so I rely on my grandson who is a motorcycle mechanic and knows all about anything with a small engine. There are huge price differences between brands and available features. I have a Honda eu3000i. It has, I think a 2200 watt output. Now I got it cheap because my grandson knows where the deals are and he found it used. I had a smaller Honda and he let me trade up with him because he was getting a huge one for his house and my smaller one fit his needs for camping. The price on mine would be about $2,200 new (gasp!), but I have far less in mine thanks to him. Their are generators out there that have that much output for one fourth of the price.
What you are paying for with the Honda is quiet operation and reliability. I can't speak for every brand, but I can tell you most people on my street because they are on fixed incomes have the cheaper ones. Let me just say for the last two days my street sounded like the pits at a NASCAR race track. But I'm a bit of a gear head so that didn't bother me. Mine was by far the quietest one. It's rated at 53 decibels. The cheaper ones are really intended for use at construction sites and places where noise doesn't matter. They would not make you a good neighbor at a campsite or apartment building.
Then there are other bells and whistles like electric start vs pulling a rope. Mine has both. My neighbor just bought an inexpensive one but it has a remote start key fob. The Honda has a feature called an eco throttle. The engine will idle low and rev up only as much as it needs to according to the demand. It does this automatically and saves some fuel. DO some research, most of them have a decibel rating you can find on the manufacturers website.
Another important tip: Don't wait for the power outage to go buy extention cords. Last year the power was out here for seven days and you couldn't find an extention cord within 100 mile of here. Same goes for gas cans. Keep them full and if you are not going to use the gas within about three months add a product called Stabil. It's a gas preservative and will keep your gas fresh for up to two years.
Any way, being new to this, that's about all I know. Hope this helps somewhat.
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