ALLPOWERS R1500 LITE 1056Wh Portable Power Station: A Full Review

I've spent three days staring at a dead fridge during our last winter outage because I thought a cheap battery bank would cut it. I see a lot of people on forums asking for the best power station under $100, and I have to be honest: at that price, you're buying a glorified phone charger. If you want to keep a refrigerator running or power a CPAP machine through the night, you have to step up to the 1000Wh tier. The ALLPOWERS R1500 Lite currently sits around $428, which is a massive drop from its original MSRP. It packs a 1056Wh LiFePO4 battery, meaning it'll survive thousands of charge cycles before degrading. I plugged in a standard kitchen fridge and a small space heater, and the 1600W output handled both without tripping the inverter. It even has a built-in UPS function, switching over in about 15 milliseconds when the grid drops. That's fast enough to keep a desktop computer from shutting down. The catch is the interface. The screen is basic, and the companion app can be finicky to pair over Bluetooth. Also, calling it "Lite" is a bit funny since it still weighs a solid 25 pounds. You won't want to hike with it, but for tossing in the back of an RV or keeping in a closet for emergencies, it hits a really sweet spot between those cheap entry-level units and the massive generators.