EcoFlow Delta 2 Review: Pros And Cons – in this article, as you guessed, we’re going to review the new Ecoflow Delta 2. I think they have this one that is pretty unique, offering several different ways. There are things that I do like about it, and there are some things that you need to be aware of before you purchase this. And we’ll go over all these points, we’ll break down all the specs, and so on.
EcoFlow Delta 2 Review: Pros And Cons
EcoFlow Delta 2 Review
So, here’s what we’re going to cover in the article. We’re going to go over the primary specs, and we’re going to look at the features of this model. I’m going to tell you about all the things that you need to be aware of. We’re going to run through various tasks, we’ll check the DC and AC efficiency, we’re going to look at pure sine wave capability, and we’re going to look at the solar charging capabilities.
All the things you want to know before you buy something like this, and then I’ll show you how it Stacks up against the competition. I’ve got a spreadsheet that I’ve built, and we’ll go over that. This is something I’ve introduced several times on the web. It’s very exhaustive, and it shows you all the different options. So, you can see how this Stacks up, then we’ll answer the question is this the right fit for the preparedness?
I focus on preparedness on this web. So, I try to introduce products I think will be a good fit. I’ll disclose how I get compensated for this article and then I’ll give my final thoughts at the very end on you know whether I think this is a good fit for the community and just all the other things after we tie it all together.
So for EcoFlow Delta 2 review, let’s jump into the first one’s features and specs now. Before I run through all the features and specs, I would recommend and I’ll post a link in the cards below.
EcoFlow DELTA 2
EcoFlow Delta 2 Features And Specs
1. The battery chemistry
So, let’s jump into the primary points. Let’s start off with the battery chemistry. It’s lithium iron phosphate, and if you’re not sure what that means, it’s a type of battery chemistry that is known for longer charts rather long life. You can get a lot of Cycles out of it, around 3,000 to 3,500 Cycles whereas your typical lithium battery maybe gets around 500 to 800 maybe a thousand tops.
Technically, if you use this every day, you could run it from top to bottom for about 8.2 years. And think of it kind of like a cell phone when you first get your cell phone, the battery life is long after you use it over time, and it starts dying. It’s kind of like that, but you can still get 80 after, what I say 3,000 Cycles now after that period doesn’t just become a paperweight, it’s not just dead at that point. You’re only going to get 80% of the capacity that you originally got, or you know again, think about your cell phone after a year or two, it just doesn’t hold as much power, think about it.
In those same terms, one of the other features is a five-year warranty. As far as I know, this is one of the best in the industry. There are a few others that come close, but five years, I want to say is probably one of the longest that I’ve seen out there. This particular unit is expandable, you can add a kilowatt-hour lithium-ion phosphate battery, or you can add a two kilowatts Delta Max battery.
2. The plug-ins
Now, as far as the plug-ins go, on the front, you’ve got USB plugins. These are your standard options, again, you can look at the 100 Watts of some of the old dinosaur types of plugins on the back. You’ve got solar and AC input along with the fuse if you trip it out. Below that, you have your AC plug-ins which can support up to 1,800 watts of output.
As I mentioned a moment ago, below that, you have your 12 volts plug-ins that are rather an output for your 8-millimeters and then your standard cigarette adapter, and of course, this is your output on both sides. You have your exhaust fans as this heats up, and you use it or you’re charging it. It will warm up and if you’ve ever owned an Ecoflow product, these are all pretty standard interfaces on the front and back.
2. Solar charging
EcoFlow Delta 2 review, As far as the charging goes, the AC charging what it does is it will charge up to 1,200 watts for the first 80 percent. That’s pretty powerful for something this size. You can pull 1,200 watts and those first 80 while you’re charging this. Let’s talk about solar charging, this particular unit can handle 500 watts, and I’ll walk you through the solar charging setup momentarily that I experimented with.
3. Remote capabilities
We’ll go into a little more detail now. As far as remote capabilities, you can connect this with an app over the internet, and you can control it from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. This is obviously tied into. And for example, if you have this set up in a remote cabin, this is very useful, you can turn off the AC and the DC, you can monitor the battery life, and you essentially have full control over this over the internet to see what’s going on with it.
4. Ecosystem built
And one of the things I like about the Ecoflow products, and why I like reviewing them is that they really have a whole ecosystem built. You can connect this one specifically to their smart generator, And I don’t have one. So, if this drops down to a certain percentage, you’ll tell the generator “Hey kick on and charge me up” and then when it hits a certain amount that it fills up it says okay “we’re done, so we’ll turn the generator off”.
I think that’s a pretty nifty little setup now. It does have an X-boost, and this is good for heating devices such as a heat gun, or an induction plate. If you’re heating up food, you know, just a heater to warm up the room, but you don’t want to use this on sensitive devices, what it does is it boosts the wattage but not the voltage. Again, if you know anything about sensitive devices that’s not good, but for devices that are more forgiving, you can pull more power out of this.
5. EPS
All right, one of the last features is EPS. An EPS is the equivalent of UPS. If you’re familiar with UPS (Uninterrupted Power Source), if you’ve ever hooked up a small battery for example next to your computer, so if the power goes off, you can still charge your device or rather keep it powering. It won’t turn off and then you’ll have time to power down. Now, this has EPS. It’s 30 milliseconds switch over time whereas a UPS is zero milliseconds.
So, for sensitive devices and computer workstations, I wouldn’t recommend this, but for more forgiving devices, my monitor, and some other simple electronics, It’ll be fine, if you just want to keep them continuously powered.
