Page 4 - Conclusion
How did the BLUETTI AC50B with its 448Wh battery fare against its 768Wh brother, the AC70? To start, it is much smaller and lighter for improved portability, tipping the scales at 14.8 lbs and measuring in at 28cm in width, 22cm in height, and 20cm in depth. It is still far from light enough for you to throw it in your backpack to go hiking with, but it is much lighter and easier to handle than a gas generator for camping trips. For home use, such as power backup for your computers and electronics, it is compact enough to comfortably fit in many places, not to mention its UPS mode is fast enough to keep the juice flowing uninterrupted. As far as performance is concerned, its usable battery capacity was very good at 90.2% of the advertised capacity, where this figure includes losses such as the inverter. Power delivery was also consistent for most applications like my desktop PC setup or Vitamix blender. However, for high resistive loads such as a hair dryer, you will not be able to run it at full speed even in Power Lifting mode, since it is capped at only 700W. For high burst applications such as a torque wrench, you will feel a reduction in power. If you need to do some of these things, I recommend the more powerful AC70. Other than that, there is a good number of connectors for all your power needs, and the LCD screen is useful for monitoring its operational status and configuring settings. The 3000 cycle rated battery charges reasonably quickly, and the internal fan is quiet during operation. Like the rest of the company's lineup, there are some areas where I believe the company can improve on. First, BLUETTI should add an 80% charge limit for those who plan to use it plugged in all the time as a UPS. Second, the built-in user interface was a bit unintuitive. Lastly, there should be authentication for new Bluetooth devices, as anyone with the app can gain full control of the portable power station without physically interacting with it. For about $280 at press time, the BLUETTI AC50B is a well-designed portable power station with a big battery, solid array of charging and powering options, as well as good performance at an affordable price.
BLUETTI provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH Networks Review Focus Summary:
8/10 means Definitely a very good product with drawbacks that are not likely going to matter to the end user.
7/10 means Great product with many advantages and certain insignificant drawbacks, but should be considered before purchasing.
-- Final APH Networks Numeric Rating is 7.2/10
Please note that the APH Networks Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other publications.
The BLUETTI AC50B is a mid-sized 448Wh portable power station suitable for a variety of applications, whether you need a battery backup for your PC at home to powering moderate loads on a camping trip.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
3. Test Results
4. Conclusion
