Dewalt Portable Power Station Review

What does portable power mean to you?  For some people, it doesn’t mean much because they are never in a situation where power is hard to come by.  For the rest of us, it means freedom.  Freedom to run tools wherever you want and whenever you want.  The one problem with portable power is most of the time you need a gas engine to produce the power.  Having a gas engine means it can be noisy and is required to sit outside in the fresh air.  I am not saying generators or inverters are bad because they aren’t.  They have their use and when you need a ton of power for long periods of run time, a generator and inverter are awesome tools to have around.  However what about those times you just need a little bit of power to do some quick work?  You really don’t feel like dragging an inverter around for those smaller jobs.  Well that is where the Dewalt Portable Power Station comes into play.   The Dewalt Portable Power Station is a way to get some quick power by using your existing Dewalt batteries.

I have to say this is a very cool idea that Dewalt came up with.  The DCB1800 serves two functions.  First, as you know it will allow you to have portable power.  The second function is to charge your batteries.  So let’s talk about the first function, portable power.

The Dewalt Portable Power Station is an 1800 Watt system that delivers 1800 continuous watts and 3600 peak AC power when running off 4-20V max batteries.  That is a lot of power in such a small package.   The unit supplies 15 amps of power.  So basically you have a 15 amp residential circuit right in your hands.  Here is what’s cool about this power station.  It doesn’t matter what tool you run off this.  You can run either a standard tool or an electronically controlled variable speed tool.  For me, I think that is a huge plus because it opens up the market so much for who can use this power station.  As you can see by the picture, this runs off 4 batteries.  Here is another cool feature to this power station.  You can run either the Dewalt 20V max batteries or the new Flex Volt 60V batteries.  You can even mix and match the batteries.  So you can have two flex volt batteries along with 2-20V batteries.  The whole system is protected so you don’t have to worry about ever hurting your tools or batteries.  On the side of the station, there is an on/off switch along with a single outlet to plug into for your power.

The second part to this power station is that when you are near power, you can use it as a charger.  You can charge either 1 battery or all 4 batteries.  Now if you are familiar with multi-port chargers, you know that most of them charge one battery at a time.  Once it charges a battery, it will move onto the next battery.  So to charge 4 batteries, normally it would take about four hours.  With the Dewalt station, it will charge all four batteries at the same time.  So here is the deal.  It takes about two hours to charge a single 4 Ah battery.  So if you are only charging one battery, you are much better off charging it with a regular single Dewalt charger.  If you are going to charge four batteries, this will cut your charge time in half.

I have to say, I think this is one of the coolest inventions of 2016.  I love the fact you can have some quick power in case you need to do a smaller job and you don’t have any power around.  It’s great for those times when you have temporary power outages.  What will I use this for the most?  Well for me, I am using it when we go camping and tailgating.  Another cool feature about this whole system, is the ability to work indoors.  In the past you had to leave a noisy generator outside.  With the Dewalt station, you can use it indoors without all the noise or fumes.

Overall I love the Dewalt Portable Power Station and glad we had a chance to review this.  I love being able to have quick power I can use indoors and also charge my batteries.  While the charge time is slow for a single battery, it’s fast for four batteries.  The unit isn’t too heavy weighing 18 lbs without batteries.  Any tool that can do more than one jobs, is a huge plus.  The plastic roll cage will protect it in the harsh work environments these will be used in, so it shouldn’t have any issues lasting for many years to come.