Top positive review
21 people found this helpful
Updated; Does Exactly What I Wanted, (and now more than I expected).
By M&T Sechler on Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2018
So I ordered this generator for the specific purpose of powering up my 18 ft. camper batteries (2 deep cycle 6-volt golf cart batteries) during the day so that my lights, water pump and heater would work overnight, so that I could dry camp in the mountains. I took it out for the first time on our 10 day / 9 night family vacation recently. Five of the nine nights we camped without electric and water and the generator operated flawlessly. First, it was easy to get ready. I did have to add oil, but as I change oil in my cars and other smaller equipment regularly this was easy. The oil fill area is easy to get to and well marked. It was easy to learn how to start, and it is easy pull to start it. My 17 year old son easily learned to start and operate it as well. Second, it runs fairly quiet. My in-laws own a Honda and I don't make any claim that this runs as quiet as theirs (but the Hondas are also much more expensive), but it still ran really pretty quiet especially in economy mode, which I used most of the time. Four of the nights we camped in forest service campgrounds with other campers and I was trying to be considerate of them, and for the most part, I do not think they were bothered or even noticed much (I did make sure to run it most of the time during the day). I was running it about 20 ft from our campfire and was still able to have a comfortable conversation with my family. Third, it charged and ran most of my appliances. When it was running all of my camper appliances including our small Microwave worked. The one exception was is the AC unit, but as most of our camping is in the mountains we don't use that unit much, and did not need it at all on this trip. I think it would take 2 of these units hooked up to run our AC. It charged the batteries from about half full to completely charged in under an hour every day. Fourth, it was exceptionally fuel efficient. I filled it before we left on vacation, and I took an extra gallon of gas along. I did not need the extra gallon, because in about 5 hours of running on economy mode it used only 1/4 of the tank of gas! On the whole, I am very pleased with it. As long as I take care of it, I think it will probably last for years to come and make boondock camping much easier. If I run into maintenance problems or if it breaks down in the first few years of use, I will come back and revise this review, but for now it is just what we needed without having to pay the Honda price. Update March 2025: It does more than I expected. I'm not in a power outage lasting more than a day and a half and this little generator has run constantly for over 33 hours. It's been very helpful to have and worked very well. It's now 7 years old and I've used it a number of times when rough camping, and this is now my second power outage. I'd likely buy another Wen product and perhaps get a little bigger one next time. I feel like I've already gotten my money's worth out of this one, and it's still ticking!
Top critical review
95 people found this helpful
6 hours and 30 dollars wasted.
By G. Sharp on Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2015
I hope my experience will help you in making a better decision. In other words, never buy this product! My experience was as follows: 1) The unit arrived. I was happy. Unboxed it. Happy. I liked the color and style. A little heavy for my liking but I could deal. 2) Not so happy that oil did not come with it but understood the reason why not. Went to the store, purchased the correct oil. 3) Upon arriving home I consulted the manual on how to add oil for the first time. The manual clearly states put the generator on a level surface and fill the oil fill port with oil. This seemed alright. But to do this you need to REMOVE the side panel? Alright. I unscrewed the 3 screws and took the side panel off. No biggy, I guess I could deal but would make checking the oil before every run difficult. I am a patient individual. Then I noticed the fill port for the oil was basically 2 - 5 degree tilt from horizontal and the dip stick was tiny, basically the "max" fill level is at the point the oil would be dripping out all over the place. Not happy. Not having a funnel that would work for this, I had to go back to the store to buy a long neck funnel. 1 dollar, whatever. Back to home, made sure the gen was level, starting the fill process, but every time you take the funnel out to check the level the oil leaks out.... wow. An absolutely awful design flaw. 4) After filling it to half way to max, I decided any more would leak out anyways. So I cleaned up the mess, and went about putting the oil plug back in place. Well, that proves difficult as the threads were not exact. I am used to threading things in for work, but this was very frustrating. I didn't want to thread that plastic threads on the plug, so was very careful in trying to get it back in place. Eventually, after about 5 minutes or so of messing with it, I was able to find the perfect way of putting it back in place. Don't ask me to repeat that process though. Will probably take 5 minutes again. 5) The side panel doesn't go on very easily. The 3 little plastic slats that are suppose to hold the bottom of the panel are difficult to position correctly to slide back in. The "clips" at the bottom on the gen prevent you from getting the optimal angle to make this ergonomically feasible. 5) So, 3 design flaws so far, and I am ready to start the little guy. Well, that didn't turn out as planned. I followed the directions. It started after about 7 pulls. I turned the knob to the "on" position and after running for a minute.... "sputter".... "sputter"..... off. Hummmm. Alright, so I restarted it again.... nope. I pulled and pulled. No starting it. I let it sit over night and it started right up the next day. Great! I let it run for 10 minutes thinking that was the end of the frustrations. Nope. I turned it off, took it to my job site. I unloaded, let it sit for a few minutes. Tried to start it..... wouldn't start! Wow. Ok maybe it was flooded or whatever. I waited 20 minutes. Tried to start it.... nothing. 4th try attempting to start the bugger, THE HANDLE BROKE OFF on the pull cord! WHAT?! Only 30 pulls and it breaks right off? 6) I was done. Returned for a full refund. Had to pay for the boxing of this unit, no fault of the product or Amazon, but yet another expense attributed to bad engineering and testing. Another brand on my radar that wont have these incredible failures. And if I ever see this brand name again I will be sure to run very fast and very far away from it! Complete waste of your time, even for calm well mannered mechanically inclined individuals such as myself.
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