tl;dr — Great price and a lot of bang for your buck, but the ‘smart’ features/app control struggle. If you don’t need app functionality it’s a great value.
We really want to like pecron. They offer more battery power and more output for a much better price than the competition. Their units also have WiFi, however, their inability to remain connected and accessible via their mobile app makes them extremely unreliable for monitoring.
More Battery Capacity at a Better Price
So we’ve been through EcoFlow, BLUETTI, and OUPES. We started to give pecron a look, as their offerings had more battery capacity and more battery expansion capabilities vs. the competition. On paper, the same-tier units offer more — e.g. an EcoFlow Delta 2 is a “1000 range” unit that offers one battery expansion port, the battery also being a “1000 range” unit. So a Delta 2 can be a “2000 range” unit, but a pecron E1000LFP (also a “1000 range” unit) can accept an expansion battery that’s in the “3000 range”, so 4000wh+ of battery capacity for *less money* than an EcoFlow Delta 2.
pecron was really starting to look like the one, so we purchased a dozen of the smaller E300LFP units. These are comparable to the EcoFlow River 3 and BLUETTI AC2 units we have implemented as battery backups for computer systems. While the orange aesthetic is a bit annoying (as compared to having an EcoFlow unit somewhere in your home or store), it’s actually a plus for our customers as it’s become an easy way to find “the main power source for things.” 🙂
Thus far we have not had any issues with these pecron E300LFP units and are able to install them with confidence. If this changes, I’ll report back. We have had a few reports of iPhone app setup issues, but the Android setup hasn’t shown any issues.
Testing Higher-Capacity pecron Units
After seeing the smaller pecron E300LFP units perform well and provide more for a better price (e.g. WiFi, greater battery capacity, etc.) we wanted to test a larger unit and see how it behaves. “Day one” can be much different than letting a device run for weeks or months and seeing how it actually performs in the real world. I purchased a refurbished pecron E1000LFP from pecron’s official eBay outlet, sticking with my “do not buy these larger units brand new” philosophy.
Upon arrival, things seemed great. It’s a “1000 range” unit and it can be expanded to the “4000 range” + it his WiFi and remote management. The app experience seemed to perform fine as well. No issues pairing the unit and I was able to control it when I was no longer on the same network.
One issue though, right out of the box — the screen will not turn off. 😀 It’s a refurbished unit so it’s not a surprise, but I reached out to pecron support. Pecron support (specifically, Kein) has been great thus far. In summary, faulty screen or board. So it seems maybe the “refurbished” part isn’t as refurbished as it claims and is more-so just re-packaging returned items — “Power’s on, looks good! Ship it!”
WiFi Flaws
It didn’t take long for the next set of issues to arise — i.e. the device went offline in the mobile app:
The WiFi icon was no longer lit on the unit’s screen and no amount of button pushing brought it back on. I had to unpair/re-pair the unit to get WiFi to come on again. I reached out to pecron support again (thank you, Kein) and we went back and forth over a few messages and troubleshooting steps. With 20+ EcoFlow devices on WiFi for nearly a year, without an issue, it was starting to look like this was an issue specific to pecron devices.
Over the course of a week, the pecron E1000LFP went offline multiple times. After the second or third time it went offline, I tried powering-off the unit completely (which, BTW, you cannot do unless you *also* completely disconnect its AC power cable) and then powering it on again — WiFi came back on. This happened again a few days later and I was able to reproduce the issue/fix by powering-off/on again.
I communicated this to pecron support and a few ideas were posited — e.g. “Maybe someone removed it from the app.” It’s frustrating to have to go through the canned troubleshooting steps. After a few exchanges, two things were revealed:
- The pecron E1000LFP has a known issue with WiFi.
- There is an OTA firmware update pecron can push for this WiFi issue.
pecron support also communicated the board could be failing/bad. So here we are with another device that failed prematurely. It was sold by pecron from their official eBay outlet and listed as professionally refurbished. Either the unit has bad components and these bits are failing separate from the original reasons it was refurbished, or maybe the unit was never refurbished.
Manufacturers Using “Ship It To Us” to Cover Quality Control Issues
Both EcoFlow and pecron, two of the most popular names in solar generators/power stations, have demonstrated to at least me that their units fail prematurely and returning it to them is the “fix.” pecron support has requested I ship my “bad” pecron E1000LFP to them. Not for a refund, not for an exchange, but to ship it away for weeks so they can investigate the system 😐
I’ve submitted a return request for this E1000LFP as I just do not have time to beta test.
pecron Has App Issues
During this troubleshooting, I added one of the smaller E300LFP units we ship to customers and I also purchased a brand new E500LFP. I wanted to see if it was just the E1000LFP that was having issues (surely because it’s refurbished), so having a new E300LFP and a new 500LFP to compare with gives a nice cross section of pecron’s offerings.
Surprisingly, the little E300LFP hasn’t had any connectivity issues thus far. Multiple weeks with a steady connection and no troubleshooting. Nice.
The E500 however, problems pretty much right away. While the device would show online…
Attempting to control the device from the app resulted in a Setting failed error:
Funny enough, if you just wait long enough…it works again. 😀 Over the course of a week though, it was pretty much guaranteed that when you tried to control the device via the app, it threw errors.
The E300LFP and even the E1000LFP were still accessible, so this is device-specific. The device was in Eco Mode and pecron support suggested maybe that was reducing power to the WiFi radio, however, the issue persists with EcoMode off:
I’m already shipping back the E1000LFP and I just can’t be bothered shipping the E500 back. I don’t have the original box and I’m tired of shipping things — we do enough shipping here. I consider the $200 E500LFP I got on a deal to be a loss of money, but a gain of knowledge. I have learned that the larger pecron units are not worth exploring to use as battery backups for larger devices, let alone whole-home.
We do still like pecron and will continue utilizing and recommending the pecron E300LFP units (unless things change), but if you need the app/remote connectivity I don’t think the pecron platform is reliable enough.
Speaking of smart stuff not working, that leads us to OUPES solar generators/power stations.
Dean
I am a Software Developer, System Administrator, and consignment software specialist. I currently manage hundreds of consignment workstations, point of sale systems, and database servers all across North America and I am the developer of Peeps' Software, Peeps2Go, and Peeps' Consignor Login for iOS and Android. I've been helping consignment & resale store-owners since 2003. I started The Computer Peeps in February of 2010. Peeps' Software launched in 2016 and is now on hundreds of systems all across North America. I have successfully converted hundreds of stores from all of the major consignment software systems. After 20+ years of working with consignment stores, I understand the unique challenges consignment & resale store-owners face. From electrical issues in old buildings or strip malls, to advocating for them when their old consignment software keeps crashing.