Anker SOLIX Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro: A 5 kWh Battery That Isn't Plug-In Solar in the UK

The Anker SOLIX Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro is a 5,024 Wh home battery with 5,000 W of solar input and 2,500 W of AC output, on sale in the UK at £1,699 for orders shipping from 8 September 2026. Anker's UK listing says it must be hardwired by a qualified electrician, so in Great Britain it is a small home storage system, not a plug-in device.

That distinction is the whole review. Anker unveiled the Solarbank 4 Pro at the OXO Tower in London on 27 August, the day plug-in solar became legal, and pre-sales opened the same day. On the Continent the Solarbank range is sold as balcony solar storage, and the 4 Pro carries an 800W default output setting for exactly that plug-and-play market. In the UK the law is different, and so is Anker's own advice. If you arrived here searching for an Anker plug-in kit, the honest answer is that Anker doesn't have one on the register: the certification tracker shows no Anker device under the Plug-in Solar Type at all.

What the Anker SOLIX Solarbank 4 Pro Is

Anker describes it as an all-in-one solar battery: a single 50 kg box, weatherproofed for outdoor mounting, that takes the DC from up to 12 solar panels, stores it in a 5 kWh LiFePO4 battery, and feeds it back into the house through its built-in inverter and a hardwired connection to the consumer unit. Four independent MPPT inputs, each rated to 1,250 W, give the 5,000 W input figure, which is more PV power than most UK homes can mount. The battery is rated for 10,000 cycles, and up to five BP5000 expansion packs, 5 kWh each, take the storage capacity to 30 kWh.

On the output side there are two figures. The on-grid output, the power it can push into your home's circuits through the hardwired connection, is 2,500 W. The off-grid port, used during a power cut, is rated to 2,990 W, with a 10 ms switchover that Anker calls UPS. It can also charge from the grid at up to 2,500 W, which is what makes the tariff features work. The full specification, as Anker lists it:

One thing the listing doesn't settle is the warranty. Anker's UK page shows two figures, 15 years and 10 years, without saying which applies to the battery and which to the rest of the system. Read the warranty document before you buy; the difference matters on a product you expect to run for a decade.

Solarbank 4 Pro UK Price and Availability

Anker's UK store lists the Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro at £1,699 against a list price of £2,129, a £430 launch discount, and a bundle with one BP5000 expansion battery at £2,998 against £3,728. Tech Digest, reporting from the launch, put the BP5000 on its own at £1,299. Anker's shipping note reads: orders placed before 4 September will begin shipping from 8 September, in the order they are received.

Add the installation. Anker's page says the product must be installed by a registered qualified electrician on a dedicated hardwired circuit, and that is a cost the £1,699 doesn't include and Anker doesn't quote. It varies with your consumer unit, the run to the mounting position and whether the backup side is wired, so get a price before you order the box. The Smart Meter Gen 2, which the tariff features rely on, is sold separately.

Why the Solarbank 4 Pro Is Not a Plug-In Kit in the UK

Three separate things put it outside the plug-in route, and any one would do.

• Anker says so. The UK listing states that under current UK regulations the system must be hardwired and installed by a qualified electrician, and that plug-in installation is not currently permitted. That is the manufacturer ruling out the socket.
• The law excludes batteries. The statutory definition of a plug-in microgenerator excludes a device with battery storage, because a battery can charge from the grid. No storage system of any brand qualifies; our battery rules report sets out the wording.
• The register agrees. Anker cites an ENA type test reference, ANKER/19908/V1, for the 2.5 kW model and says G98 applies on a connect-and-notify basis. Both are true. But that record is not under the register's Plug-in Solar Type, and only a Compliant record under that Type makes a product a plug-in kit.

None of this makes it a bad product. It makes it a conventional small storage installation: an installer connects it, then notifies your distribution network operator under G98, exactly as for a rooftop system. Our G98 notification guide covers each operator. The 800W default output is the European setting and has no legal meaning here.

Smart Meter, Tariff Modes and the £770 Claim

The case for a 5 kWh battery in a UK home is mostly about tariffs, and Anker has built for that. The system offers a time-of-use mode and a dynamic tariff mode, and Anker says it is compatible with Octopus and more than 870 electricity suppliers for tariff data, so it can fill from the grid when power is cheap, hold solar energy for the evening, and discharge when power is dear. It supports Home Assistant integration for anyone who runs their own automation, and the separate smart meter gives it the whole-house consumption reading it needs to match output to demand, so an appliance draws from the battery rather than the grid and nothing is exported for nothing.

Anker's launch claim, as Tech Digest reported it, is a saving of up to £770 a year and a payback of roughly 3.3 years. Treat that as the best case it is. It assumes a tariff with a wide gap between cheap and expensive periods, enough solar and grid charging to cycle the battery most days, and a household that can shift its load. A flat-tariff home with two panels will see a fraction of it. We have no independent figure and we're not going to invent one; the savings calculator models the solar half for your own address, and the tariff half depends on numbers only your supplier can give you.

Keep it separate from the plug-in kit savings you may have read about, too. The government's £70 to £110 a year estimate is for an 800-watt plug-in kit with no storage. A 5 kWh battery with 5,000 W of PV is a different sum in both directions: far more capacity, and far more cost to recover.

Solarbank 4 Pro vs EcoFlow STREAM 5000

The comparison people are actually searching for isn't with a balcony kit. It's with the EcoFlow STREAM 5000, launched a few weeks earlier into the same 5 kWh, 5,000 W slot and also sold in the UK for professional installation. On paper they are close.

EcoFlow's headline output is higher and its launch price £100 lower, though the STREAM 5000 is on pre-order with the balance due from 15 September while Anker is shipping. Anker's four MPPTs are a real advantage if your panels face more than one way or suffer partial shade, and its Home Assistant support will decide it for some buyers. Our STREAM 5000 review and model guide cover EcoFlow's side in the same detail; for UK buyers of either system, the installation quote belongs in the comparison before the sticker price does.

Solarbank 4 Pro vs Solarbank 2 Pro

The name invites the wrong comparison. The Solarbank 2 Pro is a fixed 2 kWh unit with up to 800 W of panel input, sold at around £899 and, on the Continent, plugged into a socket. The 4 Pro is a different class: two and a half times the storage capacity, six times the solar input, three times the output power, expandable, and hardwired. If your question is a balcony with two panels and a socket, the 2 Pro is the closer fit, and even that is a conventional install in the UK because of the battery. If your question is a home battery that happens to take a lot of solar, the 4 Pro is the one Anker built for it.

Who the Solarbank 4 Pro Is For

• Homeowners on a time-of-use tariff who can mount four or more panels and want storage they can grow. This is the product's home ground.
• Anyone who wants backup power for a fridge, router and a few essentials through a power cut, with a backup circuit wired in.
• Not renters or flat-dwellers who cannot have a hardwired installation. For a balcony and a socket, a verified plug-in kit from the tracker is the product the law was written for, and it costs a third as much.

Where to Buy the Solarbank 4 Pro

Anker sells the Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro direct through its UK store, which is where the £1,699 launch price and the shipping schedule apply. We haven't found a stable UK listing elsewhere at the time of writing; the Amazon link below is a search, not a specific listing, so check the seller and the price against Anker's own.

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