In November I bought this solar panel charger (14W) on Amazon.it, spare the story that I struggled with the irresponsible delivery company, just want to comment on this product itself.
HOW DOES IT WORK
It's a charger, no battery integrated. When it's sunny, put it under direct sunlight, connect it to whatever device you want to charge and that's it. Yes it has two USB ports but for me one is enough.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CHARGE
I never accurately measured but it takes approximately one minute to charge one percentage of my phone battery. It's necessary to state that my phone is Nokia 530, the cheapest smartphone on the market, considering it's small screen and limited functionality, it doesn't consume much power and doesn't take much to charge it either. (*Nokia 530 Battery capacity: 1430 mAh Battery voltage: 3.7 V) So fully charge my phone will take about 100 minutes, which is considerably speedy. Most of the time I charge it when my phone is at 15-30% of its power, just one hour it will go up to 75-90%, for an entire day's consumption.
For other smartphone, with bigger screen it will take a little longer, all depends on the battery capacity. And my measurement is taken place in early winter, in summer with stronger sunlight it might be different, let's see.
IS IT EASY TO USE
It's not heavy nor big, more or less is the size and weight of a book, easy to carry even just in hand. Ideally you can tie it somewhere such as on your backpack during hiking. For me I mostly use it at home, in the city. While indoor charging there's shade factor, the sun moves, and moves pretty fast in winter, so sometimes I have to move the charger from one place to another place to catch up the sunlight during charging. If it's outdoor it would be easier, find an open space and put it somewhere to form a proper angle to fully receiving the sunlight. In the city if you want to charge on the move it's a bit inconvenient, if your city is crowded, you may not get constant energy input, which affect the charging efficiency.
This is what's written under the box of the charger I bought. Well, have to say that the box looks simple and elegant, but the description doesn't quite match the real functions.
As you see on the image above, there are five icons from left to right written: Power, Interface, USB hubs, Protection, Sound. I don't understand what these are supposed to mean, because the solar charger doesn't have a battery (power), although you could argue that the charger itself is a portal connecting to the largest usable power source - the sun; it doesn't have interface, it's just two USB ports and a light that beam red light when the panel receives sunlight; USB hubs, true; Protection, I don't see where the protection is, even if you say the panel itself is well designed and protected from getting damaged, I don't think it can be a selling point, since avoiding vulnerability is a basic requirement for any product; last, sound, what sound? The charger doesn't make a sound at all. Wonder why they put these things here to misleading consumers, I looked up on their official website it doesn't match up their product line, so I assume these five icons are for the charger. Then it's misleading and confusing!
OVERALL
I really enjoy using this product and I'm proud of being one of the "early adopters". Well, solar power age is coming, like it or not.
The price is 59.99Euro, which is ... kind of expensive, considering it's merely a panel connected with a simple power converter. But as early adopter it's inevitable to over pay for new gadget. In ten years I believe a solar charger like this would drop the price to about 10 Euro, and by then it will really be part of our daily life.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYff6LoiKzM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_p3zwnHRoA
