I love being prepared and have vowed to try my best to never let my phone run out of power if I can help it.

My backpack usually has two or three external batteries that are charged up and ready to go. Most portable external batteries are made small enough that you’d want to carry them around. Portable battery packs usually have a capacity of 25,000 milliamp-hours (92.5 watt-hours) or less, as that’s what’s allowed to be carried onto a commercial airplane.

I’ve also got a few big portable power stations in my closet. These are the size of drink coolers and they can weigh upwards of 50 pounds. They are designed to keep your gear running when you’re away from power or if your electricity is out. These batteries have a capacity of 500 Wh to 2,000 Wh. They also have AC inverters and AC outlets so you can plug in your home appliances, like your refrigerator.

There’s a newish class of external batteries that are placed in the middle — their capacity is too big to carry on an airplane, but they don’t necessarily include AC outlets.

Today I’m reviewing the Anker Solix C300 DC, ($199.99, anker.com). If it sounds familiar, it is because I included it in a Christmas gift guide a month ago.

I love the C300 DC, and I decided I wanted to tell you more about it.

Here’s my one sentence summary of this C300 DC review — I like this battery so much that I got one for my mother for Christmas.

My mom lives outside Houston, and her part of the country gets hit by the occasional tropical storm or hurricane every year or three. A few years back I gave mom a portable power station with a capacity of more than 1,500 Wh. This is not an easy thing for my 81-year-old mother to move around, but it has four wheels, and she can get it out of her closet and into the living room to power her coffee maker and radio and lights.

I’m glad mom has the big power station, but I wanted her to have something smaller and lighter to keep her phone and iPad charged if her power is out.

The Solix C300 DC weighs a bit over 6 pounds and it has a loop of fabric on top so you can carry it around. It measures 4.9 inches by 4.7 inches by 7.9 inches and it has a 288 Wh battery, which is about four times bigger than the biggest battery pack you can take on a plane.

The LifePO4 (Lithium iron phosphate) batteries should last for more than 3,000 charge cycles, so you can expect to get a decade of use, but the hardware warranty is three years.

Anker decided to leave the AC inverter out to save the size and weight, so as the name gives away, this power station provides DC power only.

The DC outlets include four USB-C ports, one USB-A port, one 12v car socket port and one 100W XT60 solar input port.

Two of the USB-C ports can provide 140W in and out. You charge the C300DC with the two high-speed USB-C ports. The great part is you can pump up to 140W to both of the ports at the same time for up to 280W of power input to charge the batteries from zero to 80 percent in just an hour. A 100-watt solar panel or a car outlet should charge it up in just 2.5 hours.

Available power to charge your gadgets is a combined 300W between all the outputs. The unit can do pass-through charging — meaning you can charge the C300 DC while it is charging your gadgets.

Because the output is limited to 300W of DC output, this isn’t a battery pack that will power your coffee maker or hair dryer, but I was able to use it to power my CPAP machine. I had to buy a DC power adapter that uses the 12v car port. My CPAP does not use heat or the humidifier function and I was able to sleep with the CPAP for four nights from one battery charge.

Finally, my favorite feature of the C300 DC is an LED light that extends up from the top like a lantern. I love it when power station manufacturers include a light on their big battery packs. It just makes sense that you’ll be fumbling for these gadgets in the dark, so building in a light source is perfect.

The LED has three brightness levels that use one, two or three watts of power and the battery will keep the light on at the brightest level for almost 100 hours.

I have taken to packing this in my car when we go on trips and I use it at my bedside to power my phone, watch, Macbook Pro and CPAP without worrying about how far away the nearest plug is located.

After putting the C300 DC through its paces, one of my first thoughts was, “I want to get one of these for my mom.”

That’s about as high a compliment as I can give.

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