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Bluetti AC180T Hot Swappable Modular Power Station Review | Next Level?
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Jul 30, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a detailed review of the Bluetti AC180T hot swappable modular power station with 1433Wh battery capacity, an 1800W inverter, and more! | Check out the text review: https://tinyurl.com/AC180Tda | Purchase the Bluetti AC180T @ Bluetti Store Canada https://shrsl.com/4mjoi | Bluetti USA https://shrsl.com/4mjom | Amazon https://amzn.to/3LM5yLW | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/4c8bDgv | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3A4yHzi Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept 1:40 - Build and Specifications
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott
0:11
I've been doing Power Station reviews from Bluetti, Jackery, other similar companies for about four and a half years now at this point
0:20
And over that period of time, I've seen a lot of what I would call refinements in that they do similar things to what they've done before
0:27
but they just do them increasingly better with more sophisticated. and that's obviously a key part of the industry is to continue to improve along the way
0:37
But what I can't say that I've seen is a lot of genuinely new features
0:41
a completely novel or new way of doing some of these things that we're looking for from
0:46
these power stations. But Blue Eddy is changing all of that, starting with this Blue Eddie AC180T model
0:53
and that they're moving to a truly modular system. And a modular system, not just in the battery packs, as we'll talk about and just
0:59
a moment, but also expanding what is done within that universe and with an upcoming new portable
1:06
refrigerator slash cooler that will be the first of these kind of other accessories to run off of
1:12
these modular batteries that are a part of the power station system. Rather than relying on expansion
1:18
units as before, this modular battery can then be used in a variety of other accessories. They can
1:24
be hot swapped and you can get virtually an endless supply of them. And so
1:29
So I think that it really kind of expands the potential of what you can do with these kind of units for things like camping, overlanding, and then even in power outage type situations
1:41
So at the heart of the AC180T is two of these modular units
1:47
And so they're both rated at 716 watt hours. As noted, they are hot swappable and they just slide into the top of the unit and they'll click in like that
1:58
and there's two of them in a base. So it's a total of 1,4333 watt hours
2:05
Now, in that sense, if you have a lot of these batteries, it is pretty much endlessly expandable
2:09
but you can only run two at a time, which obviously is going to be the limiting principle there
2:14
though the fact that you can hot swap, that means that you can continue to power various things
2:19
without ever actually having a power interruption. The batteries are rated, as is pretty typical these days
2:25
with these lithium-iron phosphate batteries. they're rated for at least 3,500 charge cycles to 80%
2:32
which means that you can have 10 years of daily recharge and still be at 80% capacity of the battery
2:38
So in other words, you're going to be able to use these for a very long time. The inverter itself is extremely powerful
2:45
It's 1,800 watts of pure sine wave power, and then you can also switch into the power lift mode
2:51
that I've detailed previously with other Bluetti products. It allows you to run certain things at
2:57
up to a 2,700 watt draw. Now, you need to be careful at the kind of things you power
3:03
If you're talking about things that are using like a heating coil, no problem there
3:08
But if you're using something with more sophisticated electronics, for example, a refrigerator
3:13
or an air conditioning unit, you might want to be careful with that because you can actually
3:17
shorten the lifespan of the motors on that if you're not giving them full power
3:22
Because of the hot swappable situation, you can continue to operate with only one
3:27
battery in, though the overall inverter power will drop to 1,200 watts. And so you can see here I
3:33
was powering a kettle that was that is rated at 1,500 watts. I was powering that while I swapped
3:40
out and took out one of the batteries. What I found is that for about 30 seconds, it continued to run
3:44
the kettle, and it was only then that with that prolonged draw that was greater than 1,200
3:51
watts, that it actually tripped a circuit in the battery management system and it shut down at that point
3:56
but the fact that it continued to run something that drew more than 1,200 watts for a bit of period of time
4:01
shows that if you're running anything in and around that area, you're going to be just fine at that point
4:08
This also, this not only puts out a lot of power, but it also draws in a lot of power
4:13
It is the fastest recharge that I've seen. You can charge up to 1,440 watts off of AC power in the turbo mode
4:21
So that is sucking a lot of electrons very quickly. Now, if you're going to solar input, it's still limited at 500 watts, and so it takes a little bit longer in that regard
