Jackery at IFA 2026: three Explorer Plus v2 units and a UPS for your fridge

What Jackery is announcing for IFA 2026

On 17 August 2026, Jackery published the list of what it will show at IFA in Berlin, Europe’s consumer electronics show, held this year from 4 to 8 September. The brand, best known for its black and orange portable power stations, has scheduled a launch event for 4 September at 3 pm CEST (hall 2.2, stand 114), with two announcements that matter to us directly.

First, a second generation of the Explorer Plus range: Explorer 1000 Plus v2, Explorer 2000 Plus v2 and a new flagship, the Explorer 3600 Plus. Second, the FridgeGuard, a far more unusual object: a slim backup battery designed to protect a single appliance in the home, the refrigerator.

Around those two, Jackery is also pushing its fixed residential ecosystem (SolarVault 3 series, solar roof tiles, EnergyGuard Max storage), which belongs to the world of professional installation rather than the portable power station. We are focusing here on what plugs into a socket and travels with you.

Explorer Plus v2: three modular stations from 1 to 3.5 kWh

Jackery is being sparing with detail, but the press release already sets the outline. All three models share a LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate) chemistry rated for more than 6,000 charge cycles while retaining at least 70 % of capacity, upgraded AC, USB-C and USB-A outputs, solar charging presented as more efficient, and above all add-on battery packs that let you grow capacity after the purchase.

Those 6,000 cycles deserve a moment of translation: at one full cycle a day, that is more than sixteen years before the pack drops to 70 % of its original capacity. It is one of the concrete advantages of LiFePO4 over conventional lithium-ion, a comparison we break down in our feature on Li-ion versus LiFePO4. In real household use, where a station rarely takes a full cycle every day, that lifespan comfortably outlasts your buying horizon.

Be careful how you read those capacities, though: the headline figure is the cell capacity, not what comes out of the socket. Between inverter efficiency and standby draw, expect 10 to 20 % less in practice on a mains output. We ran through that calculation in what a power station’s Wh figure is really worth.

FridgeGuard: keeping the fridge cold through an outage

This is the genuine curiosity of the announcement. The FridgeGuard is not a general-purpose power station: it is a dedicated home UPS, slim (about 2.6 in, or 6.6 cm, thick, for 10.5 kg), designed to slide beside or behind the refrigerator and serve nothing else.

• 1,024 Wh of capacity, expandable with an add-on battery;
• 800 W continuous, 1,600 W peak to absorb the inrush current when the compressor kicks in;
• switchover to battery in under 10 ms, meaning a genuine UPS function rather than a simple transfer relay;
• up to 15 hours of stated runtime on a refrigerator, 30 hours with the expansion pack;
• bypass mode: once charged, mains power passes straight through the unit without going via the battery.

The 10 ms figure is the one to remember. A fridge compressor shrugs off a one-second cut, but the control electronics in recent appliances will reboot. That switchover time puts the FridgeGuard in the same category as a computer UPS, and makes it usable on other sensitive loads: a CPAP machine, an aquarium pump, a home office setup. Jackery claims compatibility with ‘99 % of modern refrigerators’.

This very specialised format answers a real instinct: during an outage, the first worry is the contents of the freezer. We covered the right reflexes in our guide on what to do during a power cut, where rule number one remains keeping the door shut.

What the US launch already tells us about pricing

Jackery has announced neither prices nor European availability. But these products did not appear from nowhere: the same range launched in the United States in June 2026 under the HomePower name, and the FridgeGuard has been on sale there since the summer. The capacities line up watt-hour for watt-hour with the figures announced for Berlin.

Treat those numbers as an order of magnitude, not a European price list, and keep two caveats in mind. First, a US price is shown before local sales tax, whereas a European price includes VAT. Second, nothing guarantees identical configurations: the naming already differs between continents, so do the socket and mains frequency, and Jackery regularly adjusts its ranges market by market.

What is worth keeping is the scale: an entry model priced like a good current 1 kWh station, a flagship playing in the home-backup league, and a FridgeGuard positioned as a household fixture rather than an outdoor accessory.

Should you wait until 4 September to buy?

It depends on what you are after, and the answer is not the same in both cases.

You want a versatile power station now

Do not wait. A generation change is above all the moment when the outgoing generation gets discounted. The Jackery Explorer 1000 v2 and the Explorer 2000 Plus remain excellent machines, and the direct competition has not gone anywhere: our comparison of the best power stations still stands. Nothing shown in Berlin will make those models bad overnight.

You want to protect your home

Here, give it a few weeks. Home backup is precisely the ground Jackery is moving onto, and you are better off comparing the FridgeGuard and the Explorer 3600 Plus against their rivals with European prices in hand. Several stations already on sale include a comparable automatic backup function, among them the EcoFlow Delta 3 Plus, with no need to wait for September: we review them in our 2026 comparison.

We will update this article as soon as the 4 September press conference takes place, with full specifications and, we hope, European pricing.