A power station is a battery with plug sockets in it. This one holds 1,070 watt-hours, which is roughly a laptop charged eight times over, or a small fridge kept cold for the better part of a day.

Three people should be reading this. The camper who wants mains power at a pitch, the van owner who would rather not run an engine for electricity, and anyone at home who is tired of losing an afternoon’s work every time the power flickers.

It is not travel gear. The airline section further down explains why that matters more than it sounds.

Jackery’s headline is a full charge in one hour. The figure is real, but it is the Emergency Super Charge mode, not what the unit does out of the box.

In normal mode Jackery quotes 1.7 hours. The Solar Lab measured about 1 hour 35 minutes, and The Drive got from 30 percent to 100 percent in under 90 minutes on a standard wall socket.

Either way it is quick, and quicker than most rivals. Set your expectation at an hour and a half unless you have opened the app and asked for the faster mode.

Use that mode sparingly. The Solar Lab notes that leaning on it regularly is not kind to the battery over the long run.

Solar

Up to 400W of solar input with MPPT tracking. Jackery cites around three hours in strong sun, and The Solar Lab measured about 4.5 hours.

Under heavy overcast, which is most of the year in northern Europe, the Pacific Northwest and the UK, plan for most of a day rather than an afternoon.

Darleene’s version: it fills up in about an hour and a half normally, or an hour if you tell it to hurry. Telling it to hurry too often wears the battery out sooner.

About 11 kg. The Drive put one on a scale and got 24.5 lb against Jackery’s stated 24 lb, so the marketing weight is close to the truth.

That is light for 1,070Wh. The unit is also 18 percent smaller than the model it replaces, and one person lifts it out of a boot without making a plan first.

The handle folds flat, which is what lets it slide under a seat. The Drive’s only complaint: a single handle is less comfortable than two over any real distance.

Darleene’s takeEleven kilos is a big bag of potatoes. I can carry it from the car to the tent, but I wouldn’t want to carry it across a field.

Want to add a second battery later? You cannot.

There is no expansion pack, no accessory to buy in a year, no port waiting to be enabled. 1,070Wh is the ceiling for the life of the unit.

Every review we read raises this, and it is the strongest single reason to buy something else. The EcoFlow DELTA 3 Max Plus scales to 10kWh, and the BLUETTI Apex 300 to 58kWh.

If you know 1,070Wh covers what you need, none of that matters. If you are unsure, it matters more than any other number on this page.

Jackery built this one around a single idea: a kilowatt-hour should be carryable. Everything good about it follows from that, and so does the one real compromise.

The weight, the sub-22 dB fan, the recharge speed and the twenty-year cell rating are class-leading or close to it. Two sockets and a 1,500W ceiling are what that packaging costs.

We would buy it for camping, for a van, and for keeping a home office alive through a power cut. We would not buy it as the foundation of a home battery system, because it can never become one.

The Anker is the closest comparison. Near-identical weight and capacity, a third more output, and the reason our roundup lists it as the fast-recharge pick rather than the light one.

Step up to the 2000 v2 only once you have worked out that 1,070Wh runs short, because you are taking on nearly 7 kg to get there.

Jackery and EcoFlow split this class between them, and the honest summary is that Jackery sells lightness while EcoFlow sells expandability.