500W Portable Power Station, Fast Charging

Five hundred watts is the step up from the smallest unit and it is where a power station starts to feel like a real backup rather than a way of charging phones. At this rating a fridge comes into range, along with lights, a television, a router, fans and charging for a household's devices, which between them cover most of what people actually miss during an outage.

It works as a battery, an inverter and a set of sockets in one box. You charge it while the mains is on or from solar, and it hands that power back as ordinary household electricity afterwards. There is no exhaust, no fuel to buy, nothing to start and no noise, so unlike a generator it can sit inside a house or a shop. Fast charging matters because in most places the mains returns for a limited period, and a unit that refills quickly is ready again for the next outage rather than being half charged when it is needed.