ALLPOWERS P1800: our test, from camper van to office

She arrived, spent two weeks in the camper van, then I placed her under Caroline’s desk and connected her to her workstation. That’s where I conducted the tests that really interested me: cutting the power for good, asking for over a thousand watts, and sticking a microphone against her ventilation to see if you can work next to it.

What follows replaces the pre-notice I had written based on her technical sheet. The photos are mine, the numbers are what I read on her screen, and I will also tell you what I did not measure.

The cut under the desk, the test I was waiting for

The principle of the inverter is simple: the station remains plugged in at all times, your devices are connected to it, and the day the power goes out, it continues to supply them without anything turning off. On paper, ALLPOWERS claims a switch over in under 10 milliseconds. For us, the real question was whether Caroline’s workstation would hold up.

I then unplugged the wall socket, rotating camera. Nothing flickered. The external screen stayed on, the MacBook didn’t notice anything, and the station took over without the slightest hiccup.

Once on battery, the station’s screen displayed 51 W output for the MacBook Pro and its monitor. That’s low, and that’s the whole logic of this setup.

At 50 W consumption for 1,024 Wh capacity, the calculation gives a little over twenty hours. I say it as it should be said: it’s an order of magnitude on paper, before conversion losses and what the station consumes for itself. I did not perform a complete timed discharge, so I am not selling you twenty measured hours. What I can affirm is that a power cut does not cost Caroline a day of work.

Going over 1,000 watts with a hairdryer

Second test, and this one was more brutal. A station rated at 1800 W, I wanted to see if it could really handle a large resistive load. So I kept Caroline’s workstation plugged in, added an iPad and USB headphones, and brought out the weapon of choice: a hairdryer.

A hairdryer is a straightforward resistance, it’s the kind of device that doesn’t negotiate. I first set it to half power, 600 W, then to full power, 1,000 W. With the rest of what was plugged in, the station went above 1,000 W output for about a minute.

It held up without flinching. The hairdryer was definitely louder than the battery, which sums up the matter quite well.

I did not plug in a drill, and that was intentional: this is not a construction battery, it’s a home battery. A vacuum cleaner, a hairdryer, an induction plate for the time of a coffee, yes. A professional tool that draws continuously is not its job, and there were still two free sockets to plug in something else.

The noise, now that I’ve listened closely

This is a point I rarely overlook, because a station blowing in a six-square-meter camper van, or next to you while you work, quickly becomes unbearable. I have our DELTA Pro in mind, which is frankly noisy.

I therefore placed the microphone against the ventilation grille, once while it was powering the desk and charging at around 550 W, and a second time right after the hairdryer test.

The verdict is clear: at 50 cm, it’s not noisy. It’s a ventilation blow, not a turbine that goes high-pitched. I should clarify that I do not have a sound level meter: this is an observation, not a measurement in decibels.

The app, once you find the right one

I was waiting for ALLPOWERS on this front, because their previous app was not very useful: it duplicated the buttons on the front, it just saved you from getting up.

The beginning was laborious. While searching for the brand on the App Store, I came across several apps not knowing which one to choose. The first, ALLPOWERS AI, told me a trial session had expired. The second was in Chinese. The right one was actually an app I had already installed and then uninstalled, which I had to redownload.

Once connected, the judgment completely reverses. This app no longer just duplicates the front buttons, and that’s exactly what I was expecting.

You can set the eco mode and the delay after which the station turns off, displayed here as one hour. You can turn off the buzzer, which seems trivial until the day the beeps annoy you. You can rename the device, control the outputs, and find the firmware update. And above all, there’s a setting for backup reserve, the Backup Ratio, which can be set from 0 to 80%: it’s the portion of capacity that the station keeps aside for a power cut, instead of using it for regular use. On my unit, it was set to 0%.

I did not test the actual behavior of this reserve, nor the scheduled tasks, nor the Performance mode: the screens exist, I show them to you, but I will not recount tests I did not perform. What I can say is that the app is significantly better than the versions I had known, and I can recommend it this time.

The extension: it’s a no, and that remains its true flaw

In the pre-notice, I couldn’t decide from my desk: no visible extension port in the official photos, no P1800 in the manufacturer’s additional battery combinations, but no confirmation.

With the case in hand, it’s confirmed: you can’t connect an additional battery to increase its capacity. And that’s the only real downside I can find after these tests.

This code name VOLIX, still so mysterious

I keep this part of the pre-notice because nothing has changed since, and it’s the kind of detail you only see when entering the references one by one into a product database. The SKU for this machine is VOLIX-P1800-EU. Not ALLPOWERS something, VOLIX. And the app actually displays VOLIX P1800 as the device name, which you can verify in my screenshots above.

VOLIX, when you pull the thread, leads nowhere: no website, no brand page, nothing public under this name. The small P300 in the catalog carries the same root, and that’s about it. The known families from the manufacturer remain the S, R, and BS, and this P doesn’t fit into any of the three. The simplest hypothesis is an internal range nomenclature that goes back to the commercial reference.

Does this change anything for you? Regarding warranty and after-sales service, no, it’s the same manufacturer and the same five years announced. Regarding catalog reading, yes: no need to search where the P1800 fits between an R1500 and an R2500, it opens its own family.

