XANTREX XPOWER POWERSOURCE MOBILE 100 852-0281

List Price: $129.99 Discount Price: $58.18

Features:

• Converts 12 DC power from a vehicle battery into 120 AC power
• Three-prong AC outlet to handle all chargers and adapters for mobile electronics
• USB charge port
• Blue LED on/off power indicator
• DC cable with vehicle and airplane connector

Customer Reviews:

Great when traveling (excellent) immediate power [Posted on 2008-01-07]
I purchased this for my laptop notepad. When traveling, Keep in mind if you have dial service up while traveling. It won't work when cruising through the internet unless you have mobil wifi. Otherwise you can use it for movies, music and basic paperwork and Microsoft office. It can work well if you find wifi near a UPS office,Kinkos,Banks,airport, cafe, or office building that has service within 500 feet. Yes, you can use it outside. And plug in the Power source mobile unit for instant power.

Bliss Remiss [Posted on 2008-02-09]
I purchased this product with a two-fold purpose. 1) to maintain a full charge on my Blackberry and to provide for emergency power for my notebook. I have a FIVE PLUS star rating for the former and a "0" star for the later. When I found myself in a situation where I had to have another hours juice for my notebook, I couldn't even get a second. So, I'm not thrilled, but it'll do.

Good Portable Power (within limits) [Posted on 2008-03-17]
BACKGROUND
I been looking for a simple portable 110V power source that would charge via home or car. This unit is definitely the best on the market although limited in power output and run time. If you need to power something simple it is great but you cannot exceed the 60W output or it shuts off.

I have used these to demo web cameras which draw only 4Watts so it is a great device for that. It is also very good for a small DVD player or other portable device like Ipods or mini-TV's. Unfortunately, most laptops today will draw 60-90W so the charger simply does not power up. If it does it will shut down quickly.

ADVANTAGES
- Compact: Very small for a 40W-Hr supply (40W run for 1 hour)
- Reliable: Once charged it seems to hold a charge well for 2-3 weeks at at time.
- Good (but limited) run times: If power draw is low (@10W) it will run nearly 4hours.

DISADVANTAGES
- Cannot keep plugged in 24/7 to use as a battery backup since this may overcharge the battery.
- Xantrex does a poor job listing run times vs power draw or even explaining that with low power draw you can be quite long run times. This is a common principle in the backup battery area explained well by companies like APC.

SUMMARY
This is a great little supply for very portable devices. If you do not expect a battery backup solution or a big portable supply then you will be please with the product.

Good power source. Perfect for most of your portable needs [Posted on 2008-09-08]
I got this both to use as a secondary source for my laptop, and as a portable power source for my game system. I've been able to run a Slim PS2 on this baby for about 1 hour and 25 minutes on a full charge. It does what it's supposed to. If you can also find this one, you'll save about a good $30 than buying the one with Duracell on the box.

It can from time to time run a bit warm and is advised (in the manual) that you do not recharge the battery when it's "hot". I'm sure the reason is obvious but a usual 15min cool down time should be okay for recharge after wards. The only thing I really don't like about this unite is it's low battery warning indicator. It's similar to a digital alarm clock noise and that goes on for some time. But when it comes on, you basically got like 20 seconds to shut down or plug it into your car (because yes it's an inverter as well).

Charging is relatively slow when you have your source plugged into it while charging in the car (it does come with a car charger). I've never had an instance where the low car battery shutoff feature was activated, but it's there none the less. You can only "use and charge" in your car. You can't use and charge while plugged into a wall. All functions when plugged into a wall are disabled. Strictly for charging.

To finish this lengthy review, if you're looking for a reliable and inexpensive portable power source to charge all you mobile devices and utilize some big ones, this certainly does the trick.

A good value for the price, good output frequency tolerance, but wattage is lower than advertised [Posted on 2008-10-21]
I got two of these under the Duracell brand names and several more Xantrex branded when Amazon had them on sale for about $50 each. They work well for some devices, but don't work at all with some power hungry laptops like my Dell Inspiron 9400/E1705. This particular laptop has an AC adapter rated at 80 watts. Although still under 100 watts, the device runs for about 1 second then shuts off. There is also no direct DC output from the battery which would have made it more versatile. They also don't provide enough power to run an aerobed inflator. But, for $50, it's not a bad deal.

After discovering some output frequency problems with some other model xantrax/duracell inverters, I tested 8 units of this model and was pleasantly surprised that this model still appears to be crystal controlled. Most of the units were within +/- 0.05 Hz of 60 Hz. The worst was 60.14 Hz which is still within a quarter percent of nominal so that isn't too bad. The other new model xantrex (and Jensen brand) inverters I tested had output frequencies ranging from 58 Hz to 64 Hz which is very poor.

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