Whether you’re camping in the wilderness, or preparing yourself for a storm, a generator is handy to have. Electronics are becoming an essential part of our everyday lives, and we’re used to having virtually unlimited access to power at the nearest outlet.
Unfortunately, traditional generators aren’t always the best solution. Sure, a 5000 watt Honda generator can power up your entire home if there is a power outage. But they’re extremely heavy, loud, expensive, and emit toxic fumes when running. If you’ve got to run a fridge and a stove, these compromises are necessary. But for powering electronics, there is a better solution.
Goal Zero is a company that focuses on a different type of generator. Their solar generators rely on the suns renewable energy to produce power, rather than burning fossil fuels. At one point, their products were sold as all in one kits. But now that they’ve updated their battery bank to the latest technology, the Goal Zero Yeti 400 Lithium is a standalone battery that offers portable power on demand. There aren’t many batteries quite like it on the market, so we decided to try it out and see what it can do.
First Look
It’s easy to think of the Yeti 400 Lithium as a portable battery. In a way, that does describe the basic functionality. Charge it up. Carry it around. Plug things into it. With its built-in LCD display and diverse range of connectivity options, you might even consider it to be a little better than your standard battery. But once we started digging deep into the specifications and functionality, we realized that the design of the Yeti makes it unlike any other UPS-style battery on the market. For starters, it uses Lithium batteries. This is the same technology that made laptops and smartphones possible, but on a much larger scale. We’ll show you what sets lithium apart from standard sealed lead acid batteries, but first we’ll show you how the Yeti 400 Lithium works.