The front, the screen, and the format

The screen is what caught my eye during unboxing, and I confirm it in use: color display, readable at a glance, with significantly more information than previous generations. Input, output, percentage, estimated end of charge, status of outputs. On a station you look at ten times a day, that’s not a detail.

On the front, we have four AC outlets, two USB-C, two USB-A, and a 12V car socket. Nine ports in total, and that’s a lot for this size. One display detail to note: the screen announces the USB-C as PD 100W while the manufacturer’s sheet lists them at 140W. I haven’t decided which of the two is correct, just bringing it to your attention.

At the back, we find the 220-240V AC input and the DC input for solar or car. One last point of form, which matters more than you think in a van: the P1800 is built taller rather than wider, with a footprint of 20.8 cm compared to 31.2 for an R1500. Low and wide, a station slips under a bench; tall and narrow, it fits in a cupboard or against a wall. It’s neither better nor worse, it’s a different storage solution, and it’s decided meter by meter.

Seven 1 kWh stations in our shop, we need to make a choice

This segment is saturated, to say the least. Just with us, seven models revolve around the kilowatt-hour, all in LiFePO4, all at competitive prices. I’ve selected three that approach the P1800 from three different angles, and you can scroll through the columns to compare them line by line, including today’s price.

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The P1800 against three 1 kWh rivals

	ALLPOWERS P1800 Portable Power Station 1800W 1024Wh £481,58 See the product	BLUETTI Elite 100 V2 Portable Power Station 1024Wh 1800W £481,58 See the product	AFERIY Nomad1800 Pro Portable Power Station 1800W 1024Wh £459,00 See the product	Jackery Explorer 1000 v2 Portable Power Station £429,00 See the product
Capacity	1,024.00 Wh	1,024.00 Wh	1,024.00 Wh	1,070.00 Wh
Net Weight	13.00 kg (28.66 lb)	11.50 kg (25.35 lb)	11.64 kg (25.66 lb)	10.80 kg (23.81 lb)
Dimensions	371 x 208 x 296	320 x 215 x 250	350.00 mm (13.78 in)	-
Total Number of Output Ports	9.00	9.00	9.00	6.00
Total Output Power	1,800.00 W	1,800.00 W	1,800.00 W	1,500.00 W
Number of AC Outputs	4.00	2.00	2.00	2.00
USB-A	2x 5V⎓3A, 9V⎓2A, 12V⎓1,5A, 18W maximum	2 × 15 W max.	2 ports, QC 3.0 18W	1x 18W (QC 3.0)
Application	✓	✓	✓	✓
Warranty	5.00 an	5.00 an	7.00 an	5.00 an
Noise	30.00 dB	30.00 dB	-	22.00 dB
Life Cycles	3000+ (70%)	4000+ (80%)	4000+ cycles (to 80% capacity)	4000
UPS Function	✓	✓	✓	✓
Number of DC Outputs	-	-	2.00	-
Number of MPPT Inputs	-	-	1.00	-

What I read there, honestly: the P1800 is the heaviest of the four at 13 kg, and it is with the BLUETTI one of the two that will never expand. However, it wins on the number of outlets, four where the other three only have two, and it clearly outperforms the Jackery Explorer 1000 v2, which remains the lightest but delivers 1500W instead of 1800 and 400W of solar instead of 650.

The one I would keep a close eye on in its place is the AFERIY Nomad1800 Pro: lighter by a kilo and a half and expandable four times, it checks the box that the P1800 leaves empty. However, it charges slower via AC, 1000W versus 1200, so the match isn’t one-sided. If you want the details on how we classify all this little world, we’ve written this:

54 minutes announced, and what the manufacturer’s page really says

Two figures had raised an eyebrow before receipt, and they still hold.

The first is the AC charging time announced at 54 minutes, with 1200W input. Less than an hour to recharge a full kilowatt-hour is the kind of thing that changes a day at a service area. The second is the 650W solar input, generous at this level where a good part of the segment caps at 500. In real conditions, this places us around two hours for a full charge, and in the Algarve, that weighs heavily in the balance.

The rest of the technical file is clean: LiFePO4 cells, five years warranty, nine ports, and this inverter function that I showed you earlier works well. The complete detail, line by line, if you like to dig through:

The price, our code, and who it’s for

On the pricing side, we go through our partner link and our code VANTOUR, which gives -10% discount at ALLPOWERS. If the code gets stuck, we’ve detailed the tips on our dedicated ALLPOWERS promo code page. And for the P1800 itself, with today’s price, it’s here:

After these tests, I see it fitting for three profiles. The home backup for remote work, first, because that’s where it convinced me the most: four outlets, a switch that works, and enough to last a workday on a low-consumption setup. The converted van or weekend van next, where 1024Wh is enough to run a fridge, a water pump, and charge laptops. And a use that is rarely considered, the trunk of an electric car, as backup for a camping fridge or filming equipment.

Four outlets at home is perfect. In a camper van, it’s almost too much, but no one has ever complained about having a free outlet.

I do not recommend it to those who buy a station as a first step, for the reason explained above, and to those who move their battery every day, because 13 kg remains 13 kg. For the rest, it’s pretty, well-finished, and on everything I’ve asked of it, it has delivered.