INVERTER opinions PROS CONS

Two things seldom mentioned but worth considering:

1) Idle power. If you leave it on all evening it will draw a certain amount of current just sitting there doing nothing. Some people only turn it on to run a specific thing, I like it more like at home. Sine wave inverters typically have more idle power than square wave, some of them as much as 4 amps. Look at the specification for idle power.

2) Noise. I would not have thought this would be a problem, but the Prosine 2.0 that I had turned on its fan, at odd times too. Middle of the night when nothing was drawing power for example. Loud enough to hear for sure. The Magnum Energy square wave I have now in the camper makes a whining sound all the time. More when you are drawing more power. "Yep, that's what they do" says Magnum tech support. I cannot sleep with it on (like to charge the computer overnight), too loud. Nobody seems to spec noise.

In both of those respects the Mastervolt I have on the boat is the best: very quiet and very low idle power in a true sine wave converter. They are costly though.

I have a 2000 watt inverter installed, but no easy way to use it other than walk outside and switch my house power cord to it. Even then, I have to remember to make sure my fridge isn't on Auto and my battery charger is unplugged. It works.

Recently, I started using a small inverter for just the tv/dvd/computer as needed. I already had it. The net of that is that I only have to plug into the 12 volt plug. It's much simpler as you might expect and powers only what I need for AC.

I've also bought two fast 12v chargers for the phones/tablets. My wife is all Apple, and I'm all Android. These really fast chargers mean I don't use AC for charging either. With the LED lights, I practically have power left over at the end of the weekend. :) I'm sure that will change when I have to run the furnace more, but an inverter won't help with that either.

My advice is try a small inverter first.

Jeff, good answer!

I've seen a couple combination charger/inverters too and decided on separates so if one dies, I only have to mess with it. I kind of also decided 800-1000 watts inverter or 3000 watts inverter are the sweet spots. I don't use AC or microwave dry camping, just the two 12 volt fantastic vents which move a lot of air and make hot days comfortable. All we need are computers, cameras, small devices so 800-1000 will fulfill our needs. If you want to run the AC or micro, hair dryer, coffee maker, etc... then get the 3000 watt inverter. A 2000 watt in my opinion falls into the too much, too little gap. Get a 1500 watt model if you're going to run power tools. I use battery powered tools so the 800-1000 watt model again will easily charge the batteries. A 3000 watt inverter means you will need about 4 group 31 or Trojan 125 or 105 batteries to support the current demand. I would also get a pure sine wave model.
That's my answer and I sticking to it.