Ryobi is coming out with two new cordless battery-powered inverter generators, a 1500W model (RYi1802B5, shown above), and a 300W model (RYi300BG, more on that another time). Both are powered by their 40V Max Li-ion batteries.
Features include 1500W max output, (3) AC outlets, and an LCD display that shows remaining charge capacity among other things. It also features Bluetooth-connectivity.
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There are handles-galore, for easy portability.
Unfortunately, Home Depot pulled the product page (temporarily) after I started the post with some notes and before I could finish it, and so there are quite a few unanswered questions. How much does it weigh? What can you do via Bluetooth – maybe a charge capacity monitor? What does the power output look like – is it a modified sine wave? Is it weather resistant?
Price: $899 for the kit with batteries
Buy Now(via Home Depot)
Thank you Mark for the heads-up!
First Thoughts
The Dewalt Portable Power Station, reviewed here is a convenient kit, capable of powering full 15A corded tools.
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Ego recently came out with a small AC inverter for their 56V batteries.
The Anker PowerHouse is a small rechargeable power source for light load devices.
The Bosch mobile battery bank was never released in the USA.
When paired with two 40V 2.6Ah batteries, the Ryobi battery-powered inverter generator will have 208 watt-hours of output capacity. When paired with 5.0Ah batteries, it’ll have 400 watt-hours of output capacity. The Dewalt, with (4) of their largest 12.0Ah batteries, would have 960 watt-hours of capacity, and 400 watt-hours when paired with 5.0Ah batteries. The Bosch mobile battery bank power unit is rated to 1650 watt-hours.
Can it be used to power corded power tools? Yes. Three at a time? That depends on the tool. An oscillating multi-tool, sander, and work light? Probably. A table saw, grinder, and vacuum? No. It looks like the LCD display could provide users with a power output gauge, to help them avoid guessing, or at least it should; I can’t imagine Ryobi not including something like that.
Can it charge both batteries when plugged into an AC source with an extension cord? That’s a feature I would expect it to have. If not, that would greatly decrease its appeal in my eyes.
I spy USB charging ports, and what looks to be either a handy slot to stash your phone or an LED worklight (what else could it be?).
I think that Ryobi’s RYi1802B5 battery-powered generator could be an excellent recreational power source, and it might be useful to DIYers and maybe even for pro users. It should also come in handy in a blackout. But, how well-suited will it be for powering corded power tools?
Ryobi 40V Max cordless power tool line mainly includes lawn and garden tools – tools that are likely used by homeowners more than anyone else.
Ryobi’s new cordless battery-powered generator isn’t a game-changing innovation, and while it’s not powerful enough to serve as a jobsite battery generator solution, it’s not a wimpy 150W inverter either.
I find it appealing for what it is, and am eager for Ryobi to release more info as its launch date nears.
mattd
ryobi’s “40”v tools are actually 36v output so this could in theory “easily” be adapted for use with 2 of their 18v batteries on either side. I am honestly surprised they chose the 2x40v rout instead f the 4×18. unless there were design patent issues from dewalt/SBD. I am sure more people have their 18v lines than their 40’s. and with a 2pack of their 4AH batteries regularly on sale for $100 it would be cheaper to use the 18v batteries even if this was the only tool u wanted to use from them.
Name
I agree with you, they should have used (4) of their 20V batteries like DeWalt did with their power station. More people have the 20V batteries because those batteries are more interchangeable with more tools.
I have the 150W single 20V battery inverter, works well, i already pushed it to ~140W for about 50 minutes before the battery gave out. Going to test the 9ah battery next to see if i can get over an hour at 140W ..
Maybe if someone out there can make some adaptor that will take 2 or 4 of the 20V batteries in parallel to add the amperage, then get 150W for a few hrs …
TrueTexan
Confusing you refer to them as 20v. Your talking about the 18v One+ system, correct?
Name
yes i meant 18V … my bad 🙂
Dondiego
Yup I have 6 x 4Ah and 6 x 3Ah and I have no idea how many of the various other sizes but it’s a lot
Mark Poulton
I have a ton of 18v batteries and tools. I do not have any 40v. I have been waiting on a Ryobi version of a power inverter. I could justify buying 40v batteries for something like this, but I would rather justify buying more 9ah 18v batteries for a 4x18v inverter. I would at least get more use out of the batteries. I don’t see much use for a 40v battery in my current line up.
Todd Barzee
I was using my 40volt snowblower last night. not the best but awesome for battery!
