If you’re looking to get the most out of your dollar when it comes to buying a portable generator, then the Westinghouse WGen2000 is your best bet. It produces a great deal of power, has a functional and sturdy design and an incredibly long running time. It’s somewhat sparse on the outlet available, but it is enough if you don’t need to run large appliances or RVs.
The most impressive thing about this portable generator is how long it lasts. Westinghouse lists that you can expect 20 hours of continuous run time on a single tank of fuel. This is the longest run time of all the generators we evaluated. This may be, in part, due to its large 6.6-gallon fuel tank. The only model to exceed this capacity was our top overall pick, with a 7.2-gallon tank.
This portable generator weighs in at just 90 pounds, definitely not the lightest in the category, but well below the average of 130 pounds. Given that, it’s remarkably powerful. The 212cc engine can produce 2,000 running watts and 2,500 surge watts. This is about half the power as our top pick – the Generac GP5500. Nevertheless, it’s still a good choice to take onto the job site or as a short-term backup for essential household electronics.
However, it’s inadequate to power large home appliances like dishwashers, refrigerator and laundry machines. Additionally, the control panel only has 4 common household outlets, no industrial locking outlets or car-charger style 12V outlets, which makes it good to power some power tools, computers and televisions. Anything that you would normally plug into the walls of your home can be powered by this model. Just don’t expect to run an RV or refrigerator with it.
The main selling point of this model is the price. At the time of this writing you can get a Westinghouse WGen2000 for about $300. This is more than a thousand dollars less than the most expensive model we reviewed, the Honda EM500S and provides similar, if less powerful, results. Suffice it to say, it’s not a top-of-the-line generator, but not everyone needs that – and at $300, the price to power ratio is the best we saw in our review.
This generator also has a generous three-year warranty period, which is the longest in our review. Most other models only had a 1- to 2-year warranty period. This may not seem like a huge deal, but in our experience, the longer the warranty period, the longer you can expect a product to last.
In terms of pure value, the Westinghouse WGen2000 is the clear choice. It’s not as powerful as many other products we reviewed, but it still a fine solution to take with you anywhere you need extra power. It has the longest run time of any portable generator we reviewed by a mile and gives you four regular outlets to run your devices and electronics. That’s a lot for a $300 machine.