Jackery Explorer 250 Portable Power Station Review — An Affordable Loadshedding Solution?

In South Africa, it’s become a bit of a dogfight for who has the best and smartest load-shedding solution to provide some power in those darker moments. Yes, there are notably pricey UPS and backup options that cost the same as a small car, but not everyone has that type of budget. And while you can pick up a small power bank to keep your smartphone charged and a light on, there’s a gap in that intermediate zone, where you may not need an enterprise-level UPS, but a tiny powerbank isn’t going to cut it either. Enter the Jackery Explorer 250.

The Jackery Explorer 250 Portable Power Station (priced at R6,950) isn’t purely designed for load-shedding, but is a well-established device built by US company Jackery for outdoor excursions and emergency situations. Of course, this makes it a perfect product to solve some load-shedding woes too.

As per the name, the Explorer 250 is a 250Wh lithium battery cased in a pretty handy housing, featuring a handful of input options, such as two USB ports, an AC outlet (included is a South African 2-prong to 3-prong outlet adapter), and 12V car output. This essentially allows you to charge and power anything using USB, AC, or 12V power — of course, as is the case with all portable battery solutions, the caveat is to keep an eye on the connected devices’ watt requirements and manage accordingly.

While the Explorer 250 isn’t going to keep your entire house ticking over, it is a great filler for those electronic needs during outages or on the road. Thankfully, the Explorer 250 features an LCD display to give you a clear indication of the wattage that’s being provided, as well as the battery. If the wattage exceeds its 250Wh capacity, the device will auto shutoff as a safety feature.

While we have a small UPS in the office to keep our fibre and router on, it was a great opportunity to test the Jackery to keep a ULED TV and media box running, in order to enjoy a movie during a loadshedding session.

Admittedly (and somewhat hilariously), we tested the Explorer 250 with a 65-inch ULED TV and Xiaomi media box (with 12V power) running simultaneously. Of course, the TV did use up most of the wattage capacity, but it was enough to keep the TV and media box on for just over 2 hours, allowing a full movie viewing. Attempting to throw in an Xbox Series X proved to be a little too much for it, but it was asking a lot given the sizable TV and media box already taking up most of the capacity.

After the Jackery Explorer 250 was depleted, it was easy to simply charge it through normal AC power and the useful LCD display gives a clear indication of when it’s done charging, which is a nice touch, as some UPS batteries resort to simple red/green light indicators, not really letting you know how close it is to being fully charged or not.

When using the Explorer 250 for some lights, along with charging two smartphones and a laptop, it barely registered on the consumption, which is great to know that you can get your electronics up and running, even if the charging is a little slow.

While the Explorer 250 isn’t going to keep your heaters and higher-powered appliances running throughout long outages, it’s a perfect, compact, and well-designed portable device that can keep your comfort electronics — like a TV, internet, and smartphones — thriving for a few hours without any hiccup. At its price-point, it’s also a reasonable compromise when you don’t want to throw too much money at a UPS or another expensive option that’ll end up breaking the bank.

The Jackery Explorer 250 is priced at R6,950 and available from Cape Union Mart.