Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsHandy, but has some limitations
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2022
I bought this with the intention of taking it on my upcoming trip to Cameroon, where power outages are pretty much a daily thing, and can even last for several days at times. Then I found out that you can’t take it on commercial airlines. No lithium battery of any size is allowed in checked baggage, and those in carry-on must be of no more than 100 watt hours capacity. The only exception is that with the permission of the airline, which no one explains how to obtain, you can take up to two batteries of no more than 160 Wh each. So no matter how you look at it, the Jackery isn’t flying. Interestingly, there appear to be no restrictions on sealed lead acid batteries in either checked or carry-on baggage. They are far lower in capacity for their weight though. There does not appear to be any limit on how many 100 Wh or less lithium batteries you are allowed in your carry-on.
The next biggest bummer with this product is that the battery is not replaceable, not even by the manufacturer. Thus, this is engineered to be a throw-away product. So much for green energy. When Tile came out with their original key-finder tags, the world was outraged that the coin battery was not replaceable, and those only weighed a few grams. They eventually redesigned it to make the battery user-replaceable. Every Jackery Explorer 240 sold is 6.6 pounds (3 kg) of future e-waste. If you think you could re-battery it yourself, you’d better have a look at a teardown video on Youtube. There’s a lot of cylindrical cells spot-welded to metal strips in a series-parallel configuration. You’d have to be a pretty serious and resourceful DIYer to tackle that.
Next, there’s the USB ports, which are not only just Type A, they don’t support any quick-charge standard whatsoever. There’s no excuse for not including a USB PD port on this thing, which is the only way to fast charge Apple devices, and is what all mobile devices have been migrating to for some time now. Even most current pocket-sized lithium battery portable chargers support both USB PD and multiple other quick charging standards on the Type A ports. Not the Jackery though, which seems outdated in this regard. There is a work-around, since the Jackery has a 12v automotive outlet, but it will cost you another $40 or so. You can get an automotive quick charger that supports USB PD and Quick Charge 4.0 or 3.0 and some lesser known standards. I bought a Wordima 85w automotive charger here on Amazon, and it works great. Make sure you have compatible cables. This setup will allow you to charge your devices about 3 times faster than the Jackery’s built-in USB ports. Of course, you could also just plug your regular device AC charger (or several with a power strip) into the Jackery’s inverter output, but this means more stuff to carry and less efficient use of the Jackery’s capacity.
I like that the Jackery accepts a wide input voltage range from 12v to 30v, and has MPPT to optimize the utilization of variable power sources like solar, wind, small-scale hydropower or even an exercise bicycle generator. You can also charge and use it at the same time, as would be common when using solar panels. Not all similar products allow this. But I was very disappointed to discover that it does not pass any excess available input power through to the load. Thus if your solar panel is producing 100W and the Jackery is only accepting 30W because it’s nearly full, and you have a 50W load running, you are still draining the battery even though you are generating 20W more than your total need. I double checked this with an ammeter in series with the input power, in case the displayed input power represented only what the battery was accepting, and I found that the input current does not change at all when a load is switched on. Thus any available input power in excess of what the battery can accept is wasted, even if there is a load that could use it. The load is always using only the battery and the input is only charging the battery. Thus any load watts in excess of the watts input to the battery is draining the battery, even if you have way more power available from the input source. That’s disappointing to say the least.
The LCD display simultaneously shows the battery percentage remaining, and the input and output watts. It’s very informative, but they used an older LCD technology that is extremely sensitive to the viewing angle. The display is crystal clear when viewed from above, but it is very faded when viewed at eye level, and completely invisible above eye level. This irks me because even the cheap 20 year old dumb thermostat I replaced in my home uses the type of LCD that is very sharp viewed from any angle. Better LCD technology has been around for decades, but the Jackery doesn’t use it.
The power bank contains a pure sine wave inverter which produces clean AC power most closely resembling what comes from a wall outlet. This pretty much guarantees that you won’t have trouble with your AC powered devices as long as you don’t exceed its 200W power limit.
Jackery recommends that you not drain the battery below 15%, so the real usable capacity is only around 200 Wh, not its rated 240 Wh. Another page of the same manual says to recharge it when it drops to 20%, which gives you even less usable capacity.The unit comes with a hefty 65W AC charger that accepts 100 - 240v 50/60 Hz, a 12v automotive charging cable, but certainly no solar panels. You don’t have to buy Jackery’s solar panel, which is 60 W and costs as much as the Massimo 100 W foldable solar panel that I purchased. On a cloudless day, I can charge the Jackery from 15% to 100% when not simultaneously draining it.
I love that the Jackery has no fuses to blow or reset buttons to push. It has self-resetting overload protection. I like that the internal cooling fan runs only when necessary, which for me hasn’t been very often. It’s nice that all connections are on the front. You don't have to go searching all around for the different inputs and outputs - everything is in one place. I usually am not swayed much by looks over specs, but this unit looks good and feels sturdy while being light weight. The handle grip is non-slip without using any of that grippy rubbery coating that inevitably turns sticky with age.
Since I can’t take the Jackery on my flight, I bought a few INIU brand BI-B5 large pocket-sized power banks, which are 74 Wh each, and thus won’t be at odds with the TSA and FAA guidelines. Four of these together have greater battery capacity than the Jackery Explorer 240, but with no 110v AC or 12v DC outlets, of course. They have a numeric LED display showing charge percent level but not watts in & out. These will give me 2 USB Type A ports and one USB PD port each, all supporting quick charging standards. These units can only be charged via the PD port. The Type A ports are output only. I don’t know if it is safe to use the Type A ports to power things while charging via the USB PD port. I have to use a number of adapters to charge these with my foldable solar panel, using the automotive fast charger I mentioned earlier. It’s a pain compared to just using the Jackery with the solar panel, but I don’t have much of a choice when traveling by air.
