How portable power stations work

Four pages explaining why the specifications behave the way they do. Read them once and most comparison tables become readable: you will know why a cycle rating is meaningless without its threshold, and why two surge figures can describe completely different things.

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The distinctions that decide purchases

Three differences cause most of the confusion in this category. A cycle rating quoted down to 70% of original capacity is a weaker promise than the same number quoted to 80%, and makers do not all use the same threshold. A voltage-lowering mode such as Lifting Power or X-Boost is not a surge rating and will not start a motor. And a headline charging time sometimes combines mains and solar input, which makes it useless for comparing two units.

Each page below takes one mechanism and explains what it means for what you can plug in.