So last year when I was hiking around Havasupai and away from my charger for a couple days,
I thought it would be really nice to have something that was solar powered so I could
recharge my phone, my drone, and my camera batteries.
Having a decent working solar panel would mean I wouldn’t have to carry as many batteries
or power banks on long trips.
If you have a solar panel you can even take your Pokémon hunting expeditions way out
into the boonies.
So I decided to finally get a solar powered charger.
So today we’ll see how well it works or even if it’s worth our time to set up.
Inside we have 4 panels that can receive power from the sun.
And there are 4 little rings, two on each end so you can hang up the panels from trees
or hammocks or tents and angle it towards the sun.
On this side we have some instructions and on the inside it comes with one micro USB
charging cable and it has 4 USB outlets.
Two of them are 2.4 amp and 2 are regular one amp USB ports.
It also comes with a little carrying sack and two carabineers.
So now that we have it, let’s take my Galaxy S7 Active with its 4,000 milliamp battery
and charge it up outside using only the power of the sun.
So I just plugged in my Galaxy S7 Active.
It’s a little bit damaged but this phone is freaking expensive so we’re going to
use it for another video.
It’s going to take an hour and 3 minutes to charge, it’s at 45%.
So I’m going to switch it over to the solar charger and see how long that takes.
So obviously solar panels work a lot better when there’s a lot of sun in the sky, so
today there are hardly any clouds so it will be the perfect day to test out our solar panel.
So it might be a little hard to see but it says an hour and thirty two minutes until
fully charged.
So a half hour longer.
We’ll see if that’s what it actually takes.
It’s completely unfolded.
We’ve got the two hooks at the end just in case you want to hang it on a tree or a
hammock or something like that.
We have the four panels here.
And then we have 4 USB ports and a little LED light to tell if there’s power going
to it or not.
So I have it in one of the two smart ports, the 2.5 amp, and I’m going to tuck the phone
underneath so it doesn’t get hot from the sun.
There we go.
So it’s been a half hour and we have 52 minutes until fully charged and the phone
is at 71% so it’s moving along pretty quick.
That’s impressive.
So we’ll leave it plugged in a little longer and see what happens.
So it’s been plugged in for about an hour now.
We have 28 minutes left until it’s fully charged.
It’s at 85%.
We started at 45%.
So it’s a little bit slower than plugging it into the wall, but still, this phone’s
being charged by the sun.
So now I’m testing the charging of my OnePlus 3 and my Galaxy S7 and it’s charging them
both at the same time.
So this can charge multiple devices at once.
So obviously plugging your stuff into the wall is going to be a little bit faster than
using a solar powered charger, but sometimes you don’t have wall power access.
I imagine that the easiest thing to do would be to pair this with a power bank and just
leave this at your camp site or wherever you’re working and charge up the power bank all day.
Just keep in mind that when you charge up your power bank and then use your power bank
to charge up your phone after that, it’s not as efficient and you lose some power between
each transition.
So it’s much more efficient to plug your phone directly into the solar power charger
so you don’t lose any energy between the transitions.
Either way I’m pretty impressed with how fast this charged my phone.
It went from 45% all the way up to 100% in about an hour and 20 minutes.
I did start charging my phone at the peak brightness of the day though.
I started at 1:15.
So you’d get less power in the morning and less power at night.
But if you’re using it in direct sunlight, right in the middle of the day, that’s when
you’ll get the most power from it.
If you have any questions leave them down in the comments below.
I will keep this video updated in the video description.
I’m going to be using this over time.
I’m headed to Thailand next week and I imagine I’ll be using it quite a bit over there.
So we’ll see if it starts to fail or stops charging as fast as this first time.
Thanks a ton for watching.
Hope to see you around.