SolarMax Solar Inverters

There are at least three unrelated companies called SolarMax, so start here: the one sold in Pakistan is Pakistani. SolarMax(R) is a brand of Power Highway, 59 J Block, Johar Town, Lahore - which the website itself never tells you, but Google Play does. The official SolarMax Onyx app is published under the display name "OKASHA"; the verified "About the developer" block beneath it names POWER HIGHWAY at 59 J, Johar Town, Lahore 54782, and that address matches the head office on solarmax.pk ("Plot # 59, Block J, Johar Town, Lahore") exactly. The brand claims 2007 as its start, 30+ customer care centres and 99,000+ customers.

It is not the Swiss-then-German SolarMax: that brand belonged to Sputnik Engineering AG of Biel, founded 1991, bankrupt in 2014, rebuilt as SolarMax GmbH in Burgau, Bavaria - which itself went into insolvency proceedings at the Neu-Ulm district court on 29 November 2024, and whose domain solarmax.com returned a Cloudflare "DNS points to prohibited IP" error when we opened it today. It is also not SolarMax Technology, Inc. of Riverside, California (NASDAQ: SMXT), a US solar installer incorporated in 2008. If a salesman implies German or Swiss engineering, he is either confused or lying.

Live Pakistani listings on 2 August 2026 run Rs 65,000 to Rs 480,000. SolarMax publishes no price of its own - every product page on the official site says "Enquire Now" - so the entire market price for this brand is whatever four retailers happen to have typed. The floor is set by W11Stop's in-stock SM-SOLON-3KW at Rs 65,000; C-Power lists a "SolarMax 3KW MPPT" Rs 2,000 cheaper at Rs 63,000, but it is Sold Out, and a sold-out listing is not a price you can pay.

Current SolarMax lineup and prices (2 August 2026)

Two things in that table matter more than any single number. First, the ONYX UL 12/15/20kW three-phase models are on SolarMax's own website and on nobody's shelf - we could not open a single live Pakistani listing for them today. Second, look at the 6kW ONYX row: Rs 170,000 at C-Power to Rs 385,000 at SolarPanelMarket, a 126% spread, driven partly by real price differences and partly by four retailers using four different names ("Onyx Lite", "Onyx Dual Ultra", "Onyx 6KW IP65", "ONYX Ultra 6kw PV9000") for what SolarMax splits into two distinct products. Read the model code, not the marketing word.

Third, and least obvious: the cheapest SolarMax you can buy is not a SolarMax product SolarMax publishes. The Rs 65,000 SM-SOLON-3KW that sets the floor of this brand's price band appears on no page of solarmax.pk and has no datasheet among the 22 the company publishes - the only SOLON in the official lineup is the SOLON IP65 6kW. The same is true of the SOLON 3.6kW, 3.8kW and SOLON DUAL 6kW that four retailers stock. They may well be genuine older or channel-only stock, but you cannot check a specification you cannot download, and the warranty term for them is printed nowhere. If you are buying at the cheap end of this brand, you are buying entirely on the retailer's word.

Specifications

Honest assessment

Pros. The datasheets are real and specific. SolarMax publishes 22 of them, free, with full spec tables - which is more than most Pakistani badge brands manage, and materially more than the brand's rivals in its own price bracket. On price it is genuinely aggressive: the ORION ULTRA 11kW at Rs 254,000 on W11Stop's shelf on 2 August 2026 undercuts the MaxPower 11kW (Rs 340,000) and the Power Square Axpert Ultra 11kW (Rs 349,500) in the same store on the same day. The ONYX UL 10kW is a properly modern machine on paper - IP66, three MPPTs, 16kW of PV, 210A of battery current, 9-unit parallel, CAN/RS485 to a lithium BMS - and it is a real, current product with a 5-year parts warranty printed on its own datasheet. The service network claim (30+ centres, seven-day phone support) is at least a claim a local brand can be held to, which an unbadged import cannot.

Cons. Nothing about the company is independently verifiable. The website does not name the company that owns the brand; we had to get that from a Google Play developer record. It publishes no prices, no warranty policy document, no user manual, no certificate numbers, and no factory. Its own site has been running as a self-declared "interim site" long enough that the about page 404s. The official monitoring app has 1,000+ downloads and ten ratings - for a brand claiming 99,000+ customers, that is a number that does not fit. And retailers rewrite the product underneath you: c-power.pk's Onyx 10kW listing, the cheapest at Rs 425,000, prints IP65, -10 to 50C, and 6-unit parallel against the official datasheet's IP66, -25 to 60C and 9-unit parallel, and sells it under c-power's own 2-year replacement warranty rather than SolarMax's 5-year parts term.

Who should buy. Price-first buyers who will actually read a datasheet. If you want 11kW of dual-AC-input hybrid for Rs 250,000 and you understand you are buying an Axpert-class platform with a 2-year parts warranty and a 50C temperature ceiling, SolarMax is the cheapest honest way to get there. If you want documented BMS compatibility lists, a published warranty policy, firmware support commitments or a resale story, buy Solis, Goodwe or Huawei and pay the difference. Anyone being sold "German SolarMax" should walk out.

