Anker Solix E10 review: Whole home battery backups finally come within reach

The Anker Solix E10 whole-home battery backup system is a modular setup that can keep your home powered and save you money with multiple forms of power input.

In rural Ohio, my partner and I have struggled with power outages since we bought our house. The first weekend we moved in, we were hit with a power outage, and as we walked outside, we heard all of our neighbors turning on loud, gas-powered generators.

We knew this was common and had to find a solution. Until the Solix E10, we've relied primarily on multiple battery backups in the house to keep the internet running, devices charged, and appliances going during these outages.

At most, we went for over three days without power thanks to the aging power infrastructure. The roadside utility poles that deliver power are constantly downed by trees or rough weather.

The E10, from the Anker power subbrand Solix, looked like a great fit that could grow with us, while reducing our reliance on the grid and being less susceptible to outages.

	E10 with Power Dock
Outdoor Rating	NEMA 4 (-4F to 131F)
Solar Input	9kW - 27kW ; 30-450V
Auto Switching
Battery Capacity	6kWh-90kWh
Output Power	7.6kW - 22.8kW
Entry Capacity	200A Whole Home

Anker Solix E10 review: A modular solution for your home

The Anker Solix E10 is a modular power system that is designed to support your entire home. It's comprised of multiple components that you can pick and choose based on your needs.

It's a family of products consisting of battery modules, the E10 Power Module, the Smart Generator 5500, the Power Dock, and the Smart Inlet box. Here, I tested E10 connected to a battery as well as the Power Dock.

In my setup, the Power Dock with its 12 circuits is connected to my primary breaker box. Some of the circuits from my home were moved into the Power Dock to be controlled by the E10 system in the case of a power outage.

The E10 Power Module sits on top of the batteries and feeds into the Power Dock. If you have the Solix Tri-fuel Smart Generator 5500, it also feeds into the E10 Power Module to provide supplementary power and charge the batteries.

Depending on your home, you can easily customize this to your needs. You can add on lots of solar to drastically reduce your reliance on the grid or line up three E10 Power Modules with five 6144Wh B6000 battery modules each to run up to 15 days solely on stored power.

Besides grid-supplied or solar power, the generator is unique. It can be powered by a natural gas line, propane, or gasoline, depending on what you have available.

This feels like the most adaptable whole-home battery system I've seen yet and can easily be outfitted to both small and large homes. Combined, you can go off-grid, be protected indefinitely during outages, and save money.

Anker Solix E10 review: App control and smarts

The Anker Solix E10 is all managed from the Anker app. It's the same one that can run your desktop charger, your portable power station, and now, your whole home.

From the main view, you see a representation of your home with all the various inputs, such as solar, grid, and your batteries connected to the Power Dock. You see the home load, too.

It shows how the power is flowing and how much each piece is generating or drawing. I love watching and seeing the solar spike on sunny days and how much money it has saved us.

The system has two operating modes and two backup modes. For operating modes, you can use self-consumption mode (the default), which manages the load in real-time and maximizes any solar input, or you can choose "time of use mode," which is for those with variable energy rates based on the time of day.

In Ohio, I have fixed-rate electricity pricing, so I use the standard self-consumption mode. Not only does this manage the flow of power from solar and the grid, but it also designates the capacity stored in the batteries.

Batteries don't do well when stored for long periods of time at full capacity. For that reason, the E10 system will keep your batteries at an optimal capacity, usually 20%, though the user can designate exactly how much.

For backup modes, you can choose "Storm Guard" or "Rapid Charging". The former will only charge your batteries when necessary, while the second is a manual backup option that will charge your batteries at maximum power.

Lastly, there is an option for "manual off-grid." This cuts the power to the grid with the flip of a toggle and utilizes only self-produced and stored power for your home.

While the app works very well, is cleanly laid out, and has most of what I need, it isn't as robust as some of the others out there. Some, like the Tesla PowerWall or the Ecoflow Smart Home Panel, seem to have a lot more data, graphs, and integrations.

As this is the first such product for Anker, I expect the app to continuously evolve and improve. For right now, it's solid, but not the best.

Anker Solix E10 review: Storm Guard

Storm Guard is one of the best features of this system, and something I've got to test a few times in recent weeks. You input your address, and the system will monitor weather warnings for your area.

If there is a predicted weather warning approaching, it will automatically charge your batteries in anticipation. While in Storm Guard, you'll get a notification as well as a banner on the app's main view to let you know how long it is in effect.

This did not work 100% of the time for me, but it worked well enough. Even if it didn't predict every outage, I was very impressed with its performance.

Whenever Apple Weather or Carrot would send me an alert that there was a weather warning for my area — high wind, tornado, or severe thunderstorms — it was only a minute or two later that I'd get an alert from Anker that Storm Guard had been activated.

There was at least one time when a weather warning came in, and the system did not have ample time to fully charge the battery storage before our power was knocked offline. This shortened the amount of time our home could go off the battery backup.

I don't fault the system for this, as it's the best-case scenario for what it has to do. The only way to always have your batteries ready for any emergency power drop is to keep them stored at 100% perpetually, but this will reduce the lifespan of the cells, which you certainly don't want.

