geez…that was a good review,got one cominn on the 8/12…thanks
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Great review, Scott! I just got mine the other day, but haven’t yet taken it out of the box. Gotta get on over to the other house and charge up this and the EB70s I got with my Bluetti arrays. I want to see if using the Bluetti panels makes a difference in the watts achieved. Is there any reason I couldn’t use the solar input cable from the EB70 (that has the barrel plug) and dual charge with solar, using a single panel of either the SP120 or SP200, one on each input (obviously would use the same size) ? I do have two of the SP200s as well. Wish it had a better manual, with detailed specs.
The dual solar charging will not work and Bluetti confirmed with me that it will not work to plug a solar source into the 8mm AC charging brick port. I was told the reason is that the AC charging brick port does not have an MPPT controller to allow the variable voltage of a panel. I was also unable to get any charging with my adjustable DC power supply even when I matched the voltage exactly to the OEM power brick. If you have a 200 watt Bluetti panel it should give you the most wattage you wil see. It should be in the 155 to 165 watt range under perfect conditions. I would be interested to know from you if you experience the same lowered wattage charging after a cloud shades the panels. In my case if I was charging at 155 watts, a cloud would float by dropping my wattage to say 35 and when the cloud was no longer there, the max wattage input was always 119 watts. If I unplugged and restarted the charging, the wattage always returned to the 155 watt range. Curious to see if you experience the same issue. I have seen several comments from Jackery users regarding the same issue.
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Thanks for the info. I was pretty sure if it could be done, you’d have done it, lol.
Very nice review! Pretty much covered everything 
I’ve got the EB70 unit and was interested to see if the EB55 was a potential replacement or had enough features to add to the stable. If Bluetti had improved the display with battery percent and provided a real on/off button, I would have bought it in a heartbeat - as is, I probably will hold out for a larger power station (the AC200Max, for instance).
Not sure if Bluetti’s engineering/marketing team reads this but here goes:
The thing that I absolutely hate about the EB70 (and pretty much every model expect the AC200/P) is the power level display. I have a $200 unit that has a percentage readout. Even if it is not absolutely accurate, it does provide a relative power level - I can see that it changed from 87% to 89% or 35% to 34%. So now I know that something is happening much earlier in the process. With the current display, I have to wait for up to a 20% change before I see ANY update on the power level display.
Excellent detailed write up @Scott-Benson !! Thank you for taking all the time and sharing this!
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Not impressed with the 12 volt car charging on mine. Like Scott noted the most I can get is about 74 watts incoming which translates into a 9 hour actual charge time, Bluetti is advertising 6 hours. My AC50s which is about the same capacity can do it in 6 1/4 hours at about a 100 watts.
Hey Scott,
Excellent writeup! I also only got about 80W via the DC input port charging off of 14.2V from my battery, but per your suggestion I added a 12v to 24v step up, and am now getting almost 190W from the battery/alternator!
Now excuse my ignorance, but I do have a follow up question. If per ohms law for power (P=VI), then why does the wattage increase so significantly? If the power source (the battery) stays the same, should current be more or less cut in half by doubling the voltage?
Your 12 volt current (amps) is doubling to provide the increased wattage. Wiring and connector size has to be sufficient for a continuous 20 amp draw
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It is all 10 and 12AWG wiring which should be good for 20A, though the max output on the converter is 10A. I also fused both sides (input/output) at 20A just in case, and the unit itself has over/under volt and fault protection. I’m definitely going to run some tests though before installing it under my hood.
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I would go with 10 ga on the input and you can do 12 or 14 ga. on the output side not problem. The closer to the battery is to the converter the better to minimize losses.
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Perfect! Thanks for all the help Scott I really appreciate it. I think the input is 12awg and hardwired into the converter.
Also, is it possible to combine a 12V charging source and a 100W solar input together to increase the charge wattage?
No there is not. The two sources you mention operate at different voltages and the built in charge controller will not function
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Okay gotcha. Appreciate all of the info!
Nice job @Scott-Benson . Can’t believe I’m just now seeing this write up. I decided on EB55 after my research but probably would have saved time had I seen this review. Thx. Mine was suppose to arrive today but now probably monday
Thank you for the kind words. It would be great if there was a consolidated topic just for product tebiees
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95% battery output through the inverter is unbelievably good. Most inverter is at most 90% efficient. This means the actual usable battery may be larger than rated. In fact, 80% is what I would expect, and 85-90% is excellent. 90%+ through an AC load at C/3 is unreal.
It is strange that the DC 12-14V charging performance is poor. I wonder how many amps it is drawing when charging at 12V, is it only drawing day 3-4A?
The load fan is disappoint. I have a Jackery 1500 which is fine but I can’t use it for anything near my bed (no dice for any CPAP users) as the fan would randomly come on at full speed and is super loud. This seems like it is similar.
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Yeah Scott must have got an exceptional one, mine consistently gets around the expected 80% range of 430wh.
Keep in mind I used a fairly steady load of 155 watts AC. If you test with a smaller load running for additional time, inverter overhead draw will decrease the usable watts. At the opposite spectrum a very large load will yield somewhat lesser yields as well. I chose my load amount simply because it is what my tv draws and is a decent wattage amount.
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