Digital inverters and sine wave inverters are unrelated electrical devices. Digital inverters flip the one and zeros in binary signals. Sine wave inverters use direct current (DC) electricity to simulate alternating current (AC) electricity.

Binary communication consists of ones and zeros. A digital inverter is a basic building block of many binary devices. It simply takes a zero or one as input and returns a one or zero, respectively, as output.

Inverters convert DC power (steady positive voltage) to AC power (voltage that alternates positive and negative as a sine wave). They do this by rapidly flipping the DC power, positive to negative and back again. However, the resulting waveform usually comes out box-shaped. rather than a smooth sine wave curve, which is why some inverters are called “modified” sine wave inverters.

“Pure” sine wave inverters implement complicated and expensive technology to produce a smooth sine wave output. The smooth power provided is better suited to higher-end electrical appliances than is the output from a modified sine wave inverter.