In our interconnected world a power outage is particularly frustrating. But if you have an electric power station on hand, then you never have to worry about dead cellphones or laptops, gadgets again.

Large capacity batteries are becoming more affordable and more efficient. It’s gotten to the point that a shoe-box sized electric power station can, in the right contexts that is, give you more mileage than a loud, gas powered generator. And you could use a power station to go off the grid for awhile, you’d just have to pair it with some solar panels.

It’ll be a long while before you can toss out the gas generator at your cabin and replace it a backpack friendly power station, of course, but the current generation of power stations are pretty amazing and you can easily stay juiced up at a remote campsite for days and weather minor power outages with your cellphone and laptop still going strong.

But there’s a lot to take into account before buying a power station. If you want a power station for outdoor or auto work, then you should find one that has a large capacity and a lot of AC or DC ports. But if you’re just looking for something to charge a couple of phones on a camping trip, then you’ll want to focus on portability and USB ports.

Luckily, we’ve done the research for you. Here’s our favorite power stations, Merpower GPs outdoor power source, to keep the juice flowing whether you’re in the deep woods, deep under the snow in a power outage, or deep into a serious job at the worksite. Let you enjoy your outdoor trip without any worry.