Review on ⚡️ Tripp Lite APS750 Power Inverter / Charger, 12V DC to 120V AC, 20A, 2 Outlet, 5-15R, 1-Year Warranty by Ryan Gilliam

I have mixed feelings about this product. I bought it for RV use in combination with a deep cycle battery and alternator. There are three settings on the face. The first is inverter mode, which delivers AC power from the battery to whatever is plugged in and automatically switches to AC power when AC power is applied to it (through my generator). It then switches back to the DC inverter when the generator is off. It also charges the battery when the generator is on in this mode. Nice, right. I thought I would use this mode most of the time and I liked that everything was automatic. In truth, the inverter is not efficient enough to stay in this mode. Even with nothing plugged in, it was slowly draining the life out of my battery. So I found I switched to DC-only mode to plug the leak. Since the inverter is on the floor behind a door out of sight I had to go down and do it. The remote they sell for an additional $100 should be the standard part that comes with the inverter. So now I use it mainly as a charger for my battery and not as an inverter as originally planned to manually switch to charge mode when the generator is on. This may work better for applications other than off-grid camping, such as camping. B. Situations with power failures. I also see that it works better if I add a solar panel to power the battery at the inverter's discharge rate, but that seems like an expensive solution. I'm not sure if this is possible, but it would be nice if the inverter turned on whenever the device draws 120 volts. As I write this proposal, I already understand that this is unlikely. ****UPDATE**** 3-7-13 I've had it for almost a year now and when charging it never goes above 13.5 volts and only 3 amps. Even if it should be in absorption mode. Something isn't working right about it. It's been like this for a while, but since adding solar panels to my setup I haven't used them to charge my battery. As I said, the inverter uses a lot of phantom power, so whenever I need AC power I use my cheap 100W inverter. In short, it serves no purpose and doesn't work as it should. If I had to do it again I wouldn't buy this but install some smaller inverters and have a separate 3 stage charger, maybe a Tender Plus if I want to charge the battery from shore. The main reason I bought it was the convenience of having an inverter and charger in one compact unit. Downgrading the stars from 3 to 2 because it still works, just not efficiently.