I have a 600WATT AIMS PSW ($259 AMAZON) using two drop cords with one going to the home entertainment area and the other one going to handy table top where most of my must have 120VAC itmes are at located like cell phone charger, computer charger, WX radio etc...
I also have the 1500WATT AIMS PSW ($350 On-line somewhere - forgot who) that can be used with the shore power cable plugged into it. This is mainly just for the receptacles going around the trailer.
I really only use the 600WATT Unit most of the time - Both are wired into my POPUP trailer setup with DC Cables going to my main battery switch. The 1500WATT model has a remote ON/OFF on it. The 600WATT is always ON 24/7
Never really measured the difference in efficiency of either one of these. Both allows me to run all the things we want to want to run over night and I make to the next morning with my battery bank and then can re-charge them using my 2KW generator powering up the on-board converter/charger unit which takes around three hours of gnerator run time to get me back up to the 90% charge state on my batteries.
All of which works better than the other is all mute here. My goal is to make it through the night and re-charge the next morning... I have been able to do this since around 2009 for the things we want to run when camping off the power grid...
My brief running of MSW Inverters burned up one 20-inch portable fan motor, one electric blanket remote control head, got several thing very hot like computer type charger transformers. My DVD player did not work right but never failed on me. My TV's had strange noise in the audio and alot of funny lines on the screen but never failed... My coffee grinder never failed but would only work good on my 600WATT AIMS PSW Inverter. My coffee grinder would sometime work on the 300WATT MSW Inverter but I had to keep start and stop it with on/off switch and it would finally kick on and grind my coffee beans. Motor would get very hot for the short duration but never failed. Today I use the couple of trial MSW 150WATT and 300W Inverters clipped into the battery terminals to run out-side things like lights etc when camping off the power grid... Nothing with motors or input transformers will work on these units without getting very hot... No more CHEAP (Less than $60) MSW Inverters for me...
Here at the house I have two 1980s 1500WATT RACK MOUNT UPS Units made by POWERWARE Model 5125 that have an additional battery pack both are sharing and these run my whole radio/computer room for several hours when commercial power drops out. These were used by the govt powering up router circuit equipment with modem circuits throughout a building giving them several hours of use after loss of commercial power. This includes anything I want to plug into them TVs Radios, Wall Clocks, drop lights, fans, HAM RADIO radio interface, all of my computers modems, routers, etc and nothing has noticed any difference between them and the commercial power. The manual on these say they are MSW models but when I look at the 120VAC OUTPUTs on my o'scope they look as clean as the commercial power (perfect looking sinewave)... I have thought about hooking one of these up in my off-road POPUP trailer to use... They weigh a ton haha... These used to stay up for many hours when on commercial power failed but now they stay on about half as long. Have never replaced the batteries in them - don't even know what kind of heavy batteries it uses. Would love to hook up some external deep cycle 12VDC batteries to run it. Both these units comes on about every two weeks and runs a fan for two days or so. I guess they are recharing the batteries then. I have alll of my consoles here plugged into them 24/7. When the house drops off line for commercial i never notice a thing here in my radio room haha... The first time I know the rest of the house is off line is when someone comes in here to watch TV haha...
After awhile being off commercial power I do start hearing a short beep going 'on/off' on the units... The panel lights change modes as well if you think about looking at it...
I picked up a bunch of these one time from govt surplus in my NAVY MARS program days... Only have two left here that I am still using today...
Roy Ken
