Consumer Reports Named The Best-Rated Portable Generator For Camping, And It's Under $800

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If a generator is on your camping list this year, you already know the tricky part. The affordable ones are loud, the quiet ones cost a fortune, and the mashup of spec sheets and reviews online are no help at all. You want something that will run your cooler and charge everyone's phones without costing an arm and a leg. Enter Consumer Reports, a trusted independent nonprofit that buys products at retail and tests products in its own labs. It put a field of camping generators through its testing methodology, and one model took the top spot in the 1,500-2,500 watt range.

While a generator quiet enough to keep the peace at a campsite is usually quite expensive, Consumer Reports found the exception in the Champion 100571, a gasoline inverter that puts out 2,300 running watts and costs under $800 at Lowe's (at the time of writing). However, it's so popular that stock comes and goes. It earned top scores in CR's lab tests, and the standout reason comes down to how much noise it cranks out. According to Champion, it gives off 58 dBA when measured from 23 feet, about the volume of a normal conversation, which helps keep the peace with your campsite neighbors.

Per Consumer Reports, this class of generators tops out around 2,500 watts and weighs 50 to 60 pounds, which makes it the right size for a campsite and enough to keep a fridge and a few lights going. CR's testers called the 100571 reliable, praised the quality of the power it delivers, and rated it quiet in noise testing, which together earned it top scores. Two wattage numbers explain what that buys you. The 3,500 starting watts is the burst that starts up anything with a motor or a compressor, and the 2,300 running watts is what it sustains.

Car campers will have room to run a fridge, power small appliances, and charge everyone's devices at once, and the three outlet types mean charging your phone won't cost you an outlet. Pair it with some essential Amazon camping items and the rest of the hi-tech camping gadgets worth adding to a wishlist, and the campsite runs itself. RVers should take note, though. An RV with the air conditioning blasting would be tight against the constraints of the 3,500-watt surge, and Champion's own copy is careful about it, pitching this model for "powering items around the RV," rather than running one. Cold-weather trips run into the same problem from the other direction, so pack the rest of the RV essentials for cold weather camping, rather than counting on the generator to heat everything. 

Running on gas has its pros and cons. Gasoline can be purchased everywhere, which matters when the generator pulls double duty during a storm. One fill of the 1.2-gallon tank lasts about 10 hours, and there's an LED light to help you see while refueling at night. The tradeoff is draining the tank before storage, and a long weekend will have you refilling every 10 hours. Stock is the last wrinkle. If Lowe's is out of stock, you could check out Amazon, and while this exact model is hard to find there, the 2,500-watt ultralight is a close substitute. It's parallel ready, which is the workaround Redditors in a generator thread keep coming back to.