ORICO Portable Power Station Review – 120 Watts

By Nathan Kirsch November 17, 2020

The holidays are quickly approaching and one of the many cool tech related products that managed to catch our eye this year was the ORICO Portable Power Station. This is essentially a large 14,500 mAh battery (156.6Wh) in a portable outdoor power generator! It promises to charge a 12-inch MacBook three times over or charge up an Apple iPhone X smartphone a total of 16 times before the power runs out.

It has the usual assortment of USB ports, but what makes it stand out from the crowd is the fact that it has a single 110V AC power outlet! As long as the device you plug in uses less than 120 Watts it should be able to run for a period of time. This is something we can see being useful camping outdoors, in emergency situations or for those that need to charge up devices while being out of the home or office.

The ORICO Portable Power Station is available in green for $104.99 (buy on Amazon) or in gray for $109.99 (buy on Amazon). In this review we’ll be looking at the gray model that is sold under part number PA120-1A4U. The green model is sold under part number PB120-1A4U.

Inside the box you’ll find the portable power station, wall power charger, cigarette lighter adapter, user guide and a thank you message.

The ORICO Portable Power Station measures 186.5 x 102 x 113.5 mm and weighs 3 pounds and 10 ounces (1.64kg). The main body housing is made from aluminum and the top and bottom are ABS plastic. A fake leather strap is attached to the top to act as a handle.

On the front of the unit is a 4x LED light that is rated at 4 Watts. It also serves as an SOS beacon by turning it on with the button on the back and then pressing and holding the button into the SOS beacon begins. The light works surprisingly well and this is a nice feature to have.

On the back of the ORICO Portable Power Station you have number of things going on.

AC power input (13-24V – Max 30 Watts)
LED Display that shows battery life in percentage from 0-100
Power Button / LED Light Switches
Orange USB Type-A Supporting Qualcomm QC2.0 & QC3.0 (18W Max)
Two White USB Type-A: Supporting 12W (5V/2.4A)
USB Type-C: PD 60W (5V/3A | 9V/3A | 12V/3A | 15V/3A | 20V/3A)
Two DC ports: 72W (12V/6A)
One AC Power Outlet: 120W Max & 150W Peak (110V-60Hz)
AC Off/On switch
AC Power indicator light (blue)

ORICO says that the unit does support pass-through charging, but using this unit in pass-through mode is something we’d not recommend as it can damage the battery. You can recharge the power station by plugging it into any AC outlet, using the car cigarette lighter cable or with a solar panel sold separately.

Most of this information is also shown on the bottom of the ORICO Portable Power Station, which is great as no one is going to remember all of that. The battery capacity is listed as being 10.8V/14500mAh thanks to 15x 2900mAh single cell lithium ion batteries being inside.

The image above shows off the inside of the unit and was provided by the ORICO PR team. ORICO claims that they have included multiple electrical safeguards including; over-temperature protection, over-current protection, over-voltage protection, short-circuit protection and over-load protection.

Here is a closer look at the Intertek 5011274 class 2 power supply that comes with the unit. This 30 Watt charger (15V x 2V) will recharge the ORICO Portable Power Station from zero to full in about 6-7 hours.

UPDATE – January 4th, 2020:

Legit Reviews has purchased some more equipment to better test batteries and wanted to share some updated results on this device.

The voltage from the fully charged unit on both of the USB Type-A ports was found to be 4.31V. The orange USB Type-A header that supports Qualcomm QC2.0 & QC3.0 (18W Max) topped out at 14.7 Watts on our tester (4.31V @ 3.41A). The white USB Type-A ports both reached 12.4 Watts (4.31V @ 2.87A). With the battery fully charges we setup a constant power draw of 14.0 Watts from the orange USB port and the ORICO Portable Power Station lasted roughly 7 hours and 15 minutes. This gave us a result of 101.34 Watthours from the internal batteries that are said to hold a battery capacity of 156.6Wh (10.8V/14500mAh). If you leave a 15 Watt device on for six hours you’ll end up using 90 Watthours, so you can use this test result to figure out how things will last off DC power.

It took 6 hours and 5 minutes to fully charge the ORICO Portable Power Station with the included 30 Watt charger.

Final Thoughts on the ORICO Portable Power Station

We’ve been using the ORICO Portable Power Station since we’ve gotten the unit and it seems to be very well built. It will give you many hours of use and will allow you to charge or run pretty much every small electrical device that you have in your home. It really does make the perfect addition to any home emergency supply kit as it is ideal for a power outage or any other emergency situation. We had a storm go through St. Louis, Missouri this week with 50+ MPH wind gusts and sure enough the power went out. You can simply plug your lamp into this power station and keep going about your routine. It also can help those that need a CPAP at night when the power goes out as you can plug the machine in and go back to sleep.

Camping with the ORICO Portable Power Station is also a breeze as you can keep all your smartphones charged while using the AC outlet to run a fan, laptop, light, HAM radio, telescope, UAV/drone, cooler or whatever electrical devices that you bring with you.

At the end of the day the ORICO Portable Power Station is easy to use and makes powering devices off the grid very convenient. You can find the ORICO Portable Power Station in green for $104.99 (buy on Amazon) or in gray for $109.99 (buy on Amazon). Both are backed by a 1-year warranty and should make like easier for you when you need a reliable alternative power source.