Anker's Big New Solar Battery: What Are the Reviewers Saying?

Five kilowatt-hours of storage, room for twelve solar panels and a socket that can keep a heater going in a power cut. Anker's latest Solarbank has reviewers talking, but is it one for Irish homes?

Solar panels and a battery sound like a natural pairing. Catch the power when the sun does show up, then use it later instead of buying it in.

One kind of home battery tries to make that simpler. The battery and the electronics to connect your panels and your home all live in one box, and it's often sold with friendly words like "plug-in". Some can also run an appliance directly from a backup socket when the power goes.

Before anyone clears a space beside the socket: as of 6 October 2026, there's no approved way we know of in Ireland to plug a battery like this into an ordinary socket and have it feed your house. On sale and allowed aren't the same thing. Our explainer on plug-in home batteries covers the bigger picture.

Anker's latest is a good example, and reviewers have been busy with it.

Meet the Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro

In the UK, Anker sells it as the Anker SOLIX Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro. In Germany, and in a lot of reviews, it's simply the Solarbank 4 Pro. It replaces the Solarbank 3 Pro, and the big jump is capacity: 5,024 Wh (about 5 kWh, the same units as on your electricity bill), up from 2,688 Wh.

It's built for a decent-sized set of panels. It has four separate solar inputs, each managing its own panels, so they don't all need to face the same way. Each takes up to 1,250 W, 5,000 W in all, with room for up to 12 panels. There's also a backup socket on the unit itself, rated at 2,500 W (up from 1,200 W on the old model), for running things directly in an emergency. Anker also claims an IP66 rating, which means it's sealed against dust and water and can live outdoors, so a bit of Irish rain shouldn't bother it. It also claims 10,000 charge cycles, a cycle being one full fill and empty.

What it actually does for you

Think of it as a holding tank for your solar. On a bright day the panels feed the box, it covers whatever the house is using, and it keeps the rest instead of sending it out to the grid. Come the evening, when the kettle and the telly are on and the sun has clocked off, it hands that stored power back. Pair it with Anker's smart meter and it watches what the house is drawing and adjusts its output to match.

Then there's the backup socket. When the power goes, you can plug an appliance straight into the side of the box and keep it running. It won't keep the whole house going, but a lamp or a heater during an outage is no small thing.

Under current regulations it isn't a plug-it-in-yourself job, though. Anker shows an 800 W socket option but marks it "NOT currently permitted in the UK", and its recommendation for now says installation must be carried out "by a registered competent electrician via a dedicated hardwired circuit". Germany is much the same: ComputerBase says the full 2,500 W needs an electrician-fitted connection - however, to use it with a normal socket with 800W output in Germany you can just do it yourself. In the UK, batteries were left out of the new plug-in rules, which only cover solar panels.

As for cost, ComputerBase saw a German price of €1,999, cut to €1,599 with the smart meter included. Anker claims up-to £769.82 a year in savings and a payback of just over three years, but that's Anker's own model on UK tariffs, with installation costs left out, so take it with a pinch of salt.

What the reviewers are saying

ComputerBase put it through a hands-on test and found little to criticise technically. The German site's take: it performs well, but you only get the full benefit with the panels and the proper installation to match. If you won't use the extra power, it reckons the lighter Solarbank 3 Pro is still worth a look.

truthful.reviews brought its own measurements. Run from full down to 1% through the backup socket, the battery delivered 4.74 kWh over about two and a half hours, which the reviewer puts at roughly 95.3% discharge efficiency, measured against 99% of the rated 5,024 Wh. A lamp didn't visibly flicker when the backup kicked in, and a fan heater kept running through all four switchover tests, though in three of them you could hear it slow briefly before recovering. Paired with a Shelly smart meter (a third-party meter that tells the battery what the house is using), it matched its output to the house's demand within a few watts under a steady load; a hairdryer's sudden draw caused a brief overshoot before it settled.

The weak spot was low light. In weak morning light, the solar input mostly read 0 W, with only brief 10-30 W blips, and it reached useful levels later than a SunEnergyXT 500 the reviewer had tested earlier in similar conditions. Pairing a third-party meter isn't fully self-explanatory either. Those flaws cost it "polish points", but the overall verdict is positive: a capable battery for four or more panels with backup in mind, and oversized for a simple two-panel setup.

There are some good UK video first looks too. Anker Solix Solarbank 4 Pro: UK Setup and First use - Plug-in READY! walks through setup and the app, and shows how a hardwired connection unlocks the full 2,500 W on its own: "this connector tells the device that it has been hardwired in and it unlocks the full potential".

Don't Buy a Solar Battery Until You See This: Anker SOLIX Solarbank 4 Pro is a handy plain-English guide to the UK paperwork, including G98, the rule for telling the regional distribution network operator (DNO) about a new system. One small correction: the video says "within 30 days of installing your system", but the G98 rule and Anker's own manual give the installer 28 days. Better still, the creator has committed to a 12-month test, logged publicly.

Anker Solarbank 4: Plug-In Solar - First UK Install Tested follows a real customer installation, and the installer's advice is blunt: "Go wired and your export power jumps from 800 W to 2,500 W".

The Irish catch

In the UK, compliant plug-in solar panels became legal on 27 August 2026 under new regulations, but batteries weren't included in the new rules.

Ireland isn't there yet. In July, an Oireachtas committee heard that plug-in solar panels would need to be hardwired by a registered installer and notified to ESB Networks to be compliant, and that solar was first in the queue, ahead of batteries. As of 6 October 2026, nothing official has changed that.

ESB Networks says that if you want a battery to keep the whole house going in a power cut, it has to be designed, installed and tested by a Registered Electrical Contractor, with a proper changeover switch.

The Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro isn't confirmed for sale in Ireland yet either, and no, we haven't had one in for a test drive.

So, is it worth it?

If you have, or are planning, a bigger solar array and you want proper backup alongside it, the reviews are encouraging: a strong discharge result, dependable backup and little to fault on the hardware. If you've two panels and modest plans, you'd be paying for capacity you won't use. There's another reason to keep an eye on it. Anker's manual shows it can also charge from the grid and schedule itself around time-of-use or dynamic tariffs, the kind where electricity costs less at certain times of day. So if Irish rules ever allow a battery like this to be plugged in, it could suit homes without solar too, filling up on cheap night-rate electricity and using it later. That only pays if the gap between the cheap and dear rates is big enough: ComputerBase reckons on about 20% lost storing grid power and feeding it back, and you'd need enough use in the dear hours to spend what you've stored.

For Irish buyers, it's one to watch rather than one to buy for now. Keep an eye on that 12-month test, and on what Ireland decides about plug-in solar and storage. The hardware looks ready; the rules here haven't caught up yet.

Note: At the time of writing, Techknow Ireland has no commercial relationship with any manufacturer or provider of battery or power services.

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