Mango Power E power station review: King of the RV park

Outclassed at home

Whether it's just for camping or in case of an emergency, having a power station handy can save you a lot of hassle if you don't have access to a wall outlet. Plenty of fantastic power stations can handle most people's daily needs, but there are fewer options for anyone with more demanding use cases. With just over 3.5KWh of LiFePO4 cells made by CATL for EVs, 3000W of AC power, and 16 total outputs, including a 30A RV port, the Mango Power E is 100 lbs of overkill packed into a body that's hardly bigger than a carry-on bag.

While most power station manufacturers entered the market with ultra-portable units and gradually worked towards larger options over time, Mango Power is coming from the opposite direction. Unlike Jackery's line of power banks from the early 2010s or Ecoflow's handheld River power station in 2017, Mango Power started in whole-home backups and has worked its way down to portable, albeit hefty, power stations.

Between the eight high-powered USB ports, four 20A outlets, and even a 30A RV outlet, there's not a lot the Mango Power E can't handle. With 3.5kWh in LFP cells from the same company that produces Ford's EV batteries, it's only fitting that it's so geared towards life on the road.

With a staggering $3,700 price tag, the Mango Power E is one of the most expensive power stations on the market, short of a whole-home backup solution. If that's what you’re after, and you’re willing to spend an extra ten or so thousand dollars, Mango Power sells bundles with two E units, a pair of expansion batteries, and one of two panels to join them into a single 14kWh system capable of a beastly 240v of split-phase AC power at up to 6Kw of output.

While it's available on Amazon in North America, switching between 60 and 50Hz AC makes it compatible with Japanese electronics. However, Japanese customers will have to buy directly from the Mango Power website.

As impressive as it is to cram 100 pounds of battery cells and assorted hardware into this small footprint, it needs more than its pair of handles to qualify as a portable power station. To fit that label, the Mango Power E has a collapsible luggage handle and a couple of reasonably rugged wheels, so while it's well into team-lift territory for loading and unloading, it's still reasonable for a single person to zip around with the Power E.

The business end of the Mango Power E is a grid of ports, outlets, and a display. While you’re dependent upon that touchscreen to enable the AC and DC power and manually set the AC recharge amperage, it's very large and responsive. To the right of the display is the power button, which needs to be held down for a full second to turn it on, and about five to turn it off again. Rounding out the top row cements the Power E as a serious piece of hardware: the 30A RV outlet.

The rest of the ports are more pedestrian, with a 65 and 100W Type-C port, two DC barrel jacks, and a 12V car outlet directly below the display. Below are a respectable six Quick Charge 3.0 Type-A ports, each rated for 27W. To the right of those are the four three-prong 20A AC outlets.

All of the charging ports are behind a panel on one of the skinnier sides of the Power E. While these plugs enable DC solar, AC wall power, and even EV charging, the fourth port here is for doubling the capacity of Power E from 3.5KWh to 7KWh with an add-on battery.

The major annoyance here is that Mango Power went with the two and three-pin ports pictured here rather than using a more common plug type for the AC and solar charging cables. While it ensures you won't accidentally start a fire with an underspec’d cable, the use of proprietary power cables doesn't exactly sit right with me.

All the output power and capacity in the world is no good unless it's convenient to recharge, and the Mango Power E is no slouch here, either. While the AC charging tops out at a staggering 3 kW, that requires the purchase of an optional 30A RV power cable. If you’d rather not splurge an extra Benjamin, you’ll be limited to a much more reasonable 10- to 15-amp draw with the included AC cable. There's no smart switching here, though it's easy enough to limit the charging rate to what your outlet can provide on the touch screen to avoid tripped breakers.

Plugged into a 30A RV outlet, the Power E goes from empty to 80% in about an hour and is fully charged within another half hour. Because it supports multi-charge, as long as you have enough solar panels to bridge the gap, you can still get that top-charge speed with the standard cable and run-of-the-mill 15A wall power.

Without that extra juice, the 15A that most North American circuits are limited to will still manage 1500-1800W of constant AC power, which gets the Power E from empty to full somewhere around three hours. On its own, the solar port tops out at 2000W and uses the more home and RV-centric MC4 connection. This makes it most convenient to use with most permanently installed panels, but still easy to adapt to Anderson, XT-60, or DC barrel connectors, which are all common on foldable solar panels.

