FFpower CN505 Portable Power Station 500Wh

I like the intuitive control input/output panel. Buttons are labeled for easy identification. I find the construction to be sturdy enough and ideal for camping and RVing.

Great build quality. Love the display. Stores as much power as promised. The only downside is the slow charging time.

I bought this unit (CN-505) AND A Bluetti the same size to see which one would give me the most nights for my Resmed Air- Sense 10 c-pap machine with my humidifier turned off. I got 5 nights with the Bibene and only 2 1/2 nights with the Bluetti. It didn't make any difference to me which one I was going to send back, but it really was no contest when it came to which one I would get the most nights out of. This Bibene is a very impressive unit.

This is a great midsize budget power bank. I own a comparable bluetti eb70 that has a little more watt hours but this one is cheaper. I’ve used this to recharge items, run my 12 volt refrigerator, power my tv and run power tools. The inverter has had no problem running any of the items it is rated for. It worked so well at that price, I purchased a second. I do own a larger 3000 watt hour pecron. I use these electric storage banks at night when I don’t run my gas generator. I only use gas in the day. At night I run the electric power bank generators. When the lights go out here in Florida due to hurricanes, it’s normally out a week to 10 days. By rotating the gas in the day and electric at night, I have electricity and refrigeration during the day and night. The FFpower generators keep my router powered up, power the tv and any other mid range power units. The BluettiPower does allow for 200 watts of input while the Bibene only allows 100 watts of input which makes the recharge time slower than the Bluetti eb70. That said, I’m happy with my purchase.

I used it on my 5-week road trip to keep my 20 liter refrigerator cold. It worked great. I charged it either with my car when driving, or with a 100 watt folding solar panel when camping. The display is great, and it is nice and compact, and fit in the space I have for it. I like that it has the newer Lithium Iron Phosphate battery that can be recharged about 10 times as many time as the Lithium Ion batteries. In full sun, it charged at 82 watts using the 100 watt solar panel. Now sure why they keep re-branding it. The one I bought in Nov 2021 is Bibene, but the one now available (June 2022) is called FFpower. I found it through a review on YouTube which tested it and showed it to be excellent.

I was worried about purchasing a lesser known power station but i have been nothing but impressed with the FFpower since it arrived. My first impression is that it was impressively compact but chunky (about 17 pounds w/o power brick) with a flat handle (important for space savings vs the molded in handles). The aluminum case around the sides is a nice touch of quality (since most units are 100% plastic) and the build quality was fine. The display is nice, not large but it shows you all of the basics you need to see like total time to charge/discharge, battery percentage (and it has the battery bar graph too) and input/output watts. The display also shows (in small words) what outputs you currently have on and they flash if there is a fault (like a short in the 12 volt outputs, and yes I tested it). The display also seams reasonably accurate especially after I did a full discharge/charge to calibrate it. Once nice feature is even after the display dims you can just press the power button to make it bright again. To actually operate the power button you have to long press it for both on and off, which is nice to prevent accidental pushes and that also allows this display backlight feature. At room temperature the unit is very quiet (usually the fan is off or in 'whisper' mode it seems). When pressed hard the fan ramps up and a fan icon appears on the front of the display. Even at full speed the fan isn't overly loud or annoying, definitely audible though. Although DC output isn't regulated thanks to LIFEPO4 batteries it hold amazingly steady. At full charge my unit puts out 12.9 volts DC and at 10% it was still putting out 12.1 volts. Even after calibration the unit does seem to run at 0% for quite a while so that 10% could be 15% or something actual battery level. AC output voltage hovers in the upper 115 volts and only drops to 114 volts under load. It appears to have a built in 'soft start' feature which ramps heavy draw items up slowly a bit, but everything I tried seemed work. I didn't have a load which could get it up to 500 watts exactly (the rated capacity) but it handled 200 to 400 watt loads well. In my AC capacity test (I don't have the equipment to do a DC capacity test), the unit produced over 520 watt hours out of 614 rated using a steady 90 watt load (4 powerful LED bulbs), which is a very respectable 84.7% efficiency. The unit itself never got hot to the touch, just warm when charging or discharging. The included power brick charges at 90 watts but it did get 137 degrees F (as measured by my infrared thermometer) and that is probably my biggest con of the system. The manual does say that it gets hot though and so although I would prefer a cooler running adapter, it does seem to work fine. I tested it with solar charging and it successfully charged from my 100 watt, 18 volt operational Rockpals RO082 at about 64 watts on the partly cloudy day I tested it. It even charged on a completely overcast rainy day, although at an expected miserable 2 watts, so it seems the MPPT charge controller is fairly flexible in accepting inputs up to it's 100 watt max. Overall the FFpower is just a solid unit that meets it's specs. No show stoppers or major issues, it just does what it says it does. My only real gripe is the wall charger gets hotter than I would like, but it works and that is noted in the manual, so I can't really be too upset over it.

You will love it, this is the most perfect 500W power station I have ever owned. The lithium iron phosphate battery is a cool design. We pursue safety and maximize efficiency. Isn't the battery that will not explode and the number of cycles of 3000 times what we need?