Testing EcoFlow Delta 2
1. AC efficiency
So for EcoFlow Delta 2 review, let’s jump into the section about tests. As far as AC efficiency what I do when I test these devices is, I put a 75 load on the device, and then I run it until it drains out the battery. Now, this is one of my big/the only things I don’t like about this unit is, that it came to a 74 efficiency on the inverter. And it’s one of the lowest. I’ve seen testing these units, and again how did I get this number? Well, what I did is, I plugged in a device called a Killa Watt, and it will tell you how much power you’re pulling out.
What I did is, I found out that I got 760 watts, and it’s a 1024-watt-hours battery. So, what I did is, I divided that amount that I got out, 760 by 1024, and that gives us 74 (760/1024=74%). In a lot of the devices, I test the efficiency is a lot higher. This is definitely on the low end. We’ll talk about this momentarily In the comparison section when we look at it other devices that are again similar to this one in the market.
2. DC efficiency
As far as DC efficiency, I ran the same test where I plug a meter into it. It just pulls power, and it at the end tells you how much it got out. And What we found was, it pulled out 760 watts and again from an efficiency perspective 74. That’s kind of low on these devices. Most of the looks are starting low at 80 percent.
3. Charging From 0%
Now, when we charge from zero percent, what I did is, I ran this battery all the way down and then I charged it up. And as we talked about a second ago, the first 80% when you charge it up with an AC plug-in, you know plugging into your wall socket, it took about 52 minutes from 0 to 80%. It was charging at 1200 watts which is pretty impressive, but the last 20% that took a while pulled only 320 Watts during that time.
And again remember the stadium effect that I talked about earlier, it will run really quickly at the beginning and then slows down at the end. It took about an hour and a half in all to fill it up. I’m using the term fill it up by charging it up, I mean from 0% all the way to 100%. But the first 80% was done within, those first I believe 50 minutes.
4. Pure sine wave
What I did is, I tested it with 0%, 50%, 75%, and 100% loads. At 0%, it did get a pure sine wave. When we got into 50%, 75%, and 100%, by those numbers, I was putting a device on the AC pulling a certain amount of power. It’s 0, 50, 75, and 100, what I did is, I tapped into the unit with the meter, and I was looking to see how this behaved when I’m putting it under low these different percentages.
So, again at 0%, I get a pure sine wave. At 50, 75, and 100, it wasn’t quite a pure sine wave. You could begin to see some degradation on the meter, but is it going to be something that would say is just horrible? I mean it’s still going to power most of your devices under heavy load. If you’re very very concerned about very fine-tuned instruments that need Precision this might not be the right fit for you.
5. Charging with Solar
All right, let’s talk about charging with solar. I tried something different a lot of times. I have the Ecoflow panels, but what I decide to do is, let’s look at some other options on the market, it works great with the Ecoflow panels. They’re not cheating, they’re good, and they’re foldable, but I ended up getting some rigid monocrystalline panels that you typically see on rooftops, and they’re very affordable, typically, about a hundred dollars for 100 watts.
I hooked up four well. Actually, I first hooked up three in series, but the voltage was too high, so this device just wouldn’t take it. I dropped it down to two in series 200 watts. and this would charge off that in series. So, what I did was, I changed a connection from a series to a parallel, and then I was able to hook up four 100 watts panels with no problem whatsoever, and this thing just took off right off charging also.
Competition
All right, for this segment of the article. We’re going to take a look at a spreadsheet that I often reference. It’s a spreadsheet or when I test units, I put their information here.
Brand | Cost | Capacity/ Wh | Cost / Wh – stated | Cost / Wh – actual | AC efficiency | DC efficiency | Continuous (W) | Peak (W) | Solar max (W) | Battery type | Weight (lbs) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ecoflow Delta | $1.199 | 1260 | $0,95 | $1,15 | 83% | 65% | 1800 | 3300 | 400 | Li-ion | 31 |
Ecoflow Delta II | $999 | 1024 | $0,98 | $1,32 | 74% | 74% | 1800 | 2700 | 500 | LiFePO4 | 26 |
Ecoflow Delta Max | $1.899 | 2016 | $0,94 | $1,03 | 91% | 74% | 2400 | 5000 | 800 | Li-ion | 48 |
Ecoflow Delta Mini | $749 | 882 | $0,85 | $1,13 | 91% | 77% | 1400 | 2100 | 300 | Li-ion | 24 |
So, we are looking at the Ecoflow Delta II now. As you can see, you can sort the most inefficient on AC, and the Ecoflow Delta was a second. We’re going to sort the column for DC efficiency, same thing. I’ve noticed Ecoflow products typically kind of score a little low on DC efficiency.
Now, the costs per watt hour. I have two columns, I have one called stated and one is actual. Stated is if you were just looking off their website, and say okay you have this amount of what hours. What is that going to cost me when I add this all up at the end of the day?
Then, the actual is based on after efficiency. We ran through the tests or AC in particular. We can begin to see how much am I actually going to get out of this. So, on this particular model, we’re paying actually 1.32.
Final Thoughts
EcoFlow Delta 2 Review: I would say this packs a lot of punch for a small device. Something small, this portable. It can pretty capable. My only wish is that it had a slightly larger charge controller to accept more solar, maybe 800 watts because it’s at 500 watts. I’ve got the Jackery. That one has 800 watts that it can accept. It’s something that’s in the comparable size, but it can handle 800 watts which it’d be nice to have but not a deal breaker.
So, the thing I like about this is, if you had a remote cabin, and you wanted to set this up, set it up on solar panels power, a few things, and you want to be able to see it, you know what’s going on remotely if everything’s working correctly. You need to turn off the device because it’s getting all these things. You can do all that via an app as long as it’s connected to the internet, and I think that’s amazing.
I’m excited to see these products increase and add these features which I think could be very useful. Recommended usage for car camping/emergencies.
EcoFlow DELTA 2
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