Use and Performance

Indoor Use

The quickest way to charge the Jackery Explorer 1000 is to utilize the included power supply. It results in around 145–150 watts of input, so the whole unit can be fully charged in about 7 to 7.5 hours. There is also a blue indicator light on the power supply, and thanks to the lack of fans, it is silent while charging.


Turning on the flashlight in the late afternoon, you can see a nice bright spot on the wall. While the Jackery Explorer 1000 may be a bit unwieldy as a portable light to take to the washroom during a camp, it does allow you to trigger an SOS setting by holding its power button down for 2–3 seconds. This could be very useful in case of an emergency. As the Jackery Explorer 1000 can provide up to 1000 watts of continuous power, you can easily power both a notebook and full desktop system at the same time. Even gaming is no issue, but the internal fan of the Jackery Explorer 1000 will turn on as soon as you draw a lot of power. That said, if you have a blackout, the Jackery Explorer 1000 could mean the difference between saving your food or having it spoil in the fridge, finishing that movie, or getting your work done. Here on Vancouver Island, we are encouraged to have an emergency kit in case the big earthquake hits, and the Jackery Explorer 1000 could be a useful part of that package.

Outdoor Use

I took the opportunity to take the Jackery Solar Generator 1000 out into nature with a friend of mine and his lovely dog Jasper. Relaxing out in nature while being able to work with what is an abundance of power for a notebook, cooler, and the phone was a surreal experience.


Next, we drove down the southern coast of Vancouver Island, and while it was windy out, the sun did break through the cloud cover from time to time. Even with a gentle glow of sun, the Jackery Explorer 1000 was being charged with around 60–70 watts, while complete cloud cover reduced the input to around 25–30 watts. You should easily be able to push the limits of the two solar panels on a sunny summer day.


With the Jackery SolarSaga 100 offering the unique aspect of built-in USB-A and USB-C ports, I took the opportunity to charge my phone while my friend took Jasper for a walk along the beach. It worked flawlessly even though it was a cloudy day, which makes the SolarSaga 100 quite useful even on its own.


Plugging the two SolarSaga 100 panels into the Jackery Explorer 1000 is very easy as you simply have to connect them to the splitter, which in turn plugs right into the Jackery Power Station itself. Unlike other brands, you don't have to deal with various different cables and connectors, which is nice.


While you may prop the solar panel up on the ground, the panels also feature metal rings to hang them off essentially anything. In this case, the rack of the trusty Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro was put to great use with the panels hanging off it.


Before driving back towards civilization, we stopped by another beach in an area of the island we had not been to yet. Here, I plugged the Jackery Explorer 1000 Power Station directly into the cigarette lighter plug of the front dash of the Tacoma, and it was able to charge the Explorer 1000 at a solid rate of around 75 watts.


Towards the end of my trip, the weather worsened again with gray skies. However, I could not resist stopping by my friend's at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters to show off my very own super powers (all the pun intended) as I sat there and worked on this very review you are reading.