EF ECOFLOW Solar Generator RIVER 3 Plus with 45W Solar Panel, 286Wh Portable Power Station LiFePO4 Battery, 3 Up to 1200W AC Outlets,

Great unit if you size it to your needs correctly!
I bought the River 3 Plus to take on a festival camping trip. My goal was to keep our personal devices charged up and to power a small 12 volt cooler throughout the night when solar power wasn’t available. I would say it met the goals, but I might go up to a larger capacity or add the extra battery unit if doing it again.The River 3 Plus itself performed flawlessly and ran silently, even in near 100 degree weather, and actually probably 115 inside the car. The display shows everything you need to know as far as input and output wattage and estimated run time. It’s a good size to easily carry around, compared to the Delta series that weigh much, much more. The Bluetooth pairing was painless and the app worked flawlessly. I also appreciated the built in light when messing with the buttons at night.For my use case on this trip, the biggest issue is the battery capacity and the DC input limit. I was trying to charge a couple Dewalt power tool batteries to run a tent fan, charge several phones, a camera, some tent lights, and keep our 12 volt fridge running through the night. I only had a 100 watt solar panel and that proved to be not enough to replenish this fast enough, (not the fault of the River 3 Plus). I should have bought a 200w+ panel. I then had to rely on my car’s 12v cigarette lighter adapter for times when the sun was not out, which is also limited to about 100w. So I could never get more than 100w input at any time.When I managed to get it topped up enough, it definitely kept the fridge going 24/7, which was the most important task.If I could suggest any improvements, it would be to add a second solar/DC input, because then I could have used both my car’s interior cigarette lighter ports, or solar plus car simultaneously, to deliver 200 watts, which would have definitely sustained my needs a lot better.Overall, I’m very happy to have this unit and expect to get a lot more mileage from it. Ecoflow really seem to know what they’re doing with the design of these portable power stations.

The superior choice for small AC power backup
I owned both the Anker Solix C300 and this EcoFlow River 3 Plus until I discovered a key flaw in the Anker unit.My application is to power back my home networking equipment. Therefore, it was important for me to have the unit and AC outlets power back on when utility-provided AC was restored after a power failure that was long enough to fully deplete the battery. This River 3+ performed admirably in that way once I set the unit to remember and restore port settings upon startup (note that is not the default setting so need to change it if this is your application also). In contrast, the Anker Solix C300 had no such option and thus worked until the battery was fully depleted and the power restored, at which point, the Anker unit did not resume operation of my connected AC networking equipment. That represented a fatal flaw for me since I need my network equipment to resume operation without human intervention should an extended power failure happen when away from home.Beyond this core feature, I find the EcoFlow infrastructure to be a bit more mature in that it offers many settings including the ability to set limits on charge and discharge to further extend battery longevity. It also features an option to add an additional battery to further extend this small device’s capacity. As a side note, with the default battery, this was able to power my AT&T BGW320 gateway plus my Asus ET12 Pro tri-band router for nearly 9 hours (they have a combined AC draw of 26 watts). I decided to reduce the max charging limit to 80% to extend battery life and with that, the unit still provided 7 hours of system backup. Very happy with the device after a few days of operation. It is completely quiet once charged and even while charging or operating a load is very quiet (inaudible at anything over 2 feet away), charges quickly, and is feature packed. The Anker and EcoFlow models consume similar power with the AC inverter on along with the baseline system electronics. The anker measured roughly 12 watts beyond the consumption of the connected AC appliances while the EcoFlow drew roughly 10 watts suggesting EcoFlow is slightly more efficient. That comparison was similar on the app-reported operating temperature for both units with the Anker typically running at 90 degrees F while EcoFlow measured 86-88 degrees. I will report back should any disappointments arise in the coming months.