I had a camping trip a couple weeks ago and needed an inverter to use in the 80. I had planned on bringing a 1000w generator I had but couldn't get it running and to be honest it's loud. So I looked online to see what was out there. Seemed like Xantrex pretty much had some of the top of the line stuff. They were rated very well. But for the price I just couldn't see myself plopping down $200 on a 600 watt unit. Then I came upon the Npower inverters that Northern Tool sells. All the ratings seemed pretty good. All I needed was about 500 watts to power what I had but after looking them over and pricing everything out I figured I'd just go for the 1000w model Since it could be permanently mounted. And well I figured you can never have to much power. The other thing that swayed me was that it had a power meter on the front. It can tell you what your battery voltage is and how many Watts you used. This later would turn out to be a nice feature.
Got to camp and set up the dish and connected this thing up to the battery using some old cheap jumper cables I had. I just cut the ends of one side. I think I'll use a heavy duty connector next time. The inverter fired right up and worked flawlessly all weekend. I could power a Satellite dish and a small TV with basically no watts used. Maybe 100w total. The nice part was I could look back occasionally to the inverter and see what my battery level was. In 6 hrs of TV it used .3 volts of the 12.7 volt battery.
Another nice feature it has it will sound an alarm when the battery gets below 11.3 volts. This let me know I was in the yellow zone and needed to start the car to get the battery recharged. This took about 10 min at idle. I only charged the battery twice that whole day. When the battery gets below 11 volts it will shut down. At least I know it won't run down and kill my battery completely.
Overall for $140 I thought it was a good buy. A lot cheaper than a generator. Way more quiet. And it doesn't need gas. Though if you plan on using it for higher wattage you will need to crank the car up a few times. But even then the 80 is really quiet.
So if you have an inverter post it up.
Got to camp and set up the dish and connected this thing up to the battery using some old cheap jumper cables I had. I just cut the ends of one side. I think I'll use a heavy duty connector next time. The inverter fired right up and worked flawlessly all weekend. I could power a Satellite dish and a small TV with basically no watts used. Maybe 100w total. The nice part was I could look back occasionally to the inverter and see what my battery level was. In 6 hrs of TV it used .3 volts of the 12.7 volt battery.
Another nice feature it has it will sound an alarm when the battery gets below 11.3 volts. This let me know I was in the yellow zone and needed to start the car to get the battery recharged. This took about 10 min at idle. I only charged the battery twice that whole day. When the battery gets below 11 volts it will shut down. At least I know it won't run down and kill my battery completely.
Overall for $140 I thought it was a good buy. A lot cheaper than a generator. Way more quiet. And it doesn't need gas. Though if you plan on using it for higher wattage you will need to crank the car up a few times. But even then the 80 is really quiet.
So if you have an inverter post it up.
