What Can A Goal Zero Yeti 400 Power?
The Goal Zero Yeti 400 is a wonderful little power station. Perfect for not only campers and vandwellers, but also great as an emergency battery to keep at home in case you lose power.
Before we get started about what a Yeti 400 can power and not, we need to understand that there are two Yeti 400’s. There is the No products found., and the Yeti 400 Lithium.
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To answer the title of the post, both the Yeti 400 and the Yeti 400 Lithium can power a TV, as long as that TV doesn’t use more than 300 watts. That is the most the inverter in the Yeti 400’s can handle continously.
Now, which one is the best out of the two? The Yeti 400 Lithium, no doubt. It’s lighter, has a higher watt-hour capacity, uses a lithium battery, and it has an extra USB port.
How Long Can The Yeti 400 Lithium Power A TV?
The Yeti 400 Lithium has a 428 watt hour battery. If we, for example, look at a TV like the popular TCL 32S327 32-Inch 1080p, it uses 45 watts at most.
Now, we need to remember that the Yeti 400 Lithium uses an inverter to turn the 12V battery power into 120V AC power, so we should predict some power loss. An 85% inverter efficiency is common.
So let’s do the math: 428*0.85=363.8/45=8.08 hours
What this tells us is that you could expect a 45 watt TV to run for about 8 hours.
You could invest in a 12V TV like the Jensen JTV19DC, wire it to a cigarette lighter power adapter and plug it into the 12V output port on the Yeti as well.
This way the 85% inverter efficiency wouldn’t apply, although it still wouldn’t be 100% efficient.
The Jensen TV uses less than 2 amps, so since the Yeti 400 Lithium has a 39.6 amp hour battery, you could watch TV for almost 20 hours before running low.
Pair it with a compatible solar panel like the Rockpals 100W (click to view on Amazon), and you could watch TV all day without losing any battery on a sunny day.
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Can the Yeti 400 power a gaming console?
The Yeti 400 and Yeti 400 Lithium has a built-in inverter that can handle up to 300 watts continuously.
If you take a look at the most popular gaming consoles available today, the PS4 uses about 137W while gaming, Xbox one 112W, and the Wii U about 34W. So the Yeti will definitely be able to power a gaming console.
But if your TV uses about 60 watts and you’re playing the PS4, you’d only be able to game for almost two hours.
If you have questions that haven’t been answered in this post, please leave a comment down below and I will do my best to help you.
Can you increase the watts (sorry if im using the incorrect term) with a yeti 400?
I find most of the electronics and stuff i want to use in my home when the power is out won’t work with the yeti 400 lead acid battery.
Particularly I’d to run my rock tumblers. It won’t even power my coffee maker.
Goal Zero never responded to me and from what I’ve gathered all chaining more batteries together just increases battery life. It won’t help me run anything else.
Thanks in advance
Jake USAF veteran
Hey Jacob,
Nope, unfortunately you can’t increase the inverter wattage with these models.
Coffee makers usually require around 700-1500W depending on model, so you would need a much more powerful power station for that.
Something like the Ecoflow River 600 could be enough depending on your coffee maker, but it has less battery capacity than the Yeti 400 unless you get the extra battery.
Jesse