Name
I agree, 4 of the 20V batteries in parallel for added amperage and runtime … 4 of those 9ah batteries wired into the 150W inverter … Now you can get several hours of 150W power … Now we are talking.. !!
Todd
I really wish companies would stop calling these things ‘generators’.
Its very confusing to the general public who genuinely is ignorant of the difference.
Two direct experiences: 1) someone bought a goal zero and was complaining it couldnt power a jobsite, 2) user had another battery/inverter in a box setup, used it indoors and someone was worried about carbon monoxide.
Nate Bezanson
Thank you Todd, I came here to say this.
Calling this a generator is just a plain old lie, let’s call it a lie. Please don’t repeat lies, guys.
Dav id Swearingen
Hey, look how many people call the engine in a car a “motor”. Or how many confuse a helix with a spiral.
Stuart
They call it a battery-powered inverter generator, and so I’m limited to that language until a better standard description comes along.
Mobile power bank? But that typically implies a small USB charger,
Todd
‘Rechargeable AC power bank’
©2019 Todd all rights reserved
Jim
Come on Milwaukee. Wake up!!
A 4 bay charger / ac power bank would be great
I have thought many times about buying a multi port charger and disassembling it and re-assembling it where I can run an inverter on a switch when not plugged in. This way I can plug into it.
Jason
No, it’s only confusing to the people who know the difference. Most consumers don’t, so in general, it’s not confusing.
John Fal
Yea, I would call it battery powered inverter.
Bucky
This seems cool, especially since I already have two 40v 5ah batteries from getting the lawn mower and snowblower. But $700 would be way too much for me to be able to justify getting it. Hopefully it’s actually cheaper when it is released, or the other smaller model is a lot cheaper.
Gotty
No comment but i want to buy a new Ryobi generator invertor where could i buy it in namibia
John
No good for me. My electric kettle is 2200 watts so it would mean no cups of tea at break time!
David C.
Makita makes a cordless coffee maker and the bare tool price is affordable.
https://www.amazon.com/Makita-DCM500Z-Lithium-Ion-Cordless-Coffee/dp/B010FZDG82/
John
I was being flippant…..maybe next time I will add an emoticon to the post.
And for coffee drinkers at work that Makita is ideal. Personally I only have one expresso coffee at 5.00am when we go down to the kitchen…..or sometimes later in the day if we are in town.
BeholdersEye
Why do you need 2200 watts to boil water????
John
It’s whats printed on the label on the bottom. I am not overly concerned about getting a cup of tea out at the orchard. We usually knock off at 11.30 till 3.00pm, so tea time is a long time! 🙂
Nathan
some of those UK Electric Kettles are made to boil up to 8 – 6oz cups of water – and do so in short time. I think under 5 minutes is the goal.
some are faster than that.
Course it helps to have 220V current at your disposal.
Arlan Crane
I have dozens of Milwaukee cordless tools. This Cordless coffee maker is enough to make me sell them all and jump to Makita. 🙂
Eric h9lmes
Without an already functioning ac power source this product would generate 0 power why not a dual or triple 40v portable power pack or portable battery power supplier ,the generator is the ac power supply
andy
I’m not so sure this would power 13A tools. Many AC tools have surge ratings of 3-4x.
Stuart
It *should* have higher peak allowance, as well as an on-board circuit breaker.
Details should clear things up once it’s officially launched.
DrewBHAM
From the Home Depot page the Generator will be $699.00 including 2 5AH 40 volt batteries. The dimensions are height 14.75 in, length 18.25 in, width 11.125 in, weight is 15 LB, 120v 15A. and 1300 running watts with 7 circuits/outlets . The features are automatic voltage regulation, built-in inverter, LCD display, overload protection, suggested uses are lights, mobile devices, small electronics. The listing said “ideal for powering your sensitive electronics”, so hopefully that means it has a sine wave. From what I could see in the picture on the Home Depot page it has multiple USB ports, 3 120v outlets, 2 USB C ports, a work light and a charging port to connect it to AC power to presumably charge the 40 volt batteries. The unit also has a place for parallel connection so that leads me to think you could connect two units up and double the output. I am thinking the “handy slot to stash your phone” may be the work light over the LCD panel.
Stuart
Hmm, I thought it could be an LED strip light, but a phone slot made more sense. I think there’s a high likelihood it’s one of those things.
David Zeller
I have 6 40V batteries. I hope they offer this for less as a tool.
