I have a drawer full of Ryobi batteries and a long list of small household jobs where the answer was “drag an extension cord across the lawn.” Buying a tiny box that turns one of those batteries into a three-prong outlet cost me about half what a comparable dedicated power bank costs, and it quietly eliminated three different things I had been putting up with. That is the bar for me: a tool earns a place on the bench if it solves a problem I had stopped noticing.
I want to walk through what this device actually does, why it has stuck around my house for two years, and the honest reasons you might pass on it. By the end you will know whether the Ryobi ONE+ inverter is the right next addition to your battery collection or whether the math does not work for you.
How I ended up owning one
The story starts with a hurricane prep checklist. I had flashlights, a hand-crank radio, and a dedicated 20,000mAh power bank. None of those were charged when the lights went out. The power bank was in a closet I never opened. The flashlights were in a kitchen drawer with dead batteries. I spent the first two hours of the outage finding things, not using them.
After that I started looking for backup power that lived in plain sight. The Ryobi ONE+ 150-Watt Power Source showed up in a search, and the pitch was simple: it is a battery adapter that gives you a regular wall outlet plus two USB ports from any Ryobi 18V pack. I already owned three of those packs for a drill, a blower, and a string trimmer. The adapter was sixty dollars. I bought it on a Tuesday.
Here is the part that surprised me. Two years later the inverter has been more useful in everyday life than during outages. I have run a laptop on the patio, a shop light in the attic, and a phone charger on the tailgate at a football game. None of those are emergencies. All of them used to require either a long cord or a separate battery brick. Now they take whichever pack is closest to the charger.
What the device actually is
Hardware-wise the device is straightforward. A plastic box the size of a thick paperback has a battery clip on top that accepts any Ryobi ONE+ 18V pack (Ryobi’s cross-tool battery platform, which now spans hundreds of products). The front face has a standard three-prong 120V outlet plus two USB-A ports for small electronics. A single power button and a status LED round out the controls.
Output is a modified sine wave, which is an electrical waveform that approximates AC power with square-wave steps instead of a smooth curve. This is fine for almost everything in a typical house: laptops, phone chargers, fans, LED lights, and most small appliances. It can cause hum or extra heat in a few sensitive devices, including some CPAP machines, certain audio gear, and some older motors with brush designs that are picky about waveform shape. For those cases a pure sine inverter (one that outputs a smooth, utility-grade waveform) is the safer pick, and Ryobi makes one, but it costs more and weighs noticeably more.
Wattage tops out at 150 watts continuous. Anything with a heating element or a motor above that threshold will either refuse to start or pop the inverter into a fault state. That rules out space heaters, hair dryers, microwaves, and most power tools. For low-draw electronics and small appliances, the ceiling is not a problem.
A short list of what changed around my house
I keep the inverter on a shelf next to the chargers. The 4.0Ah packs that are too tired for a full yard job get rotated onto the inverter. The 6.0Ah and 9.0Ah packs go back into tools as they empty. I never think about it.
What I now do without ceremony:
- Charge a laptop on the patio without stringing a fifty-foot cord through the house.
- Run a small LED shop light in the attic where no outlet exists.
- Power a string of café lights on the porch during a backyard dinner.
- Keep a hotspot and two phones running through a four-hour power outage.
- Test low-draw 120V gear (a new string trimmer, a small pump) before committing to a long extension cord run.
The last item is the one I did not anticipate. Half the time I want to test whether a tool or appliance actually works, I just clip the inverter to a charged battery and plug the thing in. No extension cord. No walking back to the garage.
Where the honest costs land
Three costs are not on the price tag.
First, the 150-watt ceiling is real. I cannot use this to run my chop saw, my pressure washer, or anything with a heating element. For those jobs I still need a wall outlet or a generator. The inverter is not a replacement for those tools. It is a complement.
Second, battery wear is real. Heavy deep-cycle use, meaning running a battery from full to empty on a regular basis, shortens pack life faster than light tool use does. The packs I rotate onto the inverter have already absorbed most of their wear from yard work, so I am not accelerating degradation much. But if I bought new batteries just for the inverter, I would plan to replace them every three to four years instead of every five to seven.
Third, the ecosystem lock-in is real. The inverter is Ryobi-flavored. If you ever switch battery platforms, the inverter becomes a paperweight. For someone already committed to a different brand’s batteries, that lock-in is a real cost.
If you do not already own at least one Ryobi ONE+ battery, this device on its own is a bad buy. Get a generic power bank instead. If you already own three or more ONE+ tools, the inverter is the cheapest thing you can add to that platform.
Why the everyday case beats the emergency case
The marketing for any inverter, generator, or power bank leans on storm season. That is the easy story and the one I was buying into when I ordered mine. In practice the storm-season case has fired for me twice in two years. The everyday case, by contrast, fires every week.
Two examples that capture it. I run a laptop on the patio while my kids play in the yard. The outlet by the back door is fifty feet away and threading a cord through the house is a hassle. The inverter plus a charged battery sits on the patio table and the problem disappears. The other example is the attic. I have a project up there twice a year and no attic outlet. A battery-powered LED shop light plus the inverter covers both visits without any new wiring.
Neither of those is a hurricane. Both of them are the kind of small frictions the inverter quietly removes. The everyday utility is what justifies the purchase for me, not the emergency case.
Trade-offs
The ONE+ 150-Watt Power Source is not free in time. You have to commit to keeping at least one battery topped off specifically for it, which means remembering to swap batteries back onto the charger after a tool job. Heavy daily use will shorten battery life faster than tool-only use does, so the real cost includes accelerated pack replacement over a few years.
If you already own ONE+ batteries and your power outage risk is anything above zero, this is a clear win. If you do not own ONE+ batteries, the inverter on its own is a bad buy. Get the platform first, then add the inverter once you have at least three tools and one large battery.
In our case, the inverter paid for itself the first time the power went out for four hours and our phones, hotspot, and a small fan all stayed running on a single 9.0Ah pack. Your math will be different if you live in an area with reliable grid power, or if you already own a generator that handles storm season. This is the tool for the gap between “I do not need a generator” and “I have a real emergency plan.”
The migration took about ten minutes. The easier-than-expected part was that no new charging habits were required. The harder-than-expected part was remembering that not every battery in the drawer is at full charge; I now keep one pack reserved for the inverter and rotate it manually.
Bottom line
If you are already in the Ryobi ONE+ ecosystem, the 150-Watt Power Source is one of the cheapest and most useful tools you can add. It quietly solves three problems at once: emergency backup, portable outlet, and battery platform consolidation. If you are not in the ecosystem, start with a different ONE+ tool first. The inverter is a great destination. It is a bad starting point.
If you only do one thing from this article, dedicate one large ONE+ battery (6.0Ah or bigger) to the inverter and keep it on the charger between uses. Five minutes of habit, and you have storm-ready power without buying a single new gadget.