Overall and Final Verdict
I had high hopes when I had the Anker Solix C300 Portable Power Station coming in and for the most part, it met or exceeded those expectations. I did have trouble with our first C300, but even in that situation, I was impressed with its performance outside of the issues I had. But once I received the replacement and I was able to fully put it to use the C300 did great. The amount of flexibility that Anker built into it both on the charging and outputs is impressive. For charging you can recharge the C300 using an AC cord, using Type-C, a car's 12v accessory outlet, or with a solar panel. In even the slowest of those you can recharge the C300 in two and a half hours, but with the fastest (AC cord) you can do it in 50 minutes. When for outputs you have a car port, three Type-C plugs with two of those capable of 140 watts, a USB Type-A plug, or three AC outlets. If that wasn’t enough, you also have a built-in light as well. Anker is targeting hiking and camping, but I found it very useful around the house. It let us play magic when our power was out while also charging up our phones and we only used 1% of the total capacity in that multi-hour outage. With the AC outlets, you can do all of that and also keep important devices powered up as well. That same functionality also allows it to function as a UPS with it taking less than 10ms for it to switch from AC power to the battery. You could keep your medical equipment up and running, or if you are a tech head like me you could keep your router and modem up and running for 8 hours. You have 300 watts of power output on battery, which offers a lot of flexibility.
Beyond the issues with our first C300 that the replacement fixed, I had two other issues with it. First, Anker included the carry strap hooks on it and they make and sell a shoulder strap but they are selling it for $30, that’s just crazy. But my main issue with the C300 is the weight, it's just over 9 pounds. Now let me first say that I don’t think that weight is out of line for a large battery like this, nor was it an issue in ANY of my testing when using it around the house and office. My only issue is with it being promoted with hiking and I just can’t imagine anyone packing it and the devices you would want to power on any serious hiking or backpacking trip. That said, that isn’t to say this isn’t perfect for camping or to be more specific, glamping. If you aren’t carrying this all day long, this is a perfect way to get power and light for the campsite if you are looking to enjoy the outside but don’t want to give up your love for powered devices.
With all of that said, even without hiking being figured in. I do love this for someone who might use it here and there when camping but also uses it for power outages around the house either as a UPS or just to power and charge a few devices to weather a storm or outage. Now for pricing, the C300 has an MSRP of $249.99 but even at launch, it had a $50 coupon available. Right now with Black Friday deals hitting, it is currently $179.99. That’s good because at $250 it starts to get in the range of a cheap gas generator. That's not something you would want running at the campsite, but it does become competition for users like me who are looking to use it around the house. Altogether I’ve been extremely happy with the C300, but it does beg the question. When will we see a proper UPS line from Anker, they are already basically doing it here.
Live Pricing: HERE
