Bluetti AC180 vs EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus

On most of the spec sheet these two match: same continuous AC output, same solar input limit, same car port. They differ on two rows. The Bluetti AC180 has the bigger battery, so it runs everything on this page a bit longer. The EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus has the higher published surge rating, which is what you’d want for starting a compressor or a motor.

Specs side by side

Both manuals give a surge figure, so unlike some stations in our data, there’s nothing to guess at here. What we don’t have is the other half of the check. None of the appliances on this page come with a startup figure from their makers, so every passing row says “surge unverified” and the surge row can’t change a result. It’s still the row to look at if you have something that kicks on hard. Our surge watts guide covers what that means.

Microwave

That’s full-power cooking time at the Farberware’s rated input, which is higher than its cooking power. Under an hour on both, so this is for reheating, not for cooking dinner every night off the battery. The Panasonic NN-SN966S, the hungriest microwave in our data, still fits under both inverter limits and gets 0.7 hours on the AC180 and 0.6 hours on the DELTA 3 Plus. Our microwave page explains the rated input figure.

Coffee maker

Hamilton Beach’s figure is the heater’s rated power while it brews, not an average over a whole pot with the warming plate on. So these hours are heating time, not a count of pots. We haven’t tried to turn them into one, because that depends on the machine and how you use it. More on the coffee maker page.

A window air conditioner

The LG LW8017ERSM 8,000 BTU window AC is where the surge row starts to matter. A compressor pulls a burst well above its running draw when it starts, and LG doesn’t publish that figure. Both stations carry the rated running power with room to spare. Whether they handle the start, we can’t confirm from the specs. On paper, the DELTA 3 Plus has more surge headroom. It doesn’t change the hours, though, and on either station that’s not much more than an hour of cooling at the rated draw. Our air conditioner page has the bigger stations.

Starlink and CPAP

These are the loads where the AC180’s bigger battery shows most, because they run for hours. A Starlink Standard 4 X on AC gets 10.0 hours from the AC180 and 8.5 hours from the DELTA 3 Plus, using the top of Starlink’s published range.

A ResMed AirSense 11 on 12V with ResMed’s DC adapter gets 18.5 hours on the AC180 and 16.5 hours on the DELTA 3 Plus. At eight hours a night, that’s about two nights on either, with a little more left over on the AC180. If CPAP is the main reason you’re buying, our CPAP runtime table compares more stations.

Solar

Same max solar input on both, so with the same panels they take in solar at the same rate. The AC180 has more battery to fill, so a full charge from empty takes it a little longer. Put your own panels into the solar recharge calculator to see by how much.

Picking between them

Pick the AC180 if you mostly run steady loads for a long time, like a CPAP, a Starlink or a fridge, and want the most hours out of one charge. Pick the DELTA 3 Plus if you’ll be starting things with a motor or compressor, like a window air conditioner or a power tool, and want more surge headroom on paper. For a microwave or a coffee maker, both carry the running load, and the hours are close.

With hours this close, the things we don’t track could easily decide it: weight, size, wall charging speed, expansion batteries. Check both manuals for those.