Besides phone, pads or lab tops? And what all will 400watts power? What are you useing?

 

Ham radio Hand held recharging.

 

Have not used the 400W version in the 2017 yet, but I did use the 150W version in my old truck to actually power a small tire inflator and pump up the tire on my zero turn mower. It would only run for about 10 seconds at a time before kicking the breaker, but I was able to get the tire pumped. 400W would run a small tire inflator no problem.

Similarly, two years ago we used the truck to run two extension cords into a cabin to power two lamps for lighting the place up. Let the truck idle for probably 3 hours, worked great.

400W is better than any other competitor on the market now.

 

Have not used it yet... Thinking it would be handy to recharge my DeWalt drill or other tools. Small Ice chest?

 

On my 2014 i found some laptops did not like the inverter in the truck (didnt blow anything up, just wouldn't power the laptops brick). Not sure what kind of tech they are using (square wave, modified sine wave) but pretty sure thats what caused the issues (DC to AC back to DC) Haven't had a chance to try the new inverter.

 

These items are exactly what I've used the 110 plug for in my 2012. Expect I'll do the same in the '17.

 

That's a good point, Fidel. All I know is that the inverter in the old trucks was in the bottom of the center console, and was pretty small. The new one is under the back seat and is much larger and more robust looking.

 

Mainly passenger cell phone charging that I don't want to have to bother with telling sync not to pair with.

 

It would be nice to know if the new inverter is a square wave. If so, there should be no problem powering the more sensitive electronics. It should be pretty easy to test with a string of LED lights. As long as the lights don't have a built in wave modifier, you can visually see the 60 Hz flashing when you look sideways at it. I don't have any but if anyone has a cheap set of LED christmas lights you can see if the flicker or not. Maybe it's time to get a little portable scope. Always wanted one.

 

It would be good to have USB charging ports which are not connected to SYNC for that very reason. I am considering adding two always on USB's to charge even when the truck is off, as has been discussed elsewhere.

 

I use it to charge my dewalt batts for work if I don't have my trailer on site, at least in the last gen truck, so far haven't needed it

 

There are USB "condoms" that you can get that only let voltage pass, not the data lines. For example: http://syncstop.com/.

 

That's pretty neat. Never heard of that. I wouldn't have a use for it but I could see where that could be useful. I can go into my phones USB settings and switch it to charging only.

 

Thanks puddintank. I shall order up a few to have on hand. I hate it when the system starts downloading all of someones phone when all they wanted was a few amp hours in the first place. Safe power and data and all that, ya know.

 

Do a search for charge only USB cable or charge only lightning cables.

been using those for a while. Amazon has quite a selection.