What Are The Best Generator Brands?
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My opinions on Generator brands- the good and the bad
Do you know what are the best generator brands? If you are considering purchasing a generator, and know what fuel you want to use, what features, what wattage range, and so on, you are still faced with a huge range of options.
Some people just purchase the most expensive one, assuming that it is the best. That may even be true sometimes, but a lot of people do not have the budget for that kind of spending- at the time of writing this article, I have in my driveway a Wen generator, and the price difference would have cost more than my last car purchase if I had bought it as a Honda with the same features (or as close as I can, since Honda does not currently offer dual fuel generators).
Am I satisfied with my generator? Yes. Would it serve everyone else’s needs just as well? No. Should everyone just buy the same brand? Not necessarily.
Please keep in mind this is an opinion piece. All the links in this are affiliate links, which means I get paid if you purchase something through them, but I am not being supported or sponsored by any of these specific brands.
Feel free to email me and ask questions- I cannot guarantee that I will answer all of my mail, but I can try.
A word on generator brands
This post is not sponsored by anyone but by my personal opinions. To repeat, there are no companies that have sent me free samples of their products, and no one is paying me to write this thing praising their product (or putting down the competition). Feel free to disagree with me, and if you have an opinion of your own on this subject, I would love to hear from you about it.
There are a bunch of links in this article: they are meant to give you an idea of what a given brand looks like/is priced like/how things are spelled etc, not a specific model of generator. Honesty and the FTC compel me to say that these are affiliate links, and if you purchase something through one of them I get a kickback, Feel free to do so, but the biggest reason I am linking to Amazon for some of these instead of the company pages is so that my editor does not learn to force choke me through the internet. I am pretty sure that she is learning how to in her spare time, just to deal with my terrible puns.
A lot of these brands are organized by what is called “Duty cycle”, which is what percentage of the time it is designed to operate at a given workload. In some equipment, duty cycle is meant as seconds per minute, or minutes per ten minutes- Generators it is typically expressed as hours at a given load. More expensive generators are usually designed to have a higher duty cycle- in other words, to work longer for harder.
I am basically ignoring the high-end industrial or commercial generator brands- Ingersol Rand being a prime example. It is not that I don’t like these machines, but that this article is more targeted at people who have a smaller budget, and want an affordable option to prepare for emergencies. Additionally, I do not have anywhere near as much experience with large commercial or industrial generators, but would welcome feedback from someone who does.
Please remember that this is my opinion: if you disagree with me, feel free to write an article and send it to me so that I can look at publishing your opinion as well. I do not intend this as a be all end all, but as an opinion piece meant to help with researching what generator you want to get. Heck, you might even convince me I am wrong.
Lastly, this is not exhaustive. Feel free to email me and ask that I write about specific brands- if I get enough requests, I can write an article about it.
The Gold Standard
Honda is often considered the “gold standard”- it makes some excellent generators, but they cost in proportion to that. Often, other generator brands will use Honda as a comparison to show their capabilities and cost more effectively- I have seen a number of Harbor Freight ads that talk about how they stack up to Honda and try to show how they cost less for the same feature set.
In point of fact, a lot of much less expensive generators are actually Honda “Clones”- mechanical copies made of Honda designs that are usually built to a lower standard. Honda tends to make good enough designs that even when they are made to a less strict specification they still work fairly well.
Honda also has all sorts of accessories, and the parts are very common because the generators are so common- if a place services generators, sells parts for generators, or even sells parts for lawn equipment or power sports, there is a good chance they will carry Honda or Honda compatible parts.
In my experience, Honda really shines in the longevity and reliability departments. They have been fairly innovative in the past, and when I worked in film, the portable Honda quiet generators were nothing short of amazing.
I find it hard to say bad things about Honda generators, except on two fronts:
They cost a lot, (often several times what the competition does for something with the same features)
They will void your warranty if you put anything aftermarket on them, such as a propane kit- and to my knowledge, that is the only way to run propane as a fuel on a Honda generator.
(OK, so three things- they don’t offer a propane generator option, and I am fairly fond of propane as generator fuel).