Drewmcdan1
Stuart,
In searching Ryobi’s manuals page, I couldn’t find either of the 40v items, but I did find that Ryobi has developed an 18V power source that is probably coming soon. It is only for small electronics and not for tools and appliances. The manual has a posted date of 22 Jan 2019.
Here is the link to the manual: http://manuals.ryobitools.com/system/files/10877/original/RYi150BG_099930632_trilingual_02.pdf?2019
Bolt
That looks good
David C.
Nice find, I have been waiting for something like this.
PETE
150watts is pretty good for a tiny little stem top inverter. Dont think i need something that small but…. it would be another tool in the tool box should it be needed.
David C.
Might be able to run a LED tv for an hour or two on a 6ah battery (6ah*18volts = 108watt-hours) assuming the TV only uses 50 or so watts. Would be good for power outages and give you the ability to run non power hungry appliances.
TrueTexan
I ran a 24″ tv for an hour on it with a 4 ah battery during a power outage. It didn’t even take one bar off the battery gauge.
Frank D
Great find.
Something that should not break the bank and I’d love to buy.
I always grab/pack some of my Ridgid 18v batteries and the USB adapter plate, when I expect power outages. Same with some of Ryobi 18v and the area flood light I have. Would be a no brainer to add that 110v into the box … even though I’m not sure what I’d use it for based on the 150watts and how fast it would run down. But with 2.4A on USB, it could charge a tablet.
JR3 Home Performance
DIY will work out better for any serious needs. You can buy a 1000 watt hr lithium battery (5x this ryobi) with all the protection features built in for about $1k. Then just hook it up to an invertor and battery charger. I’m planning to do this on my box truck for an insulation business as a longer term investment in labor savings. I think I figured I’ll want 3 batteries to balance the life time cycles to upfront costs.
Todd
Your post made me remember a pro version battery/inverter I saw. Theyre really expensive (a few thousand as I remember). One of the big equipment rental chains carries these https://gridless.com/
Chuck
For $1100 you can get a Lithium Yeti 1000, which has everything else included. Either that is a great deal or you should be able to get those batteries cheaper.
https://www.goalzero.com/shop/power-stations/goal-zero-yeti-1000-lithium-portable-power-station/
Gordon
Costco recently had that on sale for $800. I think they were clearing them out and no longer selling the brand. You might be able to find one in store still, but not sure if the price will still be discounted.
Shawn
In terms of generating power, it seems to me that there are at least four options:
#1) There are the traditional contractor generators where a gas/LPG engine runs at a near constant RPM to generate AC power.
#2) There are the newer inverter generators that use the gas/LPG engine’s output to create DC power and then run that through an inverter to generate AC power. The inverter generators use a lot less fuel than #1 since they can run at any RPM and idle more easily. Most often #2 is smaller and shrouded to be much quieter than #1.
#3) The battery powered inverters (like this Ryobi) are most similar to the inverter generators. I agree that calling the battery powered inverters a “generator” is problematic since you are trying to generate electricity, but these require stored electrical power to operate.
#4) There are Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS) like the $200 CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD Pure Sinewave UPS (1500VA/900W) unit that kicks over immediately during a power failure. I could buy 3.5 of these for the price of the Ryobi unit.
I have one or more of #1, #2, #3, and #4. For power failures, I mostly rely upon #4 and then #2 if we lose power for a while. For running corded power tools, #1 is great. Battery powered inverters (#3, like this Ryobi) are the type of power generation that I use the LEAST often. They are most helpful when you want portable power indoors for low level power consumption, such as a cordless phone, your internet router, etc., but #3 will not run most things for very long. Maybe the 960VA DeWalt will hold its own for a bit, but you are done once your total battery supply (stored electro-chemical energy) is depleted. For #1 and #2, you just need more gasoline or LPG if you run out of fuel (stored chemical energy). I suppose if you are totally off-grid, than some type of renewable and large battery banks will be your main system.
Regarding the Ryobi, I can see the benefit of having an inverter that would work with my battery platform, but there is no way I would spend $700 on this. If I were to think about buying one of these at a $300 price point, I would want to know that it was pure sine wave, light weight, small in size, and could operate as a UPS when needed. I doubt the Ryobi will have any UPS abilities. If I could buy this as a “tool only” for my battery platform, I would do so at $100 to $150. If it could charge the batteries when AC power is available, and provide AC power when needed that would be a good benefit.
