was not working as expected. A one-hour 600 Watt charging time:
There’s also a video they posted indicating it can charge to 100% in an hour.
Coincidentally currently if you go to the FAQ page, there’s this:
The FAQ currently lists 1.2 to 1.7 hours. I got 1.4 hours when I charged it on turbo. This is a fine time. This is not the claimed/expected 1 hour charging however.
I contacted the company, asked what was going on when Turbo mode was taking 1.4 hours to charge and was informed a couple of days later that it can charge to 80% in 45 minutes, then it enters trickle mode and will take significantly longer to top off to 100%. This is pretty standard fare for power stations.
You need to understand this – for me, 1.4 hours isn’t a bad charging time for a unit like this. I don’t need to fast charge it. I just need for something I’m reviewing to not claim it does something that it doesn’t in testing.
So. I asked them now that I have informed them that their 1 hour claim was misleading to say the least, what were they going to do? I was informed that my note was being passed on to the product and website teams and if they have any comments I’ll hear them.
Please understand at this point in the review this is not outraged indignation, this is just the first, and only issue I found with this product. You want to read an “Oh, I NEVER!” into this that’s on you.
You’re not going to charge it from dead to full in an hour. You’re going to do that in 1.7 hours. That was what this entire nitpicking block was about. Maybe under some ideal power/temperature combo but not in the average house.
Then again, who needs to fast charge these things?
Testing the BLUETTI AC60
Other than that it didn’t fast charge in an hour on Turbo mode for me, I had nothing unexpected happen. Ports work fine, I was able to power a hair dryer for a bit on one port and a power brick on another. Sadly I did not record what the wattage of each was. I did not have a good way to test heavy lifting mode so that remains untested. For any gadget use it’s more than overkill, for a home being without power it’s ok for a few hours of power but you’re not going to survive running the fridge for more than a few hours (fridge average wattage / 407.)
Charged a couple of electric scooters simultaneously but to be fair I don’t suspect either pulled more than 300 watts and I wasn’t watching, phones, and it performed exactly as expected. There was never anything acting as a power distributor that set it apart from other units I have. Extremely useful to be able to bring the power to the car and recharge them there… well, for me anyway.
There’s an app that allows you to control some of the functions of the device and it’s pretty well put together, but I felt a little let down that the only way listed to switch to turbo mode in charging was to use the app, and that the app has advertising. Seriously guys, how much money can these ads make for an app that gets used once in a blue moon? Be premium – skip the ads.
I was disappointed that you cannot charge the unit via the USB-C. That was one of my favorite features of another power station I reviewed, but if you’re near an outlet, a car, or a solar panel you’re set.
Managed to pinch myself with the handle once, tried to recreate that and can not figure out what I did, but I survived.
BLUETTI AC60 Portable Power Station overall
Great rugged basic power station/UPS with a few nice features (Qi charging that worked through my thicker cases). Ads are annoying and I wish they would stay out of apps. App really shouldn’t be needed. BLUETTI’s AC60 pricing appears on the higher end for 403wh chargers, perhaps for something I have missed in testing. For most needs I would say this is a pretty decent portable power station.
From a financial point of reference unless there’s something I am missing here currently this is on the higher end of a fairly short cost/benefit research dive I just took. You can get less expensive, albeit with a lesser warranty.
Good charger. If you want it, it’s available on Amazon and BLUETTI. And if you’re interested in going with the BLUETTI brand, I’d check out the EB70S which appears to be a significantly larger battery, is currently $200 less than the AC60, and the advertising appears to claim a much more conservative charging profile. That said I haven’t laid hands on the EB70S.
Links on Amazon are monetized and Pocketables gets a bit of any purchase. Link on Bluetti is not. Going to Amazon on your own and searching AC60 is not.
AC60 Portable Power Station
The BLUETTI AC60 is what you should expect in a power station. There are some issues with performance on fast charging not reaching the advertised claims, but overall a solid little well built machine.
Product Brand: BLUETTI
Product Currency: USD
Product Price: 699.00
Product In-Stock: InStock
3.2
Pros
- Does what you expect a decent power station to do
Cons
- Advertising claims of one hour charging are probably unobtainable
