Product review: GOLABS Portable Power Station R300, 299Wh LiFePO4 Battery Backup, PD 60W Type-C Quick Charge, 300W Pure Sine Wave AC Outlet

 

 My favorite feature of GOLABS Powerstation is its portability.  The GOLABS box comes in a case with a handle, it weighs 8 pounds and 11.5 oz, and its size is 8.5"L x 7"W x 7.5"H.

There are three ways to charge the power station: a supplied AC charger that takes about 6 hours from being fully discharged, a 12-volt car charger, and solar with a supplied DC5521 cable.

The power station supports pass-through charging (i.e., you can use it while charging).  The display shows you the information about usage and charging, and if you are doing both, it shows the net watts.


I tested the station by taking out the battery from my laptop, setting the power options to never go into sleep mode, and not to shut down the screen and measure how long it could run.  The laptop ran for slightly under 6 hours.  This is the best-case power usage scenario as I was not running any programs on the laptop other than the idle mode of the operating system. If the computer were doing more intense work, the power consumption would be higher, and the battery would last less time. I thought this was an impressive performance.

Once I exhausted the battery in my laptop experiment, I timed how long it took to recharge the GOLABS battery fully. Using the charger that comes with it charges @35watts/hr.  It is possible to charge it faster by buying a 100-watt USB-c charger.

I have done this full discharge to the automatic shut-off point (2%) followed by full charge without interruption (100%) for the first cycle (only once) based on a comment in QA on the product from the QLABS rep.


To determine how long any devices will run on this battery, you need to divide 299 watts_hours by the amount of power a device draws.  A watt is a current multiplied by voltage.  For example, if I measure my USB fan with a current monitor, I get 0.40A and 5.05V, which is 2.02 watts.  This means this fan should run for approximately 148 hours (6 days) before this USB is exhausted.

Using a laptop, expected 6 hours of use and 42W.

Using a personal heater, expected 15 hours of use and 11W.

Using a bluetooth MP3 speaker player, expected 99 hours of use at 1W.


I like that the display shows the level of power left in the battery.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★★