Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus v2 Red Cross Edition Review: Portable Power With a Purpose

Jackery was one of the earliest portable power station producers to bring these beautiful creations into the mainstream. They have a line of portable power stations and proprietary portable, foldable solar panels that continues to make them one of the top go-to options for anyone looking for power on the go.

Recently, they launched a Red Cross Edition of their popular HomePower 2000 Plus v2 that donates a portion of the profits to the Red Cross to support first responders. We covered these limited edition units when they first hit our radar during our visit to Jackery’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, and now they are finally moving into production.

Jackery donates 10% of profits from this series to donate portable power stations to rescue organizations and emergency response teams, supporting disaster relief and recovery efforts. At the volumes Jackery is producing, that’s a meaningful step in the right direction to putting portable power stations into the hands of the first responders who need them most.

Disclaimer: Jackery provided the Red Cross edition of the 2000 Pro V2 portable power station to the author for the purposes of this review.

Charging Up the Battery

Charging up the unit is a simple matter thanks to its ability to pull a charge from multiple sources. Right out of the gate, you can charge from a normal 120V AC wall outlet at around 1,600 watts. This is typically the maximum you can safely charge from any wall outlet without overheating cables or outlets, and the Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus V2 makes full use of it. In our testing, we pulled 1,590W from the wall for a full charge from empty in an hour and a half.

You can also charge up the unit with solar panels, which with 800 watts of solar can recharge the battery from fully drained to overflowing in 3.2 hours. Jackery uses a proprietary solar connector, so keep that in mind before you buy your battery and/or panels.

You can also charge it up via your car’s 12V automotive outlet (requires optional car charging adapter for $29.90), which can push power out at about 100 watts. This varies slightly from car to car, but the fact of the matter is that you’re generally limited based on the factory wiring for what that outlet can handle.

Jackery knew about that, so they developed their own DC-to-DC charger for combustion vehicles. This optional accessory costs $239, but taps into the full power of your alternator and can pull up to 600 watts. This is a faster charge and can top up the battery in about 4 hours, but requires a bit of extra planning and work and assumes you’re running a combustion vehicle. It’s worth consulting with a professional if you’re going to go this route, as alternator wiring and max output varies greatly from car to car.

Electric vehicles typically don’t have a 12V outlet, opting for USB-C instead. Unfortunately, the Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus V2 Red Cross Edition is not able to charge up via USB-C at any power level. Fortunately, many electric cars come with integrated AC outlets, which can be used to charge the battery up in a pinch.

I tested this in my Cybertruck and achieved similar charging rates to what I was able to achieve at home, which tops the battery up in about an hour and a half. This is a great option to use while fast charging on a road trip because you can charge for about 30 minutes at a time to keep your portable power station charged up without having to run the inverter while driving, which drains the battery faster.

Using the Battery

When it’s time to tap into all that stored power, the Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus v2 Red Cross Edition is ready. It can push out 2,400 watts of continuous power with surge capability of up to 4,800W. Given that this is a compact 2 kWh unit weighing just 21 lb, that’s a pretty solid level of power output that it can handle. Power output has continuously been improving with each successive generation and Jackery continues to be near the top of the pack with its numbers.

It’s obviously up to the task of powering lightweight items like drones, laptops, portable lights, charging radios, keeping the internet on, and even powering your fridge in an emergency. On the home front, it’s also a great option. Thanks to its LFP chemistry, Jackery expects you to get 6,000 charging cycles out of this battery, which equates to more than 16 years of daily cycling.

Even though it is such a compact unit, it should be able to keep essentials running at home — including your refrigerator, freezer, computer, lights, smartphone, Wi-Fi, etc. — for nearly 10 hours. That should get you through most outages, and, honestly, if you’re having longer outages than that, you probably want to look into a home battery system. Or you can tap into the HomePower 2000 Plus v2 Red Cross Edition’s ace up its sleeve….

The Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus V2 Red Cross edition can actually add more capacity. It has a special port on the left side of the unit that lets you plug in any of Jackery’s Battery Plus expansion batteries for up to 12kWh of total capacity. That’s a 6× increase over this unit’s installed capacity and lets you scale your storage capacity as you find new use cases for it.

The use case for this at home is really keeping the lights and and the refrigerator running during an emergency and using solar or a generator to charge up when it runs low. It can absorb up to 800 watts of solar from an attached array, meaning you can fully charge it in about an hour and a half depending on the sunlight you’re getting. Even in terrible conditions, it’s still going to charge up in just a couple of hours.

We put this beast to use running a portable refrigerator, lights, USB, charging our laptop and phones, and even charging a few portable batteries for us to take with us hiking. This unit kept our devices charged up for several days of fun in the desert. It was great knowing that after we were done charging our devices, the battery would top itself up again from the attached solar panels.

No matter how many devices we plugged in, including our usual kitchen torture test, its 2,400W of power output was more than enough to keep everything running. The surge power is pretty cool too because it allows the unit to absorb the spikes in consumption that come from a lot of devices when you first turn them on.

But we wanted more. So we pulled out some new winter heaters and really made the Jackery sweat. Each of these heating units can pull up to 1,500 watts each, which is about the max you can get from a standard 15A outlet. We plugged both into the Jackery and cranked them up to the max. I’m personally thrilled to have more energy-hungry appliances to torture — I mean test — portable power stations with.

Playing with all of their settings, we had them pulling almost 3,100 watts constantly before the Jackery finally decided to throw in the towel. It kept them running for several minutes over its own 2,400 watt constant power output rating, which was impressive, especially considering how compact this thing is.

Overall

It’s exciting to see Jackery continuing to push into new battery technologies, but in this case, this is the same battery they sell as a normal unit, just rebranded to highlight the great work being done at the Red Cross and to give some of the profits back in the form of product.

That’s worth celebrating, and it’s exciting to see Jackery leading the charge to enable first responders with technology without charging governments or consumers more money for the same product.

Or maybe you just like a bright red unit that’ll make it hard to lose or forget. Whether you’re heading out on a camping trip or heading back to the house after a long week out in nature, the bright red colorway of this unit is sure to stand out.

For more information about the Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus Red Cross Edition or to purchase one for yourself, head over to Jackery’s official website.

Specs

• Battery Capacity: 2 kWh / 2,048 Wh (40Ah/51.2V DC)
• Cell Chemistry: LiFePO₄
• Cycle life: 6000 cycles to 70%+ capacity
• Weight: 41.45 Ibs/18.8 kg
• Dimensions: 14.4 × 10.0 × 10.7 in / 36.6 × 25.5 × 27.2 cm
• Charge Temperature: 14°F to 113°F / -10°C to 45°C
• Discharge Temperature: 14°F to 113°F / -10°C to 45°C
• Warranty: 3 + 2 Years
• Output Ports
  • 4 × AC Output: 120V~ 60Hz, 20A Max, 2,400W Rated per port
  • AC Total Output: 2,400W Total, 4,800W Surge Peak
  • DC Output: DC 12V Port: 12V⎓10A Max
  • USB-C 30W Output: 30W Max, 5V⎓3A, 9V⎓3A, 12V⎓2.5A, 15V⎓2A, 20V⎓1.5A
  • USB-C 140W Output: 140W Max, 5V⎓3A, 9V⎓3A, 12V⎓3A, 15V⎓3A, 20V⎓5A, 28V⎓5A
  • USB-A Output: 18W Max, 5-6V⎓3A, 6-9V⎓2A, 9-12V⎓1.5A
  • DC Expansion Port: 36.8V-57.6V⎓55A Max
• Input Ports
  • Charge Mode AC Input: 100V-120V~ 60Hz, 15A Max
  • Bypass Mode AC Input/Output: 100V-120V~ 60Hz, 15A Max
  • DC Input: 16V-60V⎓12A Max, Double to 21A / 800W Max, 11V-16V⎓8A Max, Double to 8A Max