BeholdersEye
Scratch the whole generator bit, how about just producing a whole array of plug and play 40 v battery bank, where we can plug in a number of 40 volt power packs to be used? That way we can add solar charging and a external grid-tied limiter inverter! A limiter grid-tied inverter would not feed back to the grid, but is easily plugged into the house circuitry…
BeholdersEye
Then in black out events, we can easily plug in the 40 v 1500+ watt roybi battery back generator into the big battery bank….
Frank D
So, just an inverter …
Very expensive and unless you want to just power up / charge electronics and maybe some light appliances. Could be useful for a limited number of circumstances, but for DIY or work, I don’t see any value over traditional small to medium generators.
I also have no plans to buy another battery type, like most people I would think.
Make an emergency power bank that could take 2 or more 18v batteries … sell it at a fair ryobi expected price … and you will have a much bigger audience.
Nathan
I like the dewalt idea – i mostly like this idea.
Yes OK call it a battery powered inverter whatever. It is odd they chose the 40V platform for this but not surprising. Just like the dewalt model needs atleast one of the 4 batteries to be the flexvolt kind. (if I read it right).
I’m not in ryobi stuffs so I wouldn’t buy this. But if I was I’d consider it.
Tj
The Dewalt Power Bank is Cheaper? Find that strange. How many people are really in the Ryobi 40v platform. Did not even know they had 40v. Ryobi has always felt like the cheap tools for those guys that don’t really want to pay for a pro tool. The kind of tool that just barely gets the job done and more reliable then the China Tool Store. It’s a great idea. But Roybi has failed to bring it to the guys that would use it in their 18v line.
At $700?? It’s priced way to high! Does not seem to fit the Royobi price model. I would rather buy a Dewalt Power Station with Batteies.
Bucky
Not sure why it’s shown with this new 40v chainsaw, which seems cool on its own. But if you look at the pictures one shows a single 40v battery bank converter,or whatever we decided to call them.
https://www.ryobitools.com/outdoor/products/details/40v-14-in-chain-saw
m. day
Needs to have 12 v re-charge adapter for in vehicle charging. To be able to install a VSR in our vehicles and attach cables to this inverter would be ideal.
Eddie Luo
The manual for RYI300BG just came out few days ago.
https://www.ryobitools.com/outdoor/support/manuals/details/ryi300bg
Gary
Would be nice to have solar panel connectivity. Kind of like GoalZero Yeti. Guess if you were doing for camping it would come out cheaper building your own using 18650 batteries rather than buying Ryobi batteries.
Nicholas Nasti
If only it came with adapter cable(s) or aligator clips so you can use it with any battery(s) of any capacity.
That would make it such a great buy.
Harry
When is the 300w inverter coming out? That will be a huge seller. The current 150w inverter is nice. But 300w and being pure sine wave is much better.
TrueTexan
It’s out now at HD.
Name
Great idea, HOWEVER, using 40V batteries is where they killed it. DeWalt was able to use (4) 20V batteries to produce 1800 CONTINUOUS watts … Using the 20V line is more universal and can be also used on a majority of their other tools … Where as the 40V line, WELL, they are not really interchangeable with most tools ..
I pitched this idea to Ryobi years ago, and while they finally delivered, they messed up by using the WRONG battery … Kinda like building a house BUT building it WRONG .. I won’t be buying this product because i ONLY use the 20V batteries, i have NO use for the 40V batteries. DeWalt the same thing, i ONLY have and use their 20V lineup because ALL my tools run on 20V along with the power station … So those batteries are interchangeable …
TrueTexan
Yeah, I feel they should make another version that can take 4-6 18v batteries. I do have some 40v batteries from years ago for lawn equipment, but I have 5x as many 18v ones from tools
James Duncan
They’re are adapters out that convert 2 18v to a 40v power they look kind of clunky but functional. Check those out
Lahmy88
Only problem is you wouldn’t be able to use it if this inverter switched to charging mode (at least I don’t think it would charge properly).
David Zeller
I wonder if this is ever going to be released. The 300W version has been out for a while now.
bd
EGO is going to Lowe’s and leaving Home Depot. Expect the RYOBI to launch sometime in 2021.
tom
Looks like it might be released soon as the product is now on Ryobi’s site. It’s also now an 1800w unit with 1500w continuous, not sure what the exact specs were before.
https://www.ryobitools.com/help-plus/details/40v-1800-watt-power-station