It is often the companies newest to the category that offer sub-par products early on.
But they learn from the process and improve future versions.
That being said, Dakota Lithium entered the space with a banger in the PS2400.
Let’s break down the pros and cons.
Dakota Lithium PS2400: The good
I’ll start with the headline.
This thing charges faster than any other power station you’re likely to get your hands on.
We saw an overall charge rate of 26.76 watt-hours per minute.
Obviously the smaller units would finish much sooner.
But, we average the time it takes to charge with the stated capacity of each battery.
This gives us an average amount of watt-hour-per-minute you could expect when charging the product.
Check out the other power stations and how we test themhere.
Lithium batteries tend to charge more slowly after they’ve reached 80%.
Another strength of the PS2400 is its switchover time.
You also can’t overlook Dakota Lithium’s 11-year warranty.
First on the list: the input and output covers.
That doesn’t keep them from being annoying sometimes.
I find they occasionally get in my way and cause some fumbling around.
But even at 2kW, I’d like to see a higher ceiling for solar charging.
The pricing for the Dakota Lithium PS 2400 is OK.
If you’ve read this far then I’m guessing that’s what you’re looking for.
If this ticks your boxes, don’t hesitate.
From a broader view, keep your eyes on Dakota Lithium.
Every company that sells portable power stations provides the expected number of watt-hours its products are supposed to last.
Bluetti AC200P claims 2,000 watt-hours.
You’d get 576 hours from the Ecoflow model and an impressive 2,000 hours using the Bluetti generator.
That would last you almost three months.
How accurate are those figures?
Usable capacity
A power station’s capacity should be a no-brainer.
You should be able to look at a gear’s rated watt-hours and purchase accordingly based on your needs.
Generally, you’re free to do that.
I’ve found that you typically won’t see theentirecapacity rating as usable power.
We record the outgoing voltage and wattage using external measurement instruments or the UUT’s own measurements if available.
In every case, that percentage ends up at less than 100%.
Most manufacturers say you should calculate expected usage at 85% of the stated capacity.
Generally speaking, the midsize units (blue bars) didn’t fare well.
A quick word on our math here.
That load rating is now 440 watts and the GoSun’s capacity of 1,100 divided by 440 is 2.5.
We would expect to see 2.5 hours of usage.
The actual run time for this unit was 2 hours, 50 minutes – 113% capacity.
Sounds great, Right?
We’re missing some key factors.
Charge time
Charging performance can be nearly as important as knowing your capacity stats.
Will it take 1 hour or 2?
(That’s an actual number from our tests.)
We report three data points for charging performance.
80% is the “magic number” for many rechargeable batteries.
You’re not going to run into anyone else, so dive, splash around, whatever you want.
As we add people, it gets a bit more crowded and complicated.
You’ve got less room for people.
True to the analogy, person No.
Take a look at the full charge test results below.
Charge times are listed in hours, so shorter bars indicate power stations that charge faster.