4:31
There is no IP rating on this, and so to me, that's always a misstep in these units
4:37
You're going to use them outdoors. Now there is a five warranty on everything here and so obviously that is helpful Now when I saw this particular picture in their marketing I thought wow that a very plucky young lady as she begins to lift one of these units because the truth of the matter is that this guy is heavy
4:54
I put it on my scale and I saw that it was fully loaded
4:58
It was 62 and a half pounds. And you take one of the batteries out
5:03
It's 43 and a half pounds. You took the both batteries out. It's 24.6 pounds
5:08
And so I actually, as I looked at that picture and I thought, You know, my wife would ever in a million years be carrying that along
5:14
certainly not with a smile on her face. But the point that they were making is the fact that even though this unit is large and it is heavy
5:21
it is a little bit more portable than what, say, the standard AC-180 would be
5:25
and that you can remove these battery packs. And so every time that you remove one of these battery packs
5:31
you're removing about 19 pounds from the equation. And after you have removed both of the battery packs
5:37
it obviously is becoming a much lighter unit at that point, that can be carried by someone who might have a little bit less physical strength
5:46
So the advantage here is that, yes, while you might have to make more trips, it is still very usable for, particularly for the size of the unit
5:54
What is that size? It's 15.4 inches by 11 inches in depth by 15.6 inches
6:01
And so that's 390 by 180 by 395 millimeters. And so it's physically large, but again
6:10
particularly if you're removing those batteries, it is movable at that point
6:15
It does have integrated handles on either side. That is the preferred carrying point
6:20
There is no LED light if you're accustomed to these having kind of a light source on them
6:25
It is not something that this unit is equipped with. On the side here, you'll find your input ports here
6:32
And while there's a reset circuit there, and then you'll just see a standard AC input
6:37
There is no external power brick. and that is great because it does allow for things like UPS functionality
6:43
where you can have it as an uninterrupted power source. So if you have delicate things that you want to protect
6:49
you can hook them into this and run it as a UPS. On the front, we do have a screen with good readouts
6:57
lots of information there. It's easy to use. And through the app, you can set up and control how long you want that screen to stay lit up
7:04
and how quickly you want it to power down. So as far as the output ports here, there is no wireless pad on the top, obviously because of the hot swapping of the batteries there at the top
7:15
We have four different 120-volt grounded plugs, 1,800 watts. Total, remember, it's not each one of these rated at 1,800 watts
7:24
It's a total of 1,800 watts across them. We have two USBA ports here in the center. These are rated a little bit higher than what I typically see. These are 5-volt 3-amp
7:36
outputs and so that's a total of 15 watts of output. I typically see them at around 12 or 13 watts of
7:42
output and so nice to see there just a little bit of extra juice flowing through there. There's also
7:47
two USBC ports that are rated at a hundred watts. They have the e-mark chip and so that they will
7:54
detect the appropriate amount of power to be sending out for your various delicate electronics
7:59
that you're going to connect up to that. We also have the 12 volt 10 amp, you know, kind of a cigarette
8:06
lighter style car outlet there. And then of course, as far as our input here on the front
8:13
the loan input on the front, is our input for DC. And so that's either for car charging and then
8:18
also for solar. It is the DC 7909 standard plug. And I'm really glad to see Blue Eddie starting
8:26
to standardize around that. What I saw in the early years is it seems like every one of these
8:30
power stations had a slightly different input plug for solar. So I'm glad to see, and even there's
8:36
and some variation even in the Bluetti models that I have reviewed. Fortunately, the most
8:40
recent ones that I have reviewed last about four have all used the same DC7909 plug input, and
8:48
so I'm really glad to see that standardization. Also there on the side, there is a grounding
8:52
connector if you want to use that. Some of the features here include the Bluetooth app control
8:59
It allows you to do a variety of things, control the speed in which you're going to, for example
9:04
charge at. If you want, you have a silent mode, you have a standard mode, and then you have a
9:10
turbo mode. And so what I saw in those various charge options is I saw in silent mode, you were still
9:16
drawing 734 watts, which is pretty impressive. That's a really fast charge for being in the silent
9:22
mode and it able to run really quietly and smoothly None of the fans engaged And so that is very very useful You could still charge it quite fast through that In the standard mode I saw 915 watts which is really really quick for that And then in the turbo mode you can run
