This. Especially those small little toys. I hate the batteries that come with them as well. Lifespan of those things never last long.
If I had money to waste, I would have liked to test the following:
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www.takealot.com
Test being the operative word before I can give an opinion.
Based on the theory that a small UPS doesn't have the capacity needed and that hooking up a big enough battery to it to supply that capacity means that the charging circuit is woefully under specced, I bought one of those units. I need to keep two laptops and their screens running, as well as the router for working from home. If it's after working hours the TV is used instead of the laptops.
The graduations for load and battery charge are quite coarse, but mine has never been more than one bar of load, and the battery still shows as full bars after a two hour load shed. I'm confident that I can get an eight hour day out of it if needed, before I need to get the generator out the garage.
It's solidly built and seems to be good quality - I haven't god access to an oscilloscope so I can't comment on how pure it's sine wave is, but for the stuff I'm running, it's been perfect. Due to cabling constraints, only my home office is connected to it normally, I connect the rest manually with extensions if we have load shedding (I'll fix it one day). So it has my work laptop, docking station, 24" screen and a 10w LED light permanently connected, and mostly my private laptop is also connected. My Kill-a-Watt measured that load at 70W, with the TV, soundbar and router adding another 60W. Unfortunately I killed my Kill-a-Watt and am waiting for a replacement, so I can't run more tests right now.
I bought it without the battery (I already had a battery), and the only issue I had was that my battery died (it's over ten years old). I've had no issues since I put in the new battery.
On a functional level, I'd recommend it, and I'd buy one again, with the caveat that it's probably not worth what they're charging, and I'd be looking for a better price. What I like about it is that it's one box, no need for any extra hardware or fiddling to get it working, and you can stick a solar panel or two on if you want solar to extend your run time. I don't regret buying it, but might regret confessing to having spent that much on it, as someone will be along soon to say just how overpriced they are. Faced with the same decision now (load shedding affecting hours worked and therefore hours billed) I'd make the same choice.
For the record, I've not used it with a solar panel, I haven't needed that so I haven't bought one.
