EcoFlow 400W Portable Solar Panel Review
Check out our in-depth video review of the EcoFlow 400W Portable Solar Panel below.
400W of power in a folding solar panel is a serious amount of power, but is EcoFlow’s range topper too much to handle?
What we like about the EcoFlow 400W panel: IP68 waterproofing is superb; 400W capability is amazing and perfect for the Delta 2 power station; great build quality
What we don’t like about the EcoFlow River 2: Hard to set-up for one person; heavy; difficult to adjust angle without legs; expensive
In a world of sky high energy prices, the allure of free solar power is very strong for both our home and camping lives. Of course, nothing is free in this world and you need to pay upfront for both a solar panel (to convert the sun’s rays into electricity) and a power station (to store the electricity which is generated).
These items are not cheap, and unfortunately, the bigger the solar panel and the bigger battery capacity you need, the more you have to pay. On top of this, the size and weight of both the panel and the battery pack also grows proportionally with the price. These items can get big and unwieldy which reduces their suitability for camping in particular.
The EcoFlow 400W Portable Solar Panel is the largest and most expensive (£999 at time of writing) folding solar panel we’ve encountered so far, and when the box arrived at the door, I struggled to lift it at all. I had to do that “shuffle along the floor” technique where you move one corner at a time. This was partly because the box didn’t have any handles, but mainly because it’s darn heavy!
But 400W… 400W! That is a fantastic level of power generation and is perfectly suited for charging up the EcoFlow Delta 2 power station we recently acquired. The Delta 2 can take in up to 500W of solar input power, so you’re not going to miss a drop of the potential 400W. Under full sunlight, you should be able to fully charge the Delta from 0->100% in about 2.5 hours – pretty impressive.
But is 400W a realistic prospect in the UK where the sun can disappear behind clouds in an instant, and the threat of rain showers is never far away. Read on to find out our experiences…..
EcoFlow 400W Panel – What’s in the box?
Once you’ve removed the outer transport cardboard box, there’s another more streamlined box inside. This contains:
- The 400W panel in it’s folded state
- A cloth carry bag for the panel with shoulder straps and carry handles – this also doubles up as the kickstand due to a rigid plastic panel included inside (more on that later!)
- Instruction pack which also contains metal carabiners to use for propping up the panel
- 3.5m power transfer cable for connecting the solar panel to a power station. This has MC4 connectors on one end and an XT60 connector on the other which is perfect for the Delta 2.
Dimensions and Weight
The panel is made up of four smaller panels which are all electrically connected in series. These smaller panels are all able to be folded on top of each other for storage or transportation – when in this state the dimensions are 105.8 x 62 x 2.4 cm.
You can then obviously unfold the panel, and the length (and area) quadruples. The dimensions expanding to 105.8 x 236.5 x 2.4 cm.
The weight of the panel itself is 16kg (35lbs), but when transported in the carry case, this increases to about 19kg (41.9lbs). This is pretty heavy and I found it difficult to lift, although transporting using the shoulder strap of the carry case made it just about manageable.
On the edge of the panel there is a small junction box with positive and negative MC4 outputs, and you can use these to couple to your power station of choice. For our testing, we were using the Ecoflow Delta 2, but you’re not limited to this. However, if your power station uses a different input connector than the XT60 then you will need to buy (or make!) a conversion cable.
The junction box of the solar panel does not have any extra ports for directly charging or powering devices. For the price of the panel I would have liked to have seen a 100W USB-C socket at a minimum, so I could charge a laptop directly without having to have the Delta 2 present. This is something that the Jackery SolarSaga panels do well, but they do not have a 400W offering in the range.
Solar Efficiency and Key Features
One area where the EcoFlow 400W panel does stand out is the solar efficiency. This is the proportion of energy (i.e. electricity) which is generated by the panel out of the theoretical maximum which could ever be extracted by the light falling on it.
The efficiency of the 400W EcoFlow is 22.6% which is a very decent level for a home consumer product. The highest efficiency ever achieved in a lab was recently reported to be 47.1%., so the Ecoflow is just less than half that, but available to buy for everyone.
It should hopefully be clear that the higher the efficiency is of your solar panel, the more power you will generate for a given temperature and amount of direct sunlight. In the UK, it’s very important to squeeze every last milliamp of current out of your panel in often very dreary conditions – the efficiency of the EcoFlow is up there with the best!
EcoFlow 400W Panel – Key Selling Point – IP68 Waterproof
There are two main reasons why generating energy from the sun can be doomed to failure in the UK.- The sun doesn’t shine enough – this is why a 400W panel is worth looking at because even on gloomy days you may get 100W of generation which is pretty sizeable and can easily run a computer say.
- It often rains in the UK, and if your panel is not waterproof then you can be constantly packing it up and putting it back out to avoid it getting wet – very irritating, believe me!
The EcoFlow 400W is IP68 waterproof which is fantastic for UK use. This means that it is totaly impervious to dust and particles getting inside it and can also be fully submerged in water without problems.
I did contact EcoFlow about whether we could permanently keep the panel outside but they said that this might be a step too far. However, no problem keeping it outside while it showers – just make sure your power station is covered!
400W Panel In Use
Whilst the size of this panel is one of its virtues, it’s also one of its downsides when it comes to being usable for camping applications. I’m a fairly large chap, and I struggled to set it up on my own – notice how in the video above I called in my wife Ali to help out – it’s a two person job in my opinion.
The kickstand is a source of frustration. On one hand it’s ingenious – it uses the carry bag in combination with some lug holes and the supplied carabiners to form a wedge shape which supports itself at the same time as the solar panel. There is also enough play in the carabiners to adjust the angle of the panel with respect to the ground. So far so good!
The problems come when you try and balance the panel out in its fully unfolded position, at which point it’s 2.36m wide, but the kickstand is only 62cm wide (i.e. a quarter of the width). What happens is that the end sections of the panel tend to droop down which means you cannot always get them to fully face the sun. You can see this in the photograph above.
Due to the weight of the panel and due to the fact the sun moves fairly rapidly through the sky, if you want to maximize the power which you generate then you will need to be constantly tweaking the angle of the panel and its orientation. With the combination of the weight and the kickstand issues, this is no small task. However, when it’s angled correctly, boy does it chuck out the power!
Power Generation
I received the panel in late November and so was not blessed with masses of direct sunshine during my tests with the EcoFlow. However, I was easily able to get 270W into my Delta 2, and that was with some shadow on the panel and part of the stand accidentally hanging over the top. I have no doubt that it can generate 400W in the summer months, even in the UK, and I’ll update this review once I’ve tested that and confirmed it.
Summary and Conclusions
This is a tricky product to review as a camper in the UK. On the one hand, I’m cognisant of the fact that in the UK you want to solar charge your power station as fast as you possibly can. This is because the sun doesn’t always shine for long periods of time, so you need to grab as much of it as you can and in as efficient a manner as possible.
The EcoFlow 400W panel certainly achieves that!
I also love the fact that it can be left out in the rain during the time that you’re using it – this is also a massive bonus in the UK.
But there are trade-offs to consider. It’s big, heavy, and the kickstand doesn’t help quite as much as it should do. It’s fiddly to attach the carabiners, and tricky to finely adjust the angles. At the time of writing, the panel is also pretty expensive, rivalling the Delta 2 itself in price.
Is it worth it? I’d say yes, but hesitantly. You’ve got to be sure that you need that much power (who doesn’t?) and can handle the foibles I’ve listed above. In my view, it’s slightly too big for campervan holidays but may be useable for bigger caravans or motorhome breaks. At home it’s another story entirely and I feel it would be more useful as storage space is less of an issue.
