ZDNET's key takeaways The Oupes Mega 1 is on sale at Amazon for $449.
It's a compact, powerful unit that can handle surges up to 4,500W, and it weighs less than 30 pounds, making it quite portable for the power it supplies.
The handles aren't very comfortable for extended carrying. $499 at Amazon
I cover a lot of portable power stations here on ZDNET and use them in my personal life, as well. After coming in contact with so many, most of them are made by one of the big three names in this market: EcoFlow, Bluetti, or Jackery. I test a lot of power stations from other manufacturers, but the truth is that many just don't make the cut.
Also: The best portable power stations you can buy
But the Mega 1 from Oupes did make the cut. It's not perfect, but it's definitely got a lot, especially for the price. And it's found a place in my truck as a reliable portable power station.
The unit is a 1,024Wh unit with 2,000W (4,500W peak output) unit and weighs in at a shade under 30 pounds. It can run things from CPAP to refrigerators, and can be recharged using AC, vehicle 12V, solar, or a combination of AC and solar, giving it a great amount of flexibility.
The weight puts the Mega 1 squarely into the portable category, and makes it perfect for in-vehicle usage. A 60+ pound unit is quite a hefty and unwieldy box, while a 30-pound unit will fit into a trunk or footwell of a car, or in the bed of a truck, and it can be picked up and moved about with relative ease.
Ample cooling, and also the ability to connect it to extra batteries. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
Powering the unit are a bank of LiFePO4 cells that are good for 3,500 recharge cycles -- that's a daily charge/recharge for over nine years. I can't quite test that yet, but I can give its durability a test, and I'm more than happy with how robust the Mega 1 has turned out to be.
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