Ultimately, as a compromise, I increased the stored percentage on the batteries to 30% so that I had a good amount of emergency power always stored, while still protecting battery health. That helps, too, in case of a surprise outage that isn't weather-related.

Anker Solix E10 review: Where is Matter?

For me, the glaring hole right now is Matter, and it isn't all Anker's fault. Matter is the unifying smart home standard that works across ecosystems, including Apple Home.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance first added power management to the Matter standard in version 1.3 (we're currently on 1.6), but it's been a slow rollout to accessories. Ecosystems have also been slow to add power management features.

Currently, the Solix E10 does not support Matter, and Anker has not confirmed or denied its plans to do so. To me, this waffling shows how cautious brands are being about committing to the standard.

It's a difficult spot for brands to be in right now. Who adopts support for a new feature first: the ecosystems or the accessories?

If no ecosystems fully support Matter power management, why add it to an accessory? Conversely, if no accessories want to support it, why add it to the ecosystem?

Thus far, Ecoflow has announced its intention to add Matter to its smart panel and its Oasis monitoring system, and others, like Pila, are adding it to their smaller battery stations.

Here's my pitch on why more need to add it: aside from the ecosystems themselves, whole home battery backups are what this Matter feature was designed for. It's the central point in your home that feeds power to all of the devices in your home.

With Matter, I could only run large appliances when my solar input passed a certain threshold at midday. I could also opt to pause unnecessary devices when running on battery power, like an extra space heater or the studio mini-fridge.

For homes that have electric vehicles, you can also control when and how fast you charge your car. Charge only on green energy or during off-peak hours. The system could also better track what in your home is using energy to give you insights to inform your control.

Apple specifically has shown a lot of interest in the power management space. With iOS 27, Apple is adding energy monitoring to the Home app, and it already has clean energy monitoring and ties into select power providers.

While Apple doesn't yet support robust power management Matter features, it's absolutely something of interest. When purchasing a whole home battery backup system, whether or not it supports or is expected to support Matter would be a major factor for me.

I'd want something this substantial to support the latest features and not feel outdated as soon as Apple and the other ecosystems get serious.

Anker Solix E10 review: In use

As I mentioned, power outages are a constant problem in my area. Even if not a full prolonged blackout, those brownouts are just as problematic, especially to connected smart home tech.

Instead of relying on several smaller battery backups throughout the home, this has consolidated everything into one system. It's also much more reliable and seamless.

If or when the house goes offline during a big launch, I can make sure I can keep working without interruption. Let alone making sure we can make baby formula or keep the freezers cold during those outages.

With a whole-home system, I don't need to keep a bunch of batteries charged or check in on each of them individually during an outage to monitor how long they will last. Plus, since we have two full-sized refrigerators and a deep freezer, outfitting each with a battery backup that can last days would be expensive.

The Solix E10 system has reliably kicked in during every storm during my testing and powered our home during multiple outages. Only one outage wasn't predicted when someone ran into a utility pole, but the 20% battery capacity got us through until it was repaired.

The Anker app is super useful to monitor that, as you can not only monitor the usage, but also see a real-time estimate of how long the battery will last.

Since the system has a sub-20 millisecond activation time, I also noticed that my brownouts are completely gone. The lights no longer flicker, and my smart home tech doesn't need to reboot because the power dipped for just a second or two.

Anker Solix E10 review: Should you buy it

A whole-home battery system is certainly not cheap. It's much more than a 5KmAh battery pack for your iPhone.

But for anyone who lives in an area with questionable power, frequent inclement weather, expensive energy rates, or is looking to go more off-grid, it's the best solution.

More and more options have launched in the last few years, and I believe the Anker Solix E10 is the most approachable and customizable yet.

If you don't want to go all-out, you can opt for an E10 and one battery. As time goes on, outfit your system with additional batteries, yard- or roof-mounted solar panels, or the tri-fuel smart generator.

Speaking of generators, I much prefer this over a regular gas generator. Most of those have just a few AC outlets you have to run cables to, but they also need regular maintenance and usually gas.

Using a battery system, it's always ready to go, silent, and you don't have to do anything. It simply kicks in when necessary, and if you do opt for that tri-fuel generator, it can run indefinitely.

The E10 system can be mounted indoors or outdoors, so it can withstand the elements. It still needs to be installed by an electrician, but it was a relatively quick and painless process.

I'd still recommend this system based on its setup and performance, but I still want Matter to be in the picture. It's the one thing holding it back from being basically perfect for me.

Anker Solix E10 review: Pros

• Easy installation for pros
• Whole-home backup for up to 15 days on battery
• Modular system to expand as needed
• Optional Tri-fuel generator to power home & batteries
• Two standard MC4 solar inputs
• Easy-to-use app
• Storm Guard to auto-backup batteries
• Track energy savings
• Store inside or outside

Anker Solix E10 review: Cons

• No Matter support
• Not as rich app compared to competition

Anker Solix E10 rating: 4 out of 5

Where to buy the Anker Solix E10

You can customize your own Anker Solix E10 system on Amazon, starting at $4,099.