Bluetti Elite 200 V2

Introduction

The Bluetti Elite 200 V2 is a powerful battery power station, capable of storing just over two kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, and supplying a peak of 2,600 watts (2.6kW) of mains power. It’s targeted at medium to heavy duty use in the home, and for campers with a car or camper van. Confusingly, this isn’t a replacement for the Elite 200 V1 – there never was one. Bluetti says it’s an update for the AC200P, which it claims was the first portable power station to use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells.

Bluetti has tried to move the game on with this power station. It says it has filled the Elite 200 V2 with high-quality ‘automotive grade’ LFP cells, doubling its durability. Accordingly, its batteries should still have at least 80% of their stated capacity after 6000 full charge/discharge cycles – the norm is 3000, although some batteries have extended this to 4000 charges. In theory that means you could fully charge and discharge it once a day for 16 years, and it would still be able to store more than 1.6kWh of power. I can’t test that, but Bluetti backs this supply with a five-year warranty, which helps to protect your investment.

While some rivals include features such as built-in lights, this power supply focuses on ports that cover a wide range of devices. There’s a 10A car power socket and four USB ports, but unfortunately only room for two UK power sockets. That’s a little bit stingy for this class of power station.

Design and features

• Solid storage and maximum output figures
• Surprisingly compact…
• …but very heavy

Bluetti’s marketing shows the usual dynamic-looking people loading the Elite 200 V2 onto the tailgates of small trucks, but in truth this isn’t the device I’d want to go camping with. While the designers have worked miracles getting a 2kWh power station into such a compact space, they can’t do anything about the inherent weight of lithium ion batteries – this is a 24kg lump. That means it’s out of the question for walkers or cyclists, but it could be very well suited to camper vans, or if you do want power for a tailgate party.

The Bluetti Elite 200 V2 is also ideal for fairly heavy duty use in the home. It’s rated to store an unusually precise 2,073.6 watt-hours (2.07kWh) of power, which is enough to see modern dishwashers and washing machines through at least one entire cycle. It’s also capable of supplying a peak of up to 2.6kW, which is enough for almost any home device, save the most powerful kettles and electric heaters.

These specifications combined mean you could use it to run kitchen or laundry appliances in a power cut. In theory, it stores enough juice to run a fridge-freezer for more than a day, or to boil a full kettle around 13 times. That’s pretty good, but unlike some other power supplies in this class, you can’t expand this one with an extra battery.

Still, the Elite 200 V2 looks to have the durability for use as a home backup. Bluetti says that its batteries will still have at least 80% of their capacity after 6,000 full charge/discharge cycles. That’s twice the norm for LFH cells, and could mean that even a heavily used unit would still be working well after more than a decade’s use. Connect it in series with your fridge, or the devices in a big home office setup, and you’d be able to ride out even significant power cuts.

Bluetti says that the Bluetti Elite 200 V2 is about the size of other power supplies with 1kWh of storage. That’s slightly fanciful, as you can see in the comparison below where I’ve placed it alongside the 1kWh Anker SOLIX C1000 (right).

Still, placing it next to a similarly specified power supply helps to underline both how compact it is for this class, and that it’s missing certain features. It’s significantly smaller than the 2kWh Anker SOLIX F2000 seen on the left above, but that device offers more ports, a light, wheels and a carry handle – and is definitely a better choice for campers.

That said, I’d be happy with the Bluetti Elite 200 V2’s range of ports in the home. Its two mains sockets are arranged conventionally, so there’s no danger of tall adaptors blocking the neighbouring socket. Each USB A port is rated at 12W, while both USB-C sockets will provide up to 100W. As usual, there’s a 120W car-style socket, too. As with all Bluetti supplies, the capabilities of every port are clearly stencilled next to it. I wish all manufacturers did this: it’s such an obvious and simple way to prevent overloading.

You can access and control all of the Elite 200 V2’s features with button presses, but this is 2025, so there’s also Bluetti’s app. This power supply connects via Bluetooth – useful if you’re camping – or Wi-Fi, which lets you access it from anywhere you have data, provided the power supply itself is turned on.

Bluetti’s app echoes the same information displayed on the power station’s screen, showing how much power is coming and going via AC and DC connections, the batteries’ state of charge (SOC), and estimating when they’ll be full or empty depending on the balance. It also gives you an easier way to change between working modes. While the default is to act as a standard uninterruptible power supply (UPS), switching to battery supply if the mains input dies, you can also configure it to prioritise solar charging. A more advanced ‘Time Control’ mode lets you set the working battery SOC range, with the supply favouring mains or solar charging depending on the battery state.

Charging

• Charge from mains, car, or the sun
• Maximum 2400W charging power
• Full recharge in little over an hour

You can recharge the Bluetti Elite 200 V2 from the mains, from solar panels, or from a car’s 12V power port. The former works in one of three modes. Turbo sees the batteries charge at the maximum 2,300W, allowing the power station to fully recharge in a little over an hour. Silent limits charging to 800W, minimising heat and thus the need for fans – although they do still run very quietly. The default Standard mode charges at up to 1,200W, striking a compromise between recharge speed and sound levels, and helping maximise the battery life.

