Thread: Pretty good DC-to-AC inverter for trips?

TL;DR What power inverter should I buy to charge a laptop and maybe a cell phone? I want quality, price is not too much of a concern. $60-$120 is the budget?



The tuning laptop is getting very long in the tooth and the battery doesn't last like it should. It is so old and technically not even mine, buying a battery for it makes no sense. I've looked into how to replace the cells inside the battery and it looks do-able but the batteries still give me about 40 minutes so I'm not ready to completely bork the battery pack if I mess up.

The economical thing to do now IMO is to get a power inverter for the car. They are also super useful for tons of things. Katie would really appreciate having it on a long trip too I bet so she can charge her Kindle Fire and such.

I come from an electronics refurbish background, and regularly noticed when working with these particular things that they seemed to struggle to put out HALF of their advertized output (peak versus continuous I guess). Asking 60% continuous of advertized peak would just ruin something. So I want something up to the task of charging a laptop, and possibly another small-draw device like a cell phone or similar.

I'm clueless when it comes to these things now though, and Amazon's ratings are pretty much all I have to go on. I'll be making a purchase within a day or two. What should I get? You guys know what I want. Something that is maybe overbuilt a bit, etc.
Maybe they are setup now so that you can draw a certain amount of power on the cigarette plug, and then you can get more if hooked up to power directly?

I use that from time to time. Powers a laptop.

You can also check into getting a generic cigarette lighter style laptop charger. Some even have a built in USB charging port.

C

I have a small one for my wife's PT cruiser. I also have a big inverter that hooks up everything we could need on a long trip so the kids won't make us crazy. Both of them from Fry's and have last for 5 years thus far. Both have USB ports for the cells, MP3 Players (That's right I said MP3 not AAC you MAC users ), etc..

The most we have had running one big one was 2 laptops, 1 Leap Frog Explorer, 1 DVD player, charging 2 cell phones.

I can't find the exact model but the small one and the big one are from this company and look much like this.



**Edit**

Company is hard to see, but it WAGAN.

I sometimes keep my battery charger with me in my car which includes the car charging plug-in.
Plus you can charge your car in case something happens to your battery.

Here's a much better one than what I have...

I'm going to find out how much power my laptop draws when charging so I can make a better educated decision. Thanks for the suggestions folks, and Cliff for the long AIM chat on the topic. I'll be in good shape soon.

Radio shack has a good in store selection

I will be doing the same thing once my car gets running. I have one (some where, just looked for it and cant find it.) that i will be using as well.

The silly thing here is that we are converting the DC from your car to AC, then our laptop power supply converts it back to DC. It would be nice to find a DC to DC converter that suits the particular laptop.

If you're just looking to power a laptop, you should be able to find either a model specific one, or a generic one. I got a generic at Radio Shack a while back.

C

Yah, I thought about the DC to AC back to DC thing, and Chris obviously pointed out the solution to that earlier. I think I want something more versatile. For just laptop use though it seems like the obvious choice.