9:39
it as fast as 1,444 watts. I would recommend only doing that as you need it. However, my experience
9:46
with batteries is that you only want to kind of fast charge them if you absolutely have to
9:53
because I do think you're going to get a slight degradation of a long-term battery life
9:57
if you're constantly really, really forced charging it. But obviously there's situations where you're in a rush, you need to get charged up quickly
10:03
and absolutely use it in those settings. That's what it's there for
10:07
Now, if you're charging in the turbo mode, you can go from zero to 80% in just 45 minutes
10:12
which is obviously really, really useful. And you can get the full charge in as little as 70 minutes up to 100%
10:18
That's going to be just huge for having a large unit. and needing to be able to charge it up quickly
10:24
I've seen in some units in the past where I'm trying to rapidly charge them up
10:29
and it's just hours and hours to get them charged because the old charging brick style
10:34
you would often be limited at a 200 watt input. And so, I mean, it is amazing to be able to charge these so quickly
10:41
You can run firmware updates of various things through this. I also love to be able to remotely monitor
10:47
if I'm actually solar charging outside, for example. I can just look at the Bluetooth app
10:52
and see from inside, you know, what kind of rate I'm getting if I need to go and
10:56
reposition the solar panels, you know, how much longer it needs to be out there. If it's finished, all of those things. And so I really appreciate the Bluetooth control. Having the
11:04
UPS function is obviously great. And so you have typically about a 15 millisecond changeover
11:10
from, you know, the loss of power to it switching over to the battery power here. So very, very
11:16
useful. Now, the main feature here obviously is the modular batteries. And then also
11:22
Of course, it's kind of incomplete, and yet the cooler unit, the refrigerator, portable
11:26
refrigerator unit is going to come out in 2025, early 2025 at some point
11:32
And so obviously I can't review the whole ecosystem yet. This is the first step of, you know, a chain of products at this point
11:39
And so, I mean, there's not a lot of additional features over the AC-180 outside of the modular
11:45
battery component and the fact that you do get more power between those batteries
11:49
So as far as the tests that I ran in testing unit along the way, I've been using it consistently for about six weeks at this point
11:57
And basically everything that I hooked up to it, it could run. And so my 1,500 watt kettle, obviously falling under the 1,800 watts, it was no problem at all
12:05
I mean, no hiccup, nothing at all. I used an 1,100 watt blender, a 1,000 watt blender
12:10
I used a toaster. All of these things is zero problem. even though my wife's hair dryer, blow dryer is rated at 1,875 watts, you know, technically
12:23
a little bit above the 18 watt rating. The fact the matter is, is that it doesn't consistently
12:28
draw 1850 watts. There's the initial, you know, startup where it jolts and draws a little bit more
12:33
but it's settled into around the 1,700 watt range, and I could run it endlessly, you know
12:38
until the battery is expired, no problems there. And so, I mean, I had no issues with running any
12:44
the things that I hooked up. I used it as a mobile power station for doing some construction work
12:49
charging my batteries, running some tools. Again, zero problems with that. This inverter is really
12:55
really strong. It can do a lot of things. One morning we had a power outage, and I woke to the fact
13:00
that there was no power in the house. But it was no problem. I hooked up the AC-180T to a variety
13:07
of things. You know, I was able to do toast. I did smoothies. I, you know, did my morning tea. All of those
13:14
things and obviously zero issues because it has no issues in running those things. And because
13:19
it has such a large battery capacity, I could do all those things and still have a lot of power
13:24
left over for a variety of other things. So let's talk about some things that I like. I like
13:29
the idea at least here of the battery swap tech. It is great. It's unique. The idea of being
13:36
able to have more of those battery packs to be able to continually kind of run this. For example
13:41
in a power outage situation is really, really useful. I also think that the idea of the portable fridge
13:46
as soon as I saw that and using these modular batteries for other components, I thought
13:51
that's a really, really clever idea. We'll see if they've actually implemented it well
13:55
but at least the proof of concept that's on their website is really, really intriguing
14:00
And we'll see how much that it costs and whether or not it's still intriguing after I see the price tag
14:05
I love the fact that the inverter is powerful enough that it can pretty much run everything
14:10
And so there's very few things. in your household that this cannot run if anything at this point I like the fact that you have the very fast charging capabilities So if you do need to you know maybe if you in between camping and you have access
