While power converters for vehicles are nothing new, they’re often box shaped and clunky, making them a bit awkward to set up and use inside your vehicle. Our BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter review takes a look at a cup-shaped car power inverter which allows you to run household appliances, pumps, motors, laptops, and more from your vehicle.
Specifications
The BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter has the following features and specifications:
- Provides 200 watts continuous DC to AC power and 400 watts of peak power with 2 AC outlets and 2 USB charging ports, 12V cigarette lighter socket
- 5-IN-1 Design: combined AC outlets, cigarette lighter socket, and USB charging into one compact, space-saving design, charging 5 devices at the same time, 24-inch power cord allows you to put your inverter anywhere you want, tight fit into the car DC socket
- Dual USB Ports: 4.5A/dual USB ports can automatically detect your devices to deliver optimal charging speed, great for your Kindles, iPhones, iPads, tablets, MP3 players, cameras, and other mobile devices
- Full Protection: auto-shutdown keeps your appliance and car from damage. Built-in 25A/32V fuse, overvoltage, under-voltage, overload, over-current, overheating (applied for a 12V car but not 24V).
- Input Voltage: DC 12V
- Output Voltage: 110VAC
- Rated Power: 200W
- USB Output: DC5V/3.4A (4.5A Max), one USB: 2.4A, the other: Auto 0~2.4A
- AC Sockets: US standard
- Product Dimensions: 7 x 3 x 4.3 inches
- For DC12V and Car ONLY, not applied for DC 24V and airplane use.
- Caution! Understand your product wattage. Not designed for high power electrical devices such as hair dryers, electric heaters, curling irons etc.
What’s in the box
- BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter
- User Manual
- 18-month Warranty
Design
As mentioned above, the BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter is roughly the shape of a tall to-go coffee cup with squarish edges. The main unit is red with some orange and darker red accents starting along the bottom and travelling around the “cup” to the halfway point. The BESTEK logo is in white just below the top lid.
The bottom of the power inverter is black, with gaps which allow the bottom fan to disperse air away from the unit. The device is a bit smaller than a takeout coffee cup and the extra space on the sides allows the air to flow better from the bottom.
On the right side of the power inverter is the power cord connection which sits just below the top lid. The cord itself is roughly two feet long and connects into the DC socket in your vehicle. The lid itself is black with the BESTEK logo embossed in the top. Flipping up the lid, which is best done by pressing up with both your thumbs under the white up pointing arrows, exposes a Power button, Power/Fault LED indicator light, two USB-A ports, a DC port, and two AC sockets. Just above and to the right side of the AC sockets are ventilation fins.
The design of the BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter is fairly nice as it looks like a cup at a glance. The design also allows you to easily place it in a number of areas in your vehicle depending on where your cup holders are placed. As mentioned above, is a bit smaller than your average takeout coffee cup though and in the cup holders we tried it on it sat kind of loose in it. This isn’t a dealbreaker by any means, but is worth noting if you were hoping for something with a bit of a tighter fit.
Easy of Use
There’s not much to using the BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter. Simply connect the included power cord to the inverter and the other end into a DC (cigarette lighter) socket in your vehicle. Once plugged in and turned on, you can plug in any number of appliances or USB devices to run them or charge them using your vehicle. As mentioned in the product features and specifications above, take care to check the wattage of the appliance or device you’re planning on plugging into the power inverter as it is only designed to handle DC 12V currents and is not designed for high power electrical devices such as hair dryers, electric heaters, and curling irons. Unfortunately, that also meant no powering the margarita machine…
Performance
As mentioned before a couple of times, you’ll want to be careful on what you use this to power. While 200W sounds like a lot, it can add up pretty quickly and depending on what appliance or laptop you’re using it with, you may go over without realizing it. To calculate the Wattage of your appliance or laptop, simply multiply the voltage times the amps listed on the power brick or appliance itself. If this is below 200, you should be fine to use the BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter. Be sure to add up all your devices to make sure you don’t go over. The device does have auto-shutdown for over-voltage, under-voltage, overload, over-current, and overheating but we weren’t about to test that out. From comments based on other reviews on the internet however, the fault protection does kick in properly when it needs to.
During testing, the power inverter had no problem powering a Chromebook and two smartphones, or a Dell XPS 15 and the two smartphones. Unfortunately, our gaming laptop draws 230W so you wouldn’t be able to use that with this inverter, however there are 300W inverters available as well. As expected, powering two tablets and two smartphones was no issue either.
One handy feature relates to the power button. The power button pretty much controls power to the DC and AC sockets. When on, the fan on the inverter runs, but is very quiet and you have to really strain to hear it. When driving with music on, you won’t hear it at all. When the power button is off, you can still use the two USB ports to charge your USB devices. Depending on your vehicle, if you have an always-on DC socket you’re going to want to disconnect it when your vehicle is off so as not to drain your battery.
Price/Value
With an MSRP of $45.99USD, the BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter is pretty reasonably priced. However, it can currently be purchased from Amazon for $27.99USD which is a great deal if you’re in the market for a car power inverter to run your devices including home appliances, pumps, motors, laptops, and more via AC power. BESTEK has also offered us a code for our readers, simply enter Q3EKCZLO during the checkout process to save an extra 20% for a limited time!
Wrap-up
While it won’t power every home appliance or laptop, the BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter is an affordable solution for those needing regular outlets or more ports to charge devices while on those longer road trips. Just be wary of what you’re plugging in and make sure you’re not exceeding 200W total.
*We were sent a sample of the BESTEK 200W Car Power Inverter for the purposes of this review.
Last Updated on July 6, 2017.
