Hykon Halo 1200: a lithium inverter and battery in one 21 kg box, tested with a drill

Most Kerala homes have an inverter and battery in a corner, and most of those batteries are lead-acid, weigh fifty kilos, need their water checked, and are replaced every five or six years. The Hykon Halo 1200 is a different shape of answer: a 1,200 VA inverter and a 100 Ah lithium battery built into one enclosure that weighs 21 kilograms, has no exposed terminals, and plugs into a wall socket. We are a Hykon dealer, so read this as a product we sell and have tested, not as an independent review.

What is inside

Inverter capacity of 1,200 VA, with a usable load of about 960 watts. A 12-volt, 100 Ah lithium battery inside the case. A second 100 Ah pack can be added underneath, taking the system to 200 Ah, and packs connect in parallel. On the back: a cooling fan, the AC output taken through a standard plug, and a 125-amp DC MCB for the battery that trips on any battery emergency and is locked for transport, so the first thing to do after unboxing is release that lock.

For comparison, a conventional 100 Ah tubular battery weighs around 50 kg and its inverter another 8 kg, so a like-for-like lead-acid setup is close to 60 kg in two pieces. This is 21 kg in one, and one person carries it.

Two modes, and why they matter

The unit runs in either UPS mode or inverter mode. In UPS mode it switches to battery as soon as the mains drops below about 200 volts, which protects sensitive electronics from a brownout rather than only from a blackout. In inverter mode it tolerates the line down to about 120 volts before switching, which stretches the battery on a poor supply. Most homes want UPS mode for the computer and the router and do not much care which mode runs the fans; the switch is on the front.

The display is a two-segment LED panel, and it is the part that a non-technical owner will value: grid voltage, charging current, output load in watts, battery voltage, and plain fault words such as overload and low battery. Older inverters give you one blinking light for every problem, and half the service calls we take on them are an overload being read as a battery fault.

The test

We connected a 450-watt drill and cut through a square metal tube on inverter output alone. The display showed the drill drawing about 168 watts at working load, comfortably within the unit's capacity, and the battery voltage held steady at around 13 volts through the cut with no overload trip. That is a fair proxy for a household's evening: fans, lights, television, router, a laptop charger, all at once, is well under 960 watts. It will not run an air conditioner, an induction cooktop or a water pump, and it is not sold as something that will.

Safety and installation

There are no exposed battery terminals and no exposed charging area; everything is inside the case. On a conventional setup the terminals are on the back of the inverter and the battery sits open beside it, and a child touching them is a real risk we have seen. Here there is nothing to touch.

Installation is a plug. The unit is single-phase, which is fine in a three-phase house because an inverter only ever feeds one phase anyway. If your house already has inverter wiring, unplug the old unit's input and output and plug this one into the same socket and output point. No electrician, no DC wiring, no acid. That also makes it suited to a rented house: it leaves with you.

Life, warranty and price

Lithium packs of this type are rated for a working life of around ten years, against five or six for tubular lead-acid, with no maintenance in between. The manufacturer's warranty is two years on the inverter, four years on the battery, and seven years on the transformer. At the time of filming, in August 2024, the price started at about ₹42,000, with occasional offers either side of that. That is more than a lead-acid setup up front and less over ten years, once you count the replacement battery you will not buy.

Who it is for: a home that wants a clean, safe, maintenance-free backup for essential loads, or a rental, or anywhere a 60 kg battery bank is impractical. Who it is not for: a home that wants backup for heavy loads, which needs a larger inverter and a proper battery bank, and a home with solar that wants the roof to charge the battery, which is a hybrid MPPT or a hybrid system, not this. Ask us which one you are; it takes a minute.