Jackery Solar Generator Explorer 500, 518Wh Portable Power Station Mobile Lithium Battery Pack with 1xSolarSaga 100 for RV Road Trip Camping, Outdoor Adventure

Okay, I will start out by saying I am a U.S Service-member with over twenty years of Honorable service. With that being said I’ve done multiple tours to almost every desert in the Middle East, tours in tropical environments, tours in some pretty secluded off grid undisclosed locations. I only put this out there because I’ve had the pleasure of being a Jackery customer for years and years and the Jackery 240 portable power station, , the Jackery Solar Saga 60w tri-fold panels, and the small Jackery portable chargers were compact and lightweight enough to fit into my pack with ease and leave me room for the other essentials. Imagine being in the middle of nowhere and have a weeks worth of power at your fingertips for recharges, lights, portable fans, small burner for coffee and cooking. Then being able to say it never failed you, always recharged quickly, and has been through the worlds harshest conditions and environments, yet functions like the day you pulled it out of the box. So this began my Jackery passion. Which led me to purchase the Jackery 500. Everything I’ve said above applies to the 500 ten fold folks. Being Military my pay isn’t great so I’ve had to accumulate these items over the course of years, however never have I had to justify spending the money to my wife, as long as I said the word Jackery. Because she’s used the items as well here at home guard. My son plays Football and daughter plays soccer in the Nevada desert just miles away from where the annual Burning Man event is held. Hot dry desert climate, no trees for shade, just direct unrelenting heat. This genius woman, the love of my life used our Jackery Portable power stations to run dual fans, and a small refrigerated trucker cooler during daytime practices in a pop up sunshade tent, all neatly placed in one of those little soccer mom wheeled totes, and a folding low loveseat chair. Talk about super mom, with lots of friends who also wanted to stay cool. Then when night fell and the kids weren’t finished with practice, my lovely wife handed over the Jackery 500 to the coaches who then plugged LED lights into it and lit up the field for the kids giving us an extra hour or two to practice without the heat. This convinced her to give me permission to buy the SolarSaga 100w panels. Money was tight but she gave me the go ahead and we’ve never looked back and haven’t got an ounce of regret or buyers remorse for a single product. But this review is neither for the the Jackery 240, the Jackery 1000, the SolarSaga 100w or 60w panels. It’s not even for the Jackery portable chargers. This review is to let you know, the day the Jackery 500w Portable Power Station became available we did not hesitate for a second to buy it. With the stories we heard from friends about California and Washington power outages, the Covid-19 Pandemic, and any one of the many RV trips we take into Gods country to get away from it all for a few weeks, we both agreed this was the best thing for our family. Why use heavy loud generators, carry fuel, deal with all that monotonous nonsense, when you could literally live off the Jackery Families products. I say Family because over the years I’ve had multiple email contacts and numerous phone calls with them, and every interaction was amazing. Courteous, professional, and the products are literally second to none. The Jackery 1000 is my newest addition and there’s nothing I can say about it that the 240 or 500 don’t already represent. Twice the power, twice the life, multiple solar panel options, can recharge through car, wall, or good ol sunshine. I could get technical and go down the path as some of these reviewers do, but you anyone can read the box. I can sum everything the box says by just telling you that these products, put out by this amazing company, can enhance anyone’s life, save somebodies life, and will probably last your the rest of yours. It’s a no brainer for us. I’ve purchased every product so far with a smile knowing its perfect and the people handing it to me care enough to treat you as if you were family.

This Jackery is a lifesaver. I use it daily, and it powers everything I need without ever draining my vehicle’s battery. It’s compact, reliable, and holds a charge like a champ. For anyone living on the road, camping, or just wanting backup power, this isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.The best investment you’ll ever make in portable power—period.

After seeing videos of the build quality and repairability of the Jackery power stations, plus the reported great technical support, I decided to give the Explorer 500 a try. I got mine for $425 shipped on sale, so really $400 before tax if you consider the weight of the package and what it costs to ship. That works out to about 80 cents a watt which is about as cheap as you can get.I charged it for a while using the wall charger and in my car as well while driving around. It charges fine on the car's unregulated 12v power. I tested the inverter overload protection on a small fridge and that worked as expected. No need to perform a reset of the unit following the overload protection trip. The inverter uses between 5 and 6 watts when operating, which is normal. This revised version only turns on the inverter cooling fan when needed based on the wattage you're drawing. That's nice and saves a little power as well.Charging phones and other devices via USB works as expected. I'm not able to test the 12vDC barrel plug output but I'm confident that is working fine as well.Where I started having issues was using a 60w Top Solar Jackery clone solar panel. 60w panels do not provide enough wattage for the charge controller to calibrate the source and start charging. I tried in full sun with an 18.5vDC input voltage directly from the panels and I also tried re-connecting the panels to the charge port and a Jackery reset. Nothing worked.That being said, the Top Solar 60w panel did in fact charge a Jackery Explorer 240 I tested with, and would draw as little as 7 watts when in indirect shade once it got started. So the minor caveat is the larger Jackery units require more power up front to start charging. Which is understandable as bigger battery packs require more amperage to keep the voltage up high enough to allow the cells themselves to begin charging. I also tested charging from a bench power supply at 18.5vDC and got the Explorer 500 to charge at 2A before the voltage started dipping down to 13vDC once I upped the current limit to beyond 2A due to the cables I was using.So then I tried the Top Solar 100w panel and had no problems at all. The Explorer 500 was able to charge from that and pull 40w in the low evening sun. I also reached out to Jackery support on the details of charging the Explorer 500 on a 60w panel and they gave me some amperage numbers and were pretty helpful. The only thing I would advise is get a 100w panel to charge the Explorer 500, smaller ones will not work. Not a fault of the solar panel or the Jackery. Just the nature of the batteries and the minimum charge current they need per cell, as the bigger units simply have more lithium cells.Otherwise a fantastic, solid product with great, responsive technical support at a good value.