Bluetti Elite 400 Review

Design and features

• Big and heavy
• Useful wheels and handle
• Decent display and app

There’s no getting away from this power station’s bulk, but Bluetti has at least packaged it sensibly. It’s certainly not unreasonably large – here I’m comparing it with the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2, which stores only about half the energy.

The Bluetti Elite 400 has two beefy integrated handles, plus a telescopic suitcase-style grip for use with the wheels – it’s not fully extended in this photo.

The Bluetti Elite 400 is unusual in that it’s designed to be used either upright, as you see in most of my photos, or laid on its back as below. That latter configuration could be helpful if you need to slot it under a bed or bench seat in a van. In either configuration, there are large rubber pads that stop it sliding about.

If you’re expecting lots of ports, you might be somewhat disappointed. This supply has just two AC sockets, rated for a combined maximum 2600W load. That’s plenty for anything you’d find in a modern home – only older kettles or the most powerful electric heaters would exceed it on their own.

To stay within the limit, you may need to be careful about running more than one demanding device at the same time. For example, you may want to wait for your washing machine to finish the energy-intensive job of heating water before you start a load in the dryer.

This supply has only four USB ports, and they’re not especially highly rated. Its two USB-A sockets are good for 15W each, while the USB-C ports are rated for 100W. It’s fairly standard now to see at least one 140W port.

Aside from that, you’ll find the ubiquitous car-style 120W DC output, together with an XT60 DC input capable of handling up to 1kW. In practice, you’d use this to hook up solar panels, a car charging cable, or the output from one of Bluetti’s alternator chargers – none of these are included in the box.

This device features Bluetti’s clear and straightforward display, which tells you at a glance the batteries’ state of charge, whether they’re charging or discharging, and how long they’ll take to finish either. There’s also a breakdown of any input or output across the AC and DC circuits, both of which can be switched on and off.

If that sounds too fiddly, you might prefer the app. The Bluetti Elite 400 connects via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, giving you access to a range of information and options whether you’re at home or in the wilderness away from convenient Wi-Fi. You can use the app to set basics such as the recharge mode, or to configure the more advanced charge and output options available.

It’s worth noting a couple of potential shortcomings. The first is that while this supply’s own battery is massive, there’s no port to add an expansion pack. The other is that the Elite 400’s batteries are rated to retain 80% of their stated capacity after 3,000 charge cycles. That’s quite standard, and equates to roughly eight years of daily use, but the Elite 300 is rated for a more impressive 6,000 cycles.

Both the Elite 400 and 300 are protected by Bluetti’s five-year warranty, but with its shorter battery life rating, a heavily used Elite 400 may cost you more per kWh of energy stored. Calculated over its 3,000-cycle lifetime, and assuming linear degradation, the Bluetti Elite 400 will cost around 27p per kWh of energy stored if you buy it full price. If you buy at the bargain £1699 launch price, that falls to 16p, which is great. However, buy the 6000-cycle Elite 300 when it’s discounted to £1,599, and it’s an unbeatable 10p per kWh stored.

There’s a straightforward reason this matters: if you’re buying cheap energy at night and using it during the day, the potential is that you’ll save the difference between your peak and off-peak energy price. The reality’s nuanced because of the efficiency losses I explain below; an 80% saving is more realistic. If the gap between your tariffs is about 20p, you’re only saving money if your battery storage costs you less than 80% of that: about 16p per kWh or less. On the plus side, even if you’re not saving money, you’re likely to be using less carbon-intensive electricity.

Charging

• Charge from the mains. Solar or car charging are optional
• Maximum 2,300W AC charging power
• Full recharge in about two hours

The Bluetti Elite 400 offers the typical range of charging options: mains power, solar, or from a car. While its 2300W maximum AC charge rate is plenty for medium-capacity supplies, here it means that flat-out recharging still takes around two hours if you start with the batteries fully depleted. There’s good news if you’ve got plenty of solar panels: the Elite 400 can sustain its fastest mains charge rate at the same time as the maximum 1000W of solar input, for a maximum of 3300W in ideal conditions. In theory, that could accelerate charging to about an hour and a half.

Most of the time you’ll want to stick with the Standard AC charging mode, at which the Elite 400 draws about 1200W of power. This less demanding rate should help protect battery health, and charging will still complete in a little less than four hours. I measured consumption of 4152 watt-hours (Wh) for a full recharge. Assuming that took the 3840Wh battery pack from empty to full, that’s an impressive 92.5% efficiency.

I also tested this power station in its 2300W Turbo mode, in which a full recharge consumed 4,295Wh (89.4% efficiency). In Silent mode, it consumed 4,161Wh (92.3% efficiency). While even Silent mode isn’t strictly silent, this power supply was quiet and unstressed when charging at any speed.

Bluetti has stopped supplying cables for solar or car recharging, but you’d be mad to count on the latter here. At 120W, a standard cigarette lighter-style socket would need more than 30 hours to fill the batteries: you could drive from Calais to Malaga, and they still wouldn’t be full. Wiser to spend £400 or so on the Bluetti Charger 2, which can supply up to 800W of alternator power, with up to another 400W from any solar panels on your van roof – bearing in mind the Elite 400 can accept only a 1,000W maximum.

As with most other Bluetti power stations, the Elite 400 defaults to standard uninterruptible power supply (UPS) behaviour, both recharging and providing ‘bypass’ power when the mains is available, and providing battery power when it’s not.

You can use the app to select and configure alternatives such as Time Control mode, useful for storing off-peak power and consuming it during peak hours. There’s also a configurable PV priority mode which limits the maximum charge state the Elite 400 will reach from mains power – handy if you expect to get regular solar energy.

Performance

• Stable at maximum power
• Very little noise
• Exceptional efficiency

This power station can provide up to 2600W of mains power for around an hour and a half; testing this maximum required two 2kWh power stations, each configured to charge at 1300W. That’s a demanding setup, but the Bluetti Elite 400 shrugged it off, quietly and calmly providing power until its batteries were exhausted and it shut down. During this test, it provided 3,288Wh of electricity, equivalent to 85.6% of its stated battery capacity.

I tested the Bluetti Elite 400’s output at the other standard loads we use on every power station that supports them: 2000W, 1000W, 500W and 200W. It provided a best of 3558Wh on the 1000W test, equating to an excellent output efficiency of 92.7%. Calculated for my best charging and discharging figures, this power supply managed an exceptional AC round-trip efficiency of 85.7% – that’s one of the best we’ve measured.

With so much storage, and DC loads typically being quite small, it’s challenging to meaningfully measure a large power station’s DC output. I used a smaller power station to test stability at the maximum 100W output available over USB-C – the Elite 400 sustained this for several hours.

Whereas the Bluetti Elite 300 seemed to struggle when providing its maximum AC and DC output, the Elite 400 had no such issue. This DC output test didn’t generate any heat, and didn’t seem to even trigger the cooling fans – that’s far more confidence-inspiring, and much more typical of other Bluetti devices I’ve tested.

Should you buy it?