Samlex 600W Pure Sine Wave Inverter - 24V

I have gone through nearly a half dozen no-name off brand pure sine wave inverters bought off Amazon over the years. Most of them were rated in the 1200-2000 watt range, and typically cost $300-$400. They all more or less worked okay at first glance, but I recently had some equipment get fried by one and then another gave me a small shock from some sort of fault. It scared me enough to do more reading, and I started discovering just how dangerous these things can be. If you plug a simple outlet tester into any of these off-brands, or test them with a voltmeter, EVERY SINGLE NO-NAME ONE I OWN HAD A FAULT OF SOME SORT. And these were all purchased off Amazon with 4+ star reviews in the last few years. This blew my mind. When I tested them, EVERY SINGLE ONE had open grounds, one had reversed hot/neutrals, and all seemed to split the voltage to some degree across the hot and neutral wires (not normal). The more I investigated, the more worrisome it all got. Buy a $10 outlet tester or use a voltmeter and check yours out yourself. They are wired up incorrectly in one way or another and will fail the tests. Somehow they still seem to work, but it just shows that something under the hood is not done correctly. Enter the Samlex. It is one of the few inverters I could find that was UL listed, so I gave it a try. It is double the price, but it passes every safety test. It checks out on the outlet testers, and supplies AC voltage identical to a household outlet. It is grounded, GFCI protected, the live wide is hot at 120V and the neutral and ground wires read zero volts, as they should. AC is not something to cut corners on inferior gear. This is made to higher quality standards and is done right. The 600W Samlex version is actually beefier that most of the 1200-1500 watt inverters I've had before. And the GFCI trips correctly with a GFCI tester, providing another level of safety that could save your butt. I feel fortunate something worse never happened with the prior crappy inverters I have used. Do yourself a favor, spend the extra money from the start and get a true professional and safe inverter. Its peace of mind and money well spent. I haven’t had mine running long yet, but based on the apparent quality and higher standards it seems to be built to, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it dramatically out-lived the cheaper trash versions anyways. All my other inverters are now coming out of service, and all future inverters will be Samlex.

This inverter has been operating continuously for almost 2.5 years at an off-grid property. Not a single issue to report.

I am a solar energy hobbiest building a 1000 Watt array with ten 100 Watt panels, a combiner junction box, a charge controller, and this inverter. I have installed one dedicated, hard wired solar outlet in my home for the TV and associated electronics. I keep four 6 volt Trojan T105 golf cart batteries charged with this system in Florida. I hooked this inverter directly to the batteries using #4 pure copper wires purchased at a marine store. The West Marine store had a crimping tool so I could make use of the two lugs that came with the inverter. Very happy with the inverter's performance, very low idle current draw and the separately purchased on/off remote control are definite plusses since the inverter is located in a basement area. The inverter is significantly smaller in size compared to the 2500 Watt sine wave inverter that it replaced and appears to be much less wasteful with energy conversion. I rarely draw more than 200 watts from this 600 Watt sine wave inverter but it is nice to know the extra watts are there if needed, also the 300 Watt version did not have the remote control option.

The screw that holds the cable in stripped so I had to find a way to make the cable stay using gravity but it eventually failed so I threw it in the garbage...it was a somewhat expensive lesson not to trust the reviews. I had a similar experience with Schneider Electronics Xantrex, another expensive failure. My opinion is that it's now better to buy the cheaper units because you will be replacing them just as frequently just without the high price tag, of course most of those units are not pure sine wave but at least they work.