Inverter or not

[Mountainbiker]

Is an inverter an important item and why would you need one. If so which is a good one?

 

[urban_biker]

Do you need 230V mains power while off grid? If yes, then its important. If no, then its not.

Pure sine wave is probably worth paying a bit extra for. Remember you will need a good 12V battery and some way of topping it up.

 

[Lenny HB]

If you have to ask the question you probably don't need one.
Ours is used mainly for charging the e-bikes.

Bear in mind if you have lead batteries you need approx 400ah of batteries to support every 1000 watts of inverter power.

 

[Guigsy]

I'm in the "no mains" crowd. Coffee comes from a Moka pot on the hob. I haven't succumbed to the need to get an air fryer. And it appears my 14" Intel i5 laptop needs tiny amounts of power, so it's fine on USB C via a 12v adapter.

6.6w while I'm typing away. Which means it'll charge (at a reduced pace) on the 30w the usb C adapter produces.

I'm doing fine without an inverter.

 

[The Wino]

We manage fine without one. As others have said if you decide you want mains powered appliances you need one but then also will need lots of other stuff to make it work properly. It's a balance between how important mains powered kit is to you vs the cost.

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[Guigsy]

We manage fine without one. As others have said if you decide you want mains powered appliances you need one but then also will need lots of other stuff to make it work properly. It's a balance between how important mains powered kit is to you vs the cost.

This. Mains power is convenient to have. But it requires substantial cost for a quality inverter, a battery pack with enough current and charge and the wiring to switch over. I deemed it not worth it just to be able to use coffee pods and dry my hair.

 

[The Wino]

This. Mains power is convenient to have. But it requires substantial cost for a quality inverter, a battery pack with enough current and charge and the wiring to switch over. I deemed it not worth it just to be able to use coffee pods and dry my hair.

Motorhomes are like any other hobby you can spend and spend if you like it's where do you stop! Some like the facility to use mains kit off grid and the cost is worth it to them there's nothing wrong with that for others it's just not worth it nothing wrong with that either. In our case the extra things we could use just wouldn't make much difference to how much we enjoy our trips the wifes new saxophone on the other hand..........

 

[Abgs]

I've got an 800 watt inverter which is only really used for occasional ebike and MacBook charging. Its very useful as I try to avoid campsites. Was running quite happily in my last van which only had 2 * 105 Ah AGM batteries. Just about to fit into the new un along with a 280A Lithium battery.

Won't run a hairdryer, microwave, air fryer etc but will cope with hair straighteners and the travel iron!

 

[funflair]

We would not be without one but as Lenny says “if you have to ask you most likely don’t need one”

 

[autorouter]

Is an inverter an important item and why would you need one. If so which is a good one?

An inverter converts 12V DC battery power to 230V AC mains power. If you have a device that you want to use, and it only runs on 230V mains power, then you could consider an inverter.

However most devices of 100W or less, like phone chargers, laptops and TVs run from a 'brick' charger/power supply, and you can almost always buy something that does the same job from a 12V cigarette-lighter socket. I run laptops with a 12V laptop charger, and have 12V USB adapters that charge phones etc.

I guess from your avatar name you might be looking for a way to charge an ebike battery, which probably has a mains charger. Quite a few on here have an inverter to do that.