Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 Review

Design and features

• Optimised for off-grid and backup roles
• Plenty of power
• Good packaging

The Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 is focused on medium and heavy-duty off-grid and backup power roles. It’s the first Anker power station I’ve tested without a built-in camping light; no great loss in something that’s not especially portable. You get four AC power sockets, across which the 2400W maximum output is spread. Anker says the C2000 Gen 2 can handle a 4000W power peak, but it doesn’t say for how long – I’ve tried to answer that question below.

The C2000 Gen 2 is reasonably served for DC ports. It has three USB-C sockets, although only two of them are 140W PD capable – the third, like the USB A port, is rated at just 15W. There’s also the ubiquitous cigarette lighter-style DC output port, although no DC5521 socket – a shame, as that’s an efficient way to connect low-power DC devices like a router.

In addition to the AC input there’s an XT60i port – a beefed up version of the XT60 standard, theoretically supporting up to 100 amps. Here it serves as a catch-all DC input, supporting solar and car recharging.

The final port is for an optional 2048Wh expansion battery, which would give a total capacity of 4048Wh – enough to get you through quite a significant power cut.

The C2000 has Anker’s handy display, which summarises battery charge level and the incoming and outgoing power, but here it’s more sophisticated – and sadly so reflective that I found it impossible to get a decent photo. Pressing the display button cycles through two other modes giving a more detailed breakdown of incoming and outgoing power. A fourth screen gets you into the on-device options, but you’ll probably end up using Anker’s smartphone app, connected via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

It’s striking quite how compact Anker has managed to get the SOLIX C2000 Gen2. Its squat height in particular is obvious when you compare it directly to the SOLIX F2000, but it’s an improvement in every dimension – and hugely lighter, too. The C2000 Gen2 would certainly be more likely to fit into the nooks or under the bed in a camper van. There are no rear, top or bottom cooling vents, either, and the side ones are cleverly positioned next to the handles, which helps avoid them getting blocked.

The Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 is the first Anker supply I’ve tested to offer a choice of charging modes. It defaults to UPS (uninterruptible power supply), in which it recharges when a source of power is available, and provides bypass power to any connected mains devices. If the supply is lost it switches to battery mode in a claimed 10 milliseconds – twice as fast as the F2000, and certainly quick enough for the office equipment I tested it with.

New for this device is a time-of-use mode like you get on most recent Bluetti supplies. Configure this with your off-peak electricity hours, leave the C2000 Gen 2 plugged in and it will automatically recharge when electricity’s cheap, and provide power from the battery when it’s not. In this mode the C2000 supports up to 94% depth of discharge: at 6% it switches back to bypass power mode to avoid emptying the battery completely. Paired with a modern washing machine, this could give you one or two loads of discounted washing each day.

As you might expect, the C2000 Gen 2 uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells. These are rated to retain at least 80% of their capacity after 4000 full charge cycles – equivalent to a full cycle every day for nearly 11 years. Anker says it’s designed the C2000 Gen 2 to last 10 years, and it backs it up with a five-year warranty.

Charging

• Charge from mains, car, or the sun at up to 2,600W
• Maximum 2,300W AC charging power
• Full mains recharge in just over an hour

You can recharge the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 from the mains, from optional solar panels, or from a combination of the two. It also comes with a standard 120W car charging cable – using which it would take around 18 hours for a full recharge. Anker has introduced an optional alternator charger for use in conventional vehicles. This supports up to 800W, which would fill this supply in less than three hours’ driving.

Things are quicker still if you’ve got a mains supply handy. Like other Anker power supplies, the C2000 supports charge rates in 100W increments from a minimum of 200W, right up to its maximum – in this case 2,300W. That’s a brilliant feature, meaning you can tailor the recharge speed to suit a low-power electric hookup or optimise it for maximum efficiency when charging overnight. At 2,300W, I timed a full recharge at 66 minutes. Anker says you can get this down to 58 minutes if you connect solar at the same time – here the maximum shared input power is a hefty 2600W.

We measure how much energy it takes to get power supplies from empty to fully charged. At 2400W the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 consumed 2323Wh, suggesting a decent charge efficiency of 88.2%. At 1000W this improved to 2,290Wh (89.4%), but at 200W it consumed 2,660 (77.0%) – that’s fairly typical for slow charging, where fan use and other overheads detract from efficiency.

Performance

• Stable and quiet at full load
• Fairly efficient, but not the best

It’s surprisingly hard to test powerful battery power stations like the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 – most homes have a device that demands 2,400W, but not for long enough to really stress battery management and cooling systems. Happily I was able to hook up a couple of other power stations, configure them for a 2400W total load, and wait while the Anker Solix C2000 Gen 2 steadily discharged.

The first thing I noticed is that even at full power the C2000 Gen 2 is far quieter than any other powerful Anker station I’ve tested – its fans never rise above a subdued and easily backgrounded whirr. That’s a big difference to the SOLIX F2000, which sounds like a hairdryer on anything other than light duty. There’s little heat around the C2000’s case, either, although its outlet vent does get quite hot, and the batteries themselves warmed well above 40°C.

During this test the C2000 Gen 2 provided 1,763Wh of power, about 86% of its batteries’ rated capacity. The best it managed was 1790Wh over a constant 1,000W load; a little over 87%. That’s not bad, but I’ve measured above 90% before. The fairest assessment of a power supply’s efficiency is to compare what you put in against what you can later take out. Here, the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 managed a best round-trip efficiency of 78.2% – the best supplies tend to squeak just over 80%.

I also tested this power station’s DC output, connecting a constant 60W load to one of its USB-C ports. Here it managed 1850Wh, an impressive 90.3% of the stated battery capacity. Using this figure gave a DC round-trip efficiency of 80.8%.

I deliberately overloaded the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 with appliances totalling around 3700W, which caused it to automatically shut off the AC power sockets after just three seconds. It was impressive with more marginal overloading, though, happily supporting 2600W until I got bored with waiting for anything untoward to happen. It supplied loads totalling 3000W for about 45 seconds, before automatically adjusting its output voltage downwards to bring the true output back below the specified 2400W. That’s a pretty elegant way of dealing with overloading, although it could cause problems if you’re trying to power a voltage-sensitive device.

We always work out an indicative value for power stations by comparing what they cost, with how much electricity they might store over a lifetime. At the £999 launch price the Anker SOLIX works out at an incredible 14p per kilowatt hour – about the cheapest we’ve seen. Even at the regular £1500 selling price this is a competitive 20p per kWh.

Should you buy it?