Other Premium brands
DeWalt, and Kohler (among other premium/high cost brands) often are designed to run for longer and harder, but may not actually give any end benefit to a casual user. If you are doing construction or running a welder off of a generator for extended periods fairly constantly, it can absolutely be worth it to purchase a premium generator, but if you expect your used case to be small emergencies (six to ten hours at a stretch, less than five to ten times a year), a less premium brand may be enough to meet your usage needs.
Yamaha, (think motorcycle/piano company) Ford (same as the car company), and similar brands often provide a less expensive but still high quality generator- I highly encourage you to look at reviews for generators when purchasing one in order to find one that works for you. I have found that if a company makes engines for other applications (cars, motorcycles, lawn tools, heavy equipment) they will often make good generators.
Inexpensive, but will still do the job
There are a number of generators in this category that use inexpensive imported motors (typically from china), but seem to do a better job at sourcing them and making sure of quality assurance. These tend to cost a lot less than the premium brands, but still do a good enough job for a lot of people.
I recommend generators like this if you are a bit price sensitive, or if you know that it is a backup to a backup. If your life or livelihood depends on having one particular generator working right the first time every time, these may not be the right brand for you. If, however, you will be using it semi-regularly, have good maintenance habits, and are not afraid to do a little bit of repair work from time to time, these can be a great way to go.
I prefer Wen as a rule of thumb, since in my experience they do a good job at balancing cost and value- they are not as good as a high priced brand, but for the cost, they seem to do a good job. If I have the money for it, I prefer to buy something higher end, but when I need something cheap that will work, I have found Wen works often enough to be worth the small risk. I have seen a homestead run off of an inexpensive Wen generator for a week at a time, when the generator was not designed for anything like that workload.
To be clear, that was a week straight with the only stop being to add more fuel- that kind of workload is the kind of thing that will normally void warranties, and despite that, that generator worked quite well for some time, and still works (though not as often).
Predator is really well rated, and surprisingly inexpensive. They are harbor freights house brand, and can be purchased easily. They occasionally change the exact models unexpectedly, so getting parts can be a bit of a problem- make sure to keep your model number on hand, and I strongly recommend keeping the owner’s manual that comes with it. Predator has developed a following, and they seem to be doing well for themselves when it comes to reliability and performance.
Westinghouse has done well by me, but I know other people who have had bad experiences. They produce a few interesting things that I have had my eye on, such as a quiet propane generator, and even with these relatively unusual things, seem to have reasonable reliability.
There are other generators that fall into this category, but I do not have the personal experiences to back up other brands being here. As with all things, do your research before committing to one of these, and
And the rest
There are a lot of inexpensive generators that use imported motors out there that do not do as good a job at quality control in my experience- Sportsman, Champion, and Firman just to name a few that commonly have inexpensive Chinese-made motors. The reliability of these heavily depends on the exact brand and model, so if you choose to purchase one of these, do your research. If you are mechanically inclined, these can be a great deal, especially used, but be aware of what they are and how difficult they can be to get parts for or repair.
These generators tend to be more maintenance heavy while also being less reliable, so be aware of that. I actually own a Sportsman dual fuel 1500 watt generator that I have been very pleased with, but I have also had to do quite a bit of fussing around with it to get it to run correctly initially. When using these, I highly recommend doing all of the maintenance exactly on schedule, and keeping a tube of loctite or similar on hand for bolts that come off.
On a final note, there are a lot of no-name companies out there that stick a label on an alibaba special and then sell it on eBay/Amazon/what have you, and I have found that I am best off not using these products unless I know for sure what the actual model of the generator is- sometimes these generators are fine, because they are exactly the same as a model from a reputable company, and sometimes these generators are nothing more than a paperweight you had to fill with oil before you found out it did not work.
That said, I do not recommend purchasing a generator that you cannot find the brand of on the website of a major retailer- Bass Pro, for example, or Cabellas- or that you are unfamiliar with the brand of for other reasons. Being careful with your generator purchase (and spending a few extra dollars- usually not many thankfully) can really save your bacon. It is much cheaper to spend a little extra than to purchase two because the first one did not work and has no warranty.
This is the penned prepper- go learn something.