While all the ports above have had varying levels of mystery, thanks to the utter disregard for NEMA connector standards, the EV charging port might be the oddest. Mango Power only lists two pieces of information for it – that you need an adapter to use it and that it maxes out at 2000W.

Nothing along the lines of what adapter you’ll need or what this connector is called. Turns out it's not an EV port, but an e-bike charging port that… isn't on any bikes yet? I wouldn't hold my breath for an adapter hitting the market for a while, if ever, so it feels like a bit of a waste unless Mango Power intends to make the adapter itself.

The touchscreen on the Mango Power E is very responsive. It has minimal menu usage, with important things like enabling the AC and DC power front and center for maximum convenience. All the settings that depend on a menu, like setting the charging amperage, have no sub-menu to navigate. All the options are laid out in an easy-to-parse way with large touch targets you’re unlikely to miss. Unlike power stations with physical buttons, depending on a touchscreen makes the Power E feel less rugged by comparison. The physical power button is confidence-inspiring, at least.

There's an app to remotely control the Mango Power E, which also has options not found on the unit itself, like prioritizing solar over AC charging when both are connected. The review unit I was seeded doesn't have the same wireless hardware as production units, though, so I wasn't able to try that out firsthand.

While I found a few people online that confirmed it's working, I can't exactly vouch for it myself, so it's good that the important settings work well on the Power E, even if it lacks physical buttons.

To be frank, running down a massive battery is very difficult. Even the fattest phone batteries can be refilled hundreds of times. I shot 45 minutes of video with my camera, and a 60W LED studio light tethered to the Power E and only managed to drain a paltry 2% of the capacity. Even cooking with an electric stove, one of the fastest ways to drain a power station, is a cinch.

Most campsite meals I made only managed to use about 3-5% of the charge, giving it about a week of use between charges. That feels like a waste, though, when you could be using the RV outlet to run your camper's AC and refrigeration between RV park stops.

Most of the competition drops away once you start looking for power stations close to the $4,000 price bracket. While some big players like Bluetti and Ecoflow have had options for anyone looking to spend big bucks on batteries, even Jackery has only just dipped its toe into this part of the market, and it's usually the company to beat when it comes to power stations. Once you move away from just a battery and start including kits with solar panels, a lot of that missing competition comes right back.

Depending on whether your priority is fast solar charging or high capacity and output, Jackery has no shortage of options. While the Mango Power E will set you back $3,700, an extra $300 can get you an Explorer 1000 Pro maxed out with 800W worth of solar panels or the new Explorer 3000 Pro with 400W of panels.

However, the closest analog to the Mango Power E is the Ecoflow Delta Pro. The Delta Pro comes in at the same $3,700 price point, has an almost identical capacity, and supports a staggering 6500W multicharge rate compared to the Power E's 3000W max. The Delta Pro has an actual EV charging port, unlike the Power E, but the Mango Power E is rated for more recharge/discharge cycles and is one of the only power stations on the market to have an IP rating, even though it's only rated for a light drizzle.

If you’re in the market for one of the beefiest power stations money can buy, it's hard to justify the Mango Power E over the Ecoflow Delta Pro, but there are some things it does better. For starters, the LFP cells in the Power E are rated for a much longer life. While the Power E is rated to keep 70% of its capacity after 6000 charge cycles, the Delta Pro is only rated to keep 50% of its capacity after about as many cycles.

They’re rated for 3000W of AC charge speed, though the Delta Pro needs a 240V utility outlet to reach that, while the Mango Power E needs a 120V 30A RV outlet. The Power E also has a higher solar charge rate and natively connects to the panels most commonly installed on vehicles. Many of these small advantages make the Mango Power E edge out the competition as the right choice if you live on the road or at least spend your vacations around RV parks.

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The Mango Power E trades blows with some of the most expensive power stations money can buy. If you don't own an RV, though, you likely won't be able to fully appreciate it.

Connor is a writer living in Dallas, Texas, where he can usually be found taking photos, working out, or camping. He writes reviews, features, and guides for Android devices, power stations, earbuds, and audiophile devices like DACs and DAPs. Connor's first Android was a Samsung Intercept all the way back in 2010, and his favorite phone of all time is the Pixel 2 XL, which he insists on keeping up to date with third-party ROMs like LineageOS. At 6'5", Connor is quite literally a massive nerd, and he's so obsessed with coffee that he brought his espresso machine camping with him as part of a power station review. Connor often values cool factor over practicality, which is probably why he built an all-in-one VR gaming PC into a 2003 eMac case.