Wagan 150 Watt SmartAC Inverter

Price:

$29.99USD

Based on 2 reviews

Quantity:

Other Currencies / Languages: English (United States)English (Euro)English (British Pound)Español (United States)Español (Euro)Español (British Pound)Français (United States)Francais (Euro)Francais (British Pound)English (Canadia Dollars)Français (Canadian Dollars)

Shipping Estimator: Canada United Kingdom USA Afghanistan Albania Argentina Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Barbados Belgium Belize Bermuda Bolivia Botswana Brunei Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central Africa Chad Chile Colombia Congo Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Hungary India Iran Ireland Israel Italy Kazakhstan Kenya Korea Kuwait Lebanon Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Malta Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Montserrat Netherlands New Zealand Norway Pakistan Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Poland Portugal Reunion Russia Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia San Marino Senegal Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Suriname Sweden Switzerland Thailand Trinidad and Tobago Uruguay Vatican City State (Holy See) Venezuela

Volume Discounts

3+	6+	11+	16+	20+
$28.49	$26.99	$25.49	$23.99	$22.49

one of the most compaq inverters in the market
Reviewer: Globe Technology.com From Toronto, Canada
Date: Tuesday 17 May, 2005

Inverters are handy for those times when you need power to recharge or run standard electronic devices on the road. Unfortunately, most inverters are bulky boxes that are hard to stash out of the way in the front of your car.

If you want to cut the clutter, check out Wagan's 150 Watt SmartAC Inverter.

Advertisements
Click Heread1
Register

An inverter is basically a power adapter that lets you plug gadgets designed for standard AC wall-socket current into a DC car lighter socket. Inverters have a lighter-socket plug on one end, and on the other they have one or more standard electrical sockets like the ones in the walls of your home.

An inverter works with any standard electronic device - things such as cellphones, MP3 players and digital cameras, or even a palmtop or laptop computer. They will charge the device as if it were plugged into a wall socket, and if the device's power demands are low enough or the inverter is powerful enough, you can even run devices directly off the car's power supply just as if they were plugged into a wall socket. I use an inverter to run a notebook computer so that I can play DVDs for the kids on long car trips and keep them from going nuts in the back seat, for example (although sometimes I get driven nuts myself by hearing the same episodes of the Wiggles and Bob the Builder over and over and over again...).

Standard inverters usually start around the size of a hamburger (on a sesame seed bun with all the fixings) and go up from there, depending on their power and the number of sockets. Wagan has miniaturized its inverter so that it's about the size of half a hotdog (again, on bun). The one-piece unit plugs into the lighter socket and stays there out of your way - no worries about finding somewhere to mount the inverter on a trip.

Even though it's miniaturized, the 150 watt inverter (450 watts peak surge) will run full-size 110-volt gadgets, including laptops and GPS units. The company rates it as having enough juice to run a nine-inch TV/VCR combo, which is a pretty substantial power drain, but I didn't have one handy to try it out.

The tradeoff of the compact design is that there's only one plug-in, so you can't run or charge more than one device at a time. In contrast, bulkier inverters have at least two sockets and sometimes more.

But while it's compact, the Wagan inverter (available for about $65 Cdn. at Internet sites such as www.merconnet.com) has a full complement of safety features. For example, the auto-reset system protects circuits from overloading if there's an electrical problem or short-circuit. There's also a low-battery alarm to warn you if your car battery is getting too low to run the device being powered (if you're running the inverter with the engine turned off), as well as an automatic low-battery shutdown in case you don't happen to be in the vehicle to hear the alarm.

The inverter even has a built-in cooling fan (although it still tended to get very warm to the touch in my tests). The unit's operating temperature is 25 degrees Celcius, though, which may pose problems for people in cold climates with weak vehicle heaters.

There's not much more to say about the Wagan 150 Watt SmartAC Inverter - it's handy, works well, and is one of the most compact inverters on the market.

Displaying 1 to 1 (of 1 reviews) Result Pages:  1