If you’re someone who frequently spends time camping of caravaning, then you probably carry appliances such as a fridge-freezer, laptop or some other kind of electrical devices that require stable power. In order to feed these delicate electronic devices with clean power, you should consider investing in a quality, portable pure sine wave inverter. Sine wave inverters covert DC from your vehicle’s battery to AC, which is then used by the electrical appliances.
You can find a pure sine wave inverter that will fit the specific requirements of all your devices in camping gear online stores relatively easy. But with so many different inverter models available nowadays, picking the one with the right features might prove to be more difficult than you’d expect, especially if you are a first-time buyer who has no knowledge whatsoever in inverters.
That being said, when buying an inverter from a camping gear online store, you have to make sure the inverter is pure sine wave, and not modified sine wave. This is because most modern electronics are very delicate and require a stable current, which is only provided by pure sine wave inverters.
Moreover, consider the amount of watts that the appliances you’ll be plugging into the inverter require. The last thing you want is to purchase a 500W inverter and plug in a device that requires 1000W. For that reason, pick an inverter that can provide about 1.5 times the wattage you actually need. However, you don’t want to buy an inverter that has significantly more wattage than you need, as in this case its cost will be much higher as well.
When browsing for inverters, pay attention to the continuous load and peak load capacity. The peak load is the maximum amount of capacity the inverter can incur, while the continuous load is the consistent current flow of the inverter. So let’s say you need to power a motor that has a surge of 3.000 watts, but it only needs 1.500 to continue running. You’ll need an inverter that has peak load of at least 4.000 and continuous load of at least 2.000.
Lastly, consider the features. Pure sine wave inverters come with a wide range of features, some of which are pretty basic while others are more advanced. Typically, you get what you pay for, and every advanced feature will bump the price of the inverter considerably. The most commonly found features on inverters include USB ports, LCD display, power jump starter, solar charger, built-in compressor and overload and overheat protection.