Once upon a time, I was an avid camper. I love getting outdoors and spending time around a fire, fishing, and simply enjoying nature that isn’t on a documentary. One thing that curtailed my enjoyment of camping, however, was my doctor prescribing me a CPAP machine for my sleep apnea. Now, I look and sound like Darth Vader and an elephant had a baby every night, and camping became a fond memory – or so I thought. When I was offered this Goldenmate battery for review, I jumped at the opportunity.

After some research, I determined that Goldenmate’s 12 volt battery with 2,560 watt hours would provide enough power to run my CPAP for at least a night or two. Not only that, but I could also keep my phone charged for reading and music, and even run our Breeze fan in the heat of the day when it would otherwise be too hot to nap. As a big proponent of naps, this was a major bonus.

What Is a Goldenmate Battery?

The Goldenmate Deep Cycle Lithium Battery is a mouthful, but it’s impressive. The battery itself is one of the newer style Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries on the market, touting not only more safety, but more portability, more capacity, and longer life than older battery types. In addition, it’s effectively maintenance free and easy to charge.

Weighing in at about 50 pounds, the Goldenmate Deep Cycle Lithium Battery isn’t lightweight by any stretch of the imagination, but thanks to its chemical makeup it’s still smaller than traditional batteries with the same output. I can lift and carry it myself, but it’s definitely easier with two people.

Preparing My Goldenmate Lithium Battery

In order to make best use of this battery, particularly if you don’t already have a large battery you use, you’ll need a few accessories. Since I don’t have any solar powered panels, I opted to use my home electricity to charge, and to do that I needed a small battery charger. Using something like a trickle charger for your car battery isn’t recommended, so I went with this Talentcell AC/DC charger specifically for LiFePo4 batteries.

Because my CPAP needs a pretty clean power supply, I also needed to find a pure sine wave power inverter to use with the battery. After consulting our electrician friend, I landed on this Roarbatt Pure Sine Wave Inverter.

It took a few hours to fully charge the battery, but no longer than some of my small electronic devices. Even my phone on a slow charger takes longer. Once the battery was charged, I followed the easy instructions and hooked up the inverter.

Using the Battery

Once the battery was charged and I had the inverter properly attached, we were ready to go. The first night, I plugged in my CPAP and slept like a 40-something with bad joints and sleep apnea on an air mattress. Okay, so camping might not be as easy in my 40s as it was in my 20s and 30s, but I did it! I woke up in the wilderness, and that’s something I thought I would never be able to do again.

Initially, I thought we would only use the LiFePo4 battery for running my CPAP while camping, and maybe charge phones a little when they ran low. Instead, I discovered that the uses are many even at home. A few weeks after receiving this battery, our power went out for several hours. I was able to keep working on my laptop during that time (although I had to connect to my phone’s data plan to remote into my day job), run a lamp and three different sets of twinkly lights when it got dark, and keep everyone’s phones charged without really putting a dent in the charge of the battery.

We’ve used the battery now to power a projector outside for movie night on the side of the house, charge countless rechargeable devices from phones to flashlights to an electric stapler, keep us cool with the Breeze fan (review coming soon), and several other things we never considered before we had the battery we now lovingly refer to as Big Battery Beatrice. Heck, we’ve played entire tabletop games in a power outage because we could run lamps and not try to game by candlelight.

I also attended a festival near my home for the annular eclipse, and was able to power several strands of string lights after the sun went down for five evenings, plus keep my phone and iPad fully charged for five days of heavy use. I didn’t camp those nights, but I bet my CPAP would have been just fine for at least a couple of nights on one charge.

Final Thoughts

Even if you don’t suffer from sleep apnea and want to camp again, the Goldenmate Deep Cycle Lithium Battery is a good investment. So much of our lives day to day require electricity, and having a deep well of reserve power is incredibly useful.

Now that we have a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, I wonder why having one isn’t more commonplace. I can’t imagine not owning one anymore, and I highly recommend that if you’re in an area where losing power happens more often than once a decade and you need power to work, you invest in one of these.

Currently, the Goldenmate Deep Cycle Lithium Battery is a little under $700 on Amazon. It seems like a hefty purchase, but I promise it’s worth it. You can also purchase directly from Goldenmate and use the code GEEKDAD for 15% off.

In addition, you’ll want a charger, like this Talentcell charger for only $16.99, and an inverter, like this Roarbatt Pure Sine Wave Inverter for $99.99.

Disclaimer: Geekdad received the Goldenmate battery for review purposes, but the two accessories were purchased.

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