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.
