WEN 56200i 2000-Watt Gas Powered Portable Inverter Generator, CARB Compliant,Black & Orange

So I ordered this generator for the specific purpose of powering up my 18 ft. camper batteries (2 deep cycle 6-volt golf cart batteries) during the day so that my lights, water pump and heater would work overnight, so that I could dry camp in the mountains. I took it out for the first time on our 10 day / 9 night family vacation recently. Five of the nine nights we camped without electric and water and the generator operated flawlessly.First, it was easy to get ready. I did have to add oil, but as I change oil in my cars and other smaller equipment regularly this was easy. The oil fill area is easy to get to and well marked. It was easy to learn how to start, and it is easy pull to start it. My 17 year old son easily learned to start and operate it as well.Second, it runs fairly quiet. My in-laws own a Honda and I don't make any claim that this runs as quiet as theirs (but the Hondas are also much more expensive), but it still ran really pretty quiet especially in economy mode, which I used most of the time. Four of the nights we camped in forest service campgrounds with other campers and I was trying to be considerate of them, and for the most part, I do not think they were bothered or even noticed much (I did make sure to run it most of the time during the day). I was running it about 20 ft from our campfire and was still able to have a comfortable conversation with my family.Third, it charged and ran most of my appliances. When it was running all of my camper appliances including our small Microwave worked. The one exception was is the AC unit, but as most of our camping is in the mountains we don't use that unit much, and did not need it at all on this trip. I think it would take 2 of these units hooked up to run our AC. It charged the batteries from about half full to completely charged in under an hour every day.Fourth, it was exceptionally fuel efficient. I filled it before we left on vacation, and I took an extra gallon of gas along. I did not need the extra gallon, because in about 5 hours of running on economy mode it used only 1/4 of the tank of gas!On the whole, I am very pleased with it. As long as I take care of it, I think it will probably last for years to come and make boondock camping much easier. If I run into maintenance problems or if it breaks down in the first few years of use, I will come back and revise this review, but for now it is just what we needed without having to pay the Honda price.Update March 2025: It does more than I expected. I'm not in a power outage lasting more than a day and a half and this little generator has run constantly for over 33 hours. It's been very helpful to have and worked very well. It's now 7 years old and I've used it a number of times when rough camping, and this is now my second power outage. I'd likely buy another Wen product and perhaps get a little bigger one next time. I feel like I've already gotten my money's worth out of this one, and it's still ticking!

I got 2 of these 2000 watt (new style, orange case with the oil fill door on the side) with the parallel kit and covers. So far so good, they both started right up, nice and quiet, on par with the Honda 2000. I first saw this unit in use at an outdoor video screening, it was powering the AV system. The guy also had a Honda 2000 there. I asked him why he didn't have two Honda's, and he replied, I just grab what is at the shop when I leave for an event, and they happened to have the Honda and the Wen. He said he preferred the Wen over the Honda, as the Wen seemed a bit quieter. The noise from this Wen is very muted, more of a dull drone, without any rattly metallic sounds. Doesn't grate on your nerves :)I ran both of them for over an hour as a first test, put a 1550 watt load on each one and they both handled it with no problems. Then put them in parallel mode with the same 1550 watt load, and with ECO on, neither one barely rev'd up at all. Assuming they hold up long term, I am very happy.I confirmed that if you rotate the on/off to the position just before "off" it does shut down the fuel to the carbs, and you can run the carb out of fuel for shorter term storage.The covers are nice and thick with elastic cord at the bottom, looks like they will last a long time. I got the magnetic dip stick replacements to collect any metal particles from engine break in, not sure if this is really necessary, but gives me a sense of protection. The parallel kit, is simply a case to hold the 30 Amp connector with two sets of wires to connect to the two generators. You can use the built in 15 Amp connectors on the generators at the same time the parallel kit is in use, just keep the total load within specs.Next I'll try running my 5th wheel stuff on them, I suspect one generator will have trouble running the microwave, so that is why I got two. That and my battery charger tends to draw around 2000 watts by itself (110 Amp charge rate to the battery banks), so this would also overload just one.It's much easier to load these at 50 lbs a piece into my truck bed, then a single more capable generator at 100+ lbs.Update 9/6/17:I connected up to my 5th wheel and got about the results I was expecting. A single generator would overload after 10 seconds trying to run the microwave, this was a 1650 watt load, just above the sustained rating. Looks like 1600 really is the upper limit for useful work. It had no problem running my small AC unit, this is a 10K BTU, with a 1050 watt load. It did have trouble starting it in ECO mode, but it managed. with ECO off, no issues. Battery charger would overload it almost immediately (as expected, this was a 2000 watt load).Next ran them both in parallel mode, microwave no problem, battery charger no problem, microwave with AC at the same time, no problem. All this was with ECO on. I didn't try the main 15K BTU AC unit, but don't expect any trouble, as I have run this on another 3000 watt generator previously with no issues, and these two together are 3200 watts. I did notice that for a given load between 1000 and 1500 watts, both generators together produced less noise then a single one doing the same work. This was also as expected. If you can afford two, they are quieter, easier to load into a truck, have twice the fuel tank, and more capable than a single one.