this is the echoflow river 2 portable power station and in the Box you get the power station the owner's manual the power cable and the DC car charging cable ecoflow recently updated their entire power station lineup the most important feature that they've updated in my opinion is the top of the power station is actually flat so you can stack stuff on top of it but to make up for that flat surface they added this handle to the back which makes it look kind of like a kettlebell but it's not a kettlebell let's head into the studio and see what this thing can do X boost allows the AC outlet to power super high resistive loads I'm talking about things like hot plates and coffee makers for the river 2 its magical power devices rated at up to 1800 watts although I'm turning up the power on the heat gun it sounds like it's getting lower and as you can see the voltage is dropping as I'm turning up the load this resistive load from the heat gun now the reason I joke about banning it is that this feature is somewhat of an electrical engineering trick that manipulates voltage to make your resistive load operate as if it was getting the correct wattage but the AC inverter does not actually put out 1800 watts I say this because Echo flow does not recommend running anything but resistive loads so no air conditioners while using X boost I wasn't a fan of the design when I first pulled this out of the box and I really like the look of the older model but then I remember the original ecoflow River had an awesome carrying handle but you could not put anything on top of it so although this design seems a little less exotic it's actually a lot more functional for example when you're really bored at the campsite you can play Checkers on top of it or on a more serious note this flat top design helps optimize space for example if you had a few of these you could stack them up so I would choose functional over fashion any day let me know what you prefer in the comments check the links in the description for the current price and updated details skills speaking of functionality from an engineering perspective this handle serves an additional purpose of keeping the river 2 away from walls and allowing airflow out of this exhaust and preventing the cables from getting smashed looking a little closer at the front Echo flow Incorporated event around the entire front surface optimizing airflow and maximizing heat dissipation overall it looks simple but it is in fact very well thought out the river 2 doesn't take up a very large footprint coming in at 9.6 inches wide eight and a half inches deep and 5.7 inches tall also it's not very heavy weighing in at 7.8 pounds inside the river 2 is a 256 watt hour lithium iron phosphate battery this battery is designed to last up to 10 years and will retain 80 percent of its maximum capacity after 3000 Cycles in terms of deep cycle batteries that's about 20 amp hours at 12.8 volts on the front go going from left to right you will find a 12 volt DC Outlet this Outlet is only 8 amps which is a little lower than the usual 10 amps you get on this size power station but this is plenty of power to run a mini fridge and absolutely enough power to charge a cell phone in the center there are two USB a Outlets rated at 12 watts per port and one USBC Port this port can also charge the device and works both ways pushing or pulling up to 60 watts now I want to test the USBC Outlet I have this USBC from my MacBook the MacBook can pull quite a bit of power but it has about 90 battery right now so let's see what we get stupid so the macbook's pulling 54 Watts that's pretty close to the 60 watts now I want to see if I can pull the 24 Watts from the two USB a Outlets with this partially discharged anchor battery pack battery pack can pull around 30 Watts so I should be able to max out these Outlets so we jumped right up to 75 75 minus 54. all right we got 21 Watts from the two outlets and from one of those Outlets I'm getting about 10 watts so I'm not getting the 12 Watts that I think I should but 10 watts is pretty close it could be because of the state of charge of this anchor battery pack might be high enough that it's not pulling the full load to charge at this time in standard mode the AC outlet puts out up to 300 watts and supports surges up to 600 watts and it also has the X boost feature that I talked about at the beginning of this video okay folks so we are pulling around 120 volts which is pretty good and I'm going to turn this thing on again now I should get a higher Spike power so let's see check out that voltage drop from using this device so that's what the X boost does although I'm turning up the power on the heat gun it sounds like it's getting lower and as you can see the voltage is dropping as I'm turning up the load hitting almost 400 watts now remember this thing is designed to pull 300 watts continuously it's gonna fight that voltage to try to sustain that 300 watts and I'm gonna go all the way you know at a certain point it tapped out but you know that's okay so it turns out that this is about an 1800 watt heat gun which is the max that this thing is rated at I think that the X boost does perform as stated but keep that in mind whatever you're plugging in is going to have a lower voltage so it's not necessarily going to perform as expected unless it's just that pure resistive load this display is bright and functional it gives you all the necessary information and nothing you don't need it shows estimated time remaining at the current load percent battery remaining input wattage and load wattage also this display stays lit for quite a while some folks prefer that the display times out and others don't either way this is perfect for keeping the display on while filming YouTube videos moving over to the back the river 2 accepts up to 360 watts in the AC input using a wall plug charges the device from zero to a hundred percent in one hour 360 watts is a lot of charging power for such a small device and in the app there's a setting that you can lower the input if you don't need rapid charging rapid charging can reduce battery life if you use it too often now the DC input will either accept 100 Watts from an automotive Outlet or 110 Watts from a solar panel it can take up to six hours to charge with a solar panel depending on conditions and charging from a Car Outlet takes around three hours to charge the echo Flow River 2 from your car you get this 12 volt DC to XT 60 adapter this is a proprietary cable that although you can find these xt60 adapters for example on Amazon make sure you don't lose this cable or you'll have a hard time charging your power station when you're traveling next the AC wall charging power cable is similar to what you would get for an old computer power brick this cable is long enough to reach pretty much as far as you need to so it's not too bad next I'm going to see if I can get 100 Watts from the car charger into the device I have the app up so we can see how that responds as well pretty much getting about 100 Watts which is what we expect from this device devices like this when the fan does cut on when you're using solar power stuff like that you have to be careful because the solar power can actually cause the fan to run and drain the device unfortunately I can't test that today but that is something to think about as a possibility I want to try one more thing so this is a 24 volt outlet and this would replicate something you'd find with a diesel vehicle so I'm going to plug that in and see what we get [Music] foreign so we pretty much banged up to that 110 watt limit and we're getting the wattage that we want now I want to see if I can get the 360 Watts from this in fact I'm going to plug them both in and see what happens all right now I've got them both plugged in [Music] so I think what happened is the river 2 is only accepting power from the AC input which is perfect that means I can leave my solar panel attached or my car charger attached and it will charge depending on which one is providing a load and the way I can confirm that is by disconnecting the AC cable and seeing if the solar or the DC input takes over and starts putting power in again that is some awesome charging capability so again I'm going to plug this back in and just unplug this cable and see what happens what I'd normally be unplugging and plugging this thing in like this back and forth not really I would try to plug it in with one device and maybe have a solar panel as a backup but I want to test it and make sure it works they said it gets 360 Watts input I'm getting 351 it's a small difference there Echo flow has a user-friendly app that allows customized controls of some features this power station comes with the highest capabilities enabled so you don't need to access the app unless you want to limit some of the features this app does require registration to pair with the device and I don't like this requirement on the one hand you give up some of your anonymity by accessing this feature and on the other hand the device is more secure because it is more protected from someone accessing it it just so happens that Echo flow sent me this really interesting 110 watt solar panel to use while testing the New River too I say this is interesting because this still panel has the most premium feel of any folding solar panel I have ever tested this thing comes with a super high quality carrying case which it's in right now and Echo flow also sent a 3.5 meter cable to let me plug this thing in while the power station sits in the shade [Music] unfortunately it's been raining all week so I haven't had a chance to get this thing out in the sun and see what it can do but it's rated at 110 Watts with mono Crystal silicon cells inside and the quality of it feels really good thanks for watching and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss my next tech review [Music]