Pakistan reality check

The name is the trap. Three unrelated SolarMaxes, and only one of them is on your roof. The Swiss original (Sputnik Engineering, Biel, 1991) was a serious grid-tie inverter maker before it went bankrupt in 2014; the German successor in Burgau entered insolvency proceedings on 29 November 2024 and its solarmax.com domain does not resolve to a working site today. SolarMax Technology Inc in Riverside, California is a listed US installer that has never sold an inverter in Pakistan. The Pakistani SolarMax is a Lahore badge that has been trading since 2007 - a legitimate thing to be, but not a European engineering pedigree. Any dealer claim of German, Swiss or American origin is a claim you should ask to see on paper, and there is no paper.

The manufacturer publishes no price, so the "market price" is four retailers' typing. This is the single most consequential fact for a buyer. With no MSRP, the spread is whatever the channel wants: the 6kW ONYX class swings 126% between sellers today, and BuySolar lists both the ORION ULTRA 8kW and the ORION ULTRA 11kW at the identical Rs 345,000 - a tell that the number was not researched for either. W11Stop's own SolarMax landing page carries boilerplate claiming SolarMax prices "start from around PKR 12,000, with an average price of approximately PKR 33,000", while the cheapest product actually listed on that same page is Rs 58,000. Quote at least three sellers, in writing, on the exact model code.

Two very different machines wear one badge. The ORRA, SOLON, ORION and FALCON lines are Axpert-family hybrids - their datasheets use the Axpert template verbatim, down to "Selectable Voltage Range 170-280 VAC (For Computers) / 90-280 VAC (For Home Appliances)", they transfer in 10-20 ms rather than sub-10 ms, they top out at 50C ambient, and W11Stop sells the same 11kW class one shelf over as "Power Square Axpert Ultra 11KW". The ONYX UL line is something else: IP66, three MPPTs, DRM and CT ports, CAN/RS485 to the battery BMS, -25 to 60C with derating above 45C, transfer under 10 ms. Buying "a SolarMax" tells you almost nothing. Buying an SM-ONYX-UL-10KW tells you a lot.

Heat is a specification, not a slogan. The ORION ULTRA datasheet's operating range stops at 50C. Pakistani summer roof-space and unventilated store-rooms exceed that. The ONYX UL is rated to 60C but derates above 45C - meaning your 10kW inverter is not a 10kW inverter in a hot cupboard in June. Whichever you buy, install it indoors, ventilated, off the roofline, and size for the derate rather than the nameplate.

Warranty: the number differs by model, and the retailer can overwrite it. SolarMax says 2-5 years parts plus lifetime free service. The Orion Ultra datasheet says 2 years; the Onyx UL datasheet says 5. SunSolar's listing titles encode this honestly - "(5Y)" on the Onyx 10kW, "(2Y)" on the Orion Dual 6kW. C-Power sells the Onyx 10kW under its own 2-year replacement cover instead. There is no downloadable warranty policy to appeal to: the downloads page carries 22 datasheets and the line "Our customer care team can send you any datasheet, manual or certificate directly." The closest thing to a published policy is a blog post ("What SolarMax Lifetime Free Service Warranty Actually Covers", 2 November 2025) - and it is marketing, not terms: it names no exclusions, no claim procedure and no conditions that void cover, while adding a third parts figure by describing "a separate five-year unlimited parts warranty" on components fitted during covered repairs. Three documents from one company give three different parts terms. So the invoice - model code, parts term in years, and the named workshop that honours it - is the only document that will exist when a board fails.

Contradicting our own older guide. Our SolarMax price guide (last updated 25 July 2026) states an Orion 6kW hybrid at "approximately Rs 235,000", a "SolarMax 10.0kW Hybrid Three Phase" at Rs 540,000, models at 3.2kW and 5.0kW, a service hub in Gulberg, and cites solarmax.com.pk as the official site. On 2 August 2026: the Orion 6kW is Rs 135,000-185,000 across four sellers; the ONYX UL 10kW is single-phase per SolarMax's own datasheet and sells at Rs 425,000-480,000; SolarMax lists no 3.2kW or 5.0kW model at all; the head office is Johar Town, not Gulberg; and solarmax.com.pk serves the bare text "SERVER IS RUNNING !". That guide's 2-5 year warranty statement is the part that holds up. This page supersedes the numbers.

Price context vs rivals (August 2026)

Same store, same day - W11Stop, 2 August 2026, single-phase hybrids in the two capacity classes SolarMax competes hardest in:

SolarMax occupies both ends of that shelf, which is the clearest possible statement of what the badge means: the ORION ULTRA is the cheapest 11kW in the store by Rs 86,000, and the ONYX UL is priced above Solis's 10kW hybrid and just under Inverex's Nitrox. The first is a bargain on an Axpert-class platform with a 2-year parts term. The second asks Solis money for a brand with no published warranty policy and no verifiable service network - a harder case to make.

Model pages: ONYX UL 10kW and ORION ULTRA 11kW.