14:25
to AC for a little bit while, the fact that you can charge us up very quickly is extremely
14:30
useful and it kind of eliminates one of the big problems with having a big unit
14:34
I like Blue Eddy's power lift technology. So it just opens the scope of the things that you can run
14:41
Again, so long as you're careful about the kinds of things you're running, you're running. in power lift mode
14:46
There's a good mix here, nothing exceptional, but a good mix of AC and DC ports
14:51
and so you can power a lot of things at the same time. The app control, I think the Blue Eddy app
14:56
is pretty well implemented at this point. I find it very useful in the ability
14:59
to remotely monitor things, do firmware updates. They've just really simplified a lot of the process
15:05
and the app itself is not difficult to use, so I appreciate that. I appreciate having UPS in such a big powerful unit
15:12
So there's many more things that you could theoretically protect through this, and that is very, very useful
15:18
How about some things that I don't like? Well, I don't like the fact that there is no IP rating for this
15:24
I never quite understand why units that are designed for camping, for example, don't have some kind of IP rating to them, because it just seems to stand to reason
15:33
This is something that people will use outdoors, and so it should have some kind of weather protection built into it
15:39
Another thing that I personally was looking for that doesn't seem to be yet addressed
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though Blue Eddie is aware of it, and I think they are working on a solution, is that I would love to see the actual modular battery units
15:50
They're called B70s, by the way, to be able to be separately charged via solar
15:55
I think it would be incredibly useful. For example, in a power outage situation, if you had extra of these batteries
16:01
if you could have them outside being charged via solar while you're powering things on the inside of the building
16:08
or even while camping, same kind of concept, and so that you could have basically an endless supply of power
16:14
And right now, there is no direct way to charge these. They need to be charged from within the AC-180T unit
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And so that's something that I would like to see addressed. The third thing is more of a, it's a problem at the moment
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it won't be a problem long term. And that is that the individual separate batteries
16:34
the battery packs themselves and the portable fridge, those all got delayed. I think the original plan was that they would all be released within
16:41
a month or two window of the AC-180T itself. For whatever reason, they've been delayed until
16:48
2025. And the pricing is currently unknown on those things. And so in many ways, it's hard for me
16:53
to tell you that this is great as far as the pricing or the whole idea. ecosystem will be great
16:59
if I really don't know how much you're going to pay for that. As it stands right now, the AC-180T is a great
17:05
value, at least in the U.S. It's currently on sale for about 1,000 U.S., which was the same price as the
17:12
AC-180 unit, and obviously this is adding some extra versatility and more battery capacity
17:18
and so that makes it a strong value. For whatever reason here in Canada, it's not nearly as good
17:23
of value. It's currently on sale for 1,59, which is a much larger premium than I typically see as a
17:30
variation between U.S. and Canadian pricing. So I can wholeheartedly recommend it at the moment in the U.S
17:35
a little bit less so if you're here in Canada right now. My conclusion is as it stands
17:42
the Blue Eddie AC-180T is a mild upgrade to the standard AC-180 unit
17:48
And I say it's a mild upgrade in that, as you can use it right now
17:53
it does have more battery capacity, almost 300 watt hours, more battery capacity
17:57
And if you're in the U.S., it's the same price. But the promise is there for it to be a much more
18:05
appealing unit in the future. And that is when the additional batteries come, if the additional
18:10
expansion batteries are reasonably priced, if the fridge works as advertised, it becomes a much more
18:16
appealing option at that point. As it stands, I feel like my review, my conclusions are a little
18:21
bit incomplete at this point because I don't know and you don't know what the final answer on
18:26
those things is going to be. I like the unit just fine as it stands, but what's most intriguing
18:32
to me is the potential of what it could be in the future. And so you're going to have to
18:37
determine for yourself whether or not that that is a risk worth taking right now. I'm Dustin
18:42
Abbott. If you want more information, you can check out the links in the description that will
18:46
take you to the listings on the Blue Eddy site where you can get more information on that
18:50
There are buying links there as well. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day
18:55
And let the light in
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