This power supply supports up to 1,000W from solar panels, which is pretty good. In ideal circumstances and with enough panels you’d get a full recharge within three hours, but even with partial cloud or fewer panels, the feature should help keep the unit topped up between spells of use. You can configure exactly how the Elite 200 V2 behaves when connected to both solar and AC power, but it will charge from both at once. In Turbo mode, it’ll take up to a maximum of 2,300W from the mains or 1,000W from solar, with the overall maximum input capped at 2,400W.

Car-charging is always nice to have, but cars’ cigarette lighter-style ports are usually limited to 120W – which isn’t much in relation to this supply’s storage capacity. You’d need to drive for more than 17 hours to get a full recharge, although again, a shorter drive would at least help keep it topped up.

Bluetti has recently launched a device to help with this problem. The Charger 1 alternator charger is designed to connect directly to the battery terminals on a car, and provide up to 560 watts of DC power to your battery power supply. It’s mostly aimed at those with recreational vehicles, but in this case it would allow you to recharge the Elite 200 V2 in about four hours of driving. Unfortunately, while it’s compatible with conventional cars and hybrids, I can’t test it with my EV.

I fully recharged the Bluetti Elite 200 V2 using all three AC recharging modes. Starting from empty, it took 2.44kWh to hit 100% in Silent mode, and 2.47kWh in Standard. With Turbo enabled, a full recharge completed in an impressive 69 minutes, although this consumed 2.49kWh.

Recharging is never 100% efficient, as energy is lost to the various electronics managing the process, and as heat in the batteries themselves. Even so, this power supply was a little disappointing. Assuming its batteries went from fully empty to completely full, it managed a best efficiency of 84.9% – the most efficient systems can go above 90% on these tests.

Performance

• Stable and quiet
• Very efficient AC output
• Useful heavy lifting mode

My experience with Bluetti power supplies is that they remain stable and quiet, even when nearing their maximum performance, and that’s certainly the case here. I connected a mains output from the Bluetti Elite 200 V2 to two other power banks, configured for a total input of 2.6kW – the Bluetti’s maximum output. It happily provided this for the best part of an hour before exhausting its batteries and shutting down.

While I could feel fairly warm air exiting the vent on the right-hand side, the cooling fans remained very quiet throughout, and the rest of the case stayed cool. I’m not sure how Bluetti manages to keep its fans so hushed even at a power station’s limits – I’ve tested many other power stations that are far louder and harsher even with moderate loads.

We test each power supply across a range of constant mains loads. The Bluetti Elite 200 V2 performed well on each, managing a minimum output of 1.88kWh when providing 200W. Assuming this took the batteries from completely full to completely empty, that’s an efficiency of 90.5%. It managed a best output efficiency of 96.7% when providing a constant 1000W, which is exceptionally good.

You get the most accurate idea of a supply’s efficiency by comparing the power you put in with what you were later able to take out. Using my best AC figures gave a round-trip efficiency of 82.1% – not bad, but a little short of the best I’ve measured. Using the USB-C port to power a constant 60W load, I measured a total output of 1.88kWh. Taken with the best AC charging efficiency, this gave a slightly disappointing round-trip efficiency of 76.8%.

I used this supply to power various other gadgets and loads around my house. It had no problem with the peaky power demands of my heat pump drier and dehumidifiers. It was also quite happy to power my washing machine through a full 40°C cottons load, finishing with about a third of its charge remaining.

The Elite 200 V2 includes Bluetti’s Power Lifting mode, which lets the supply power devices rated above its 2.6kW maximum. However, this is achieved by limiting the voltage and current from its mains output ports, so the power station doesn’t actually supply more power. As such, it’s only suitable for resistive loads, such as simple kettles or electric heaters with analogue controls. These should work, but they won’t get as hot as quickly as they would on regular mains power.

I tested this with my comparatively low powered kettle and toaster, which together draw only 2700W – barely a challenge for a supply of this calibre. It limited their combined power to 2600W by dropping the output voltage from 230V to 220V. Interestingly, it was also happy to run them both with Power Lifting disabled, too, underlining that this is quite a robust supply.

I used the Elite 200 V2 to provide backup power to my office setup, comprising two PCs, a router, NAS and some other low-power devices. It switched seamlessly to battery power when I disconnected and reconnected the mains a few times. This supply could also be suitable as a backup for low power medical devices, although you’d probably want to reconfigure or disable its AC eco mode, which otherwise might shut off the AC sockets after a long period of low-power usage.

I’ve been surprised by the rate at which battery power supplies are getting cheaper, and Bluetti’s recent devices have been particularly aggressively priced. Only a year or so ago it was typical for 1kWh of storage to cost £1,000, but the Elite 200 V2 has twice as much storage, for a recommended UK price of £1,399. It even launched discounted to £999, which is incredibly cheap for such a high quality, well-specified supply.

You can get an idea of a power supply’s long-term value by dividing its cost by the amount of power it might store in its lifetime. This power station’s 6,000-cycle rating means it could store a colossal 9.5 megawatt hours before its batteries dropped to 80% of their original capacity – after which point they should still continue working, of course. That works out at just 15p per kWh stored, or an incredible 11p per kWh if you buy it at the discounted price.

Should you buy it?