The Titan Elecstor 500W power station ticks most home battery boxes. It's relatively compact and lightweight enough to lug around. For its stated capacity, the price is also really attractive. But, being the cheaper option, there are some less high-end solutions used in its construction. Particularly when it comes to that fan.
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Price
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Ease of use
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Battery
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Practicality
The moment we took the 500W Titan Elecstor power station out of its box, we could see the problem we were going to have with it. Don’t get us wrong — the best backup battery you can own in South Africa is the most expensive one you can afford and spending R9,000 on this sort of capacity isn’t a terrible idea.
But it’s also not the best idea. If you’re confined to a budget of just under R10,000, there aren’t many options for you that feature this sort of capacity but you really should know what you’re getting into. Sure, it’ll power up to 500 watts worth of electronics, provided you can connect them all via the various ports. But some more money will make the whole experience much more of a pleasure.
I’ve just gotta vent
This Titan Elecstor unit popped out of its box and immediately gave us a slight case of the horrors. It’s not the cheap-ish plastic finish, though that’s a thing you’ll find here. It’s not the weirdly resistant-to-removal plastic cover over the faceplate — it’s hard to peel off because some fittings were installed over it. And it’s not even the fact that there’s a single three-prong plug on the otherwise well-populated ports list.
It was the vent on the side of the battery that made our skin crawl. It’s big. It’s cheaply cut, the plate fitting over the side-mounted light. But mostly it’s the absence of anything like fins or vanes or even a fan crammed right up against the edge of the vent that suggests that thermal management wasn’t the first thing on Titan’s mind. Sadly, that proved to be completely true when the battery was in use.
Unique. Just like everyone else
The Titan Elecstor battery, the largest of the whole lineup, compartmentalises its various functions. Four different power buttons handle duties. There’s one of the unit as a whole, then one each for the AC, DC, and LED light functions. If you’re not using it, you don’t turn it on. Other than that, the Titan Elecstor is a plug-and-play device. You plug in gadgets, which then start to play with that lovely stored power. It’s one way to get through the dark and wintry periods — provided you’re not banging the battery too hard. It’s rated for 500W but the stated capacity of 499WH means that you’ll get a little under an hour from it if you’re using the battery near its limit.
Which is totally fine, if that’s your thing. You’ll just need two (and a bit) of these Titan Elecstor batteries to make it all the way through load shedding. The typical outage is between two and three hours and burning through its capacity in 45 minutes doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us. Intelligent usage will keep a moderately-sized TV running for the whole of load shedding. If your screen sits around the 32in mark, you’ll probably power some internet (for streaming) or an Android box (for… other streaming) as well as the LED light until the other lights come back.
Sound and fury
But back to that vent. While the unit doesn’t run appreciably hot (it’s winter in Joburg, so that might be a factor), the fan will kick in. And it’s not a well-mounted, silenced fan. A PC enthusiast would break down crying at the decibels this little battery is able to pump out. It’ll drown out the sound of a TV, necessitating turning the volume up so you can hear the dialogue over the whine of the Titan Elecstor cooling itself down. It’s still not a dealbreaker. At least the TV’s on, right?
There is another aspect of the Titan Elecstor that might prove to be problematic, though. It’ll probably only really be useful at Stage 2 or Stage 3 load shedding. Come Stage 4, there isn’t enough time to get the battery back up to full. Really. Most of the batteries we’ve tested so far will get back up to 100% in a couple of hours. Connecting right after the ‘Shed departs means you’re ready well before the next bout. The Titan Elecstor, however, takes most of a day (ten to twelve hours) to charge up again. If there are two sessions in a day in your area, the second session will interrupt its return to 100%. That’s a little harder to forgive. The price helps, a little, but it’s worth keeping the slow charge speed in mind.
Titan Elecstor 500W Portable Power Station verdict
If you’re happy with a battery that seems to deflate quicker than it should (though that could have just been the cold weather during our review), takes a while to get back up to speed, and includes a very noisy cooling system, you’ll find that there’s plenty of capacity to play with here. R9,000 for the 499WH (135,000mAh) Titan Elector isn’t actually a bad price. If you can find it on special — we’ve seen it as low as R7,300 in places — you should consider picking one up even harder. Yes, it’s a bit rough on the ears but only if you’ve never used a generator before. And you don’t need to watch TV during load shedding twice in one day, do you?