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Suggestion for portable solar charger?

mattm · · TX · Joined Jun 2006 · Points: 1,885

bearbreader is spot on - for small and light, I roll with 2x18650s and an XTAR VP2 charger.$70 and a RELIABLE 4+ full charges plus many other uses at home.

Xtar VP2

LOTS of 18650 options out there.

Stephen Minchin · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2014 · Points: 10

I've got to agree with those posting above - I looked at solar, then looked at the option of taking a couple of power packs that I'd charge at home. No question which was cheaper, easier, and more reliable. If you do really need solar because you're talking about proper long trips them I am no help at all. If you're talking trips of a week or so, then a couple of cheap power packs may be an option to look into.

JoshuaPCornwell · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2014 · Points: 0

There are a lot of solar chargers out on the market right now. I personally had trouble finding the best one for me too. Eventually after doing a lot of research I found this one review and bought an Anker 14W solar charger. I have been using it for around 4 months and I have to say I love it so far. It charges all my USB powered devices in around the same time as a standard wall outlet. I have taken it hiking and camping and it has withstand my abuse lol. The only thing I wish it had is an internal battery. If you are looking for one with a battery then the website that helped me has some promising looking ones. Anyways I hope this helps!
portablesolargadgets.com/5-…

Dylan Pike · · Knoxville, TN · Joined Sep 2013 · Points: 488
teece303 wrote:Get the Goal Zero Nomad 7 along with the Guide 10 battery pack. For cragging, the Guide 10 is a battery pack you can charge at home and throw in your pack: it will give you 1-2 recharges of a smartphone, no solar panel required. For camping, you can pair the Guide 10 with the Nomad 7 and use a smartphone more or less indefinitely by charging it from the sun.
I'm on a long term climbing trip right now, and I use the Nomad 7 and the Guide 10 to keep my phone, gps and headlamp batteries charged. It's super versatile and durable. The solar panel + battery charger is a game changer.
Morgan Patterson · · NH · Joined Oct 2009 · Points: 8,945
nicelegs wrote:I'm about to bearbreeder you
hahahahahahahaha
Will Hamann · · Logan, Utah · Joined Aug 2014 · Points: 0
Trevor wrote:goal zero makes solid products
I second that
Mahi Thakur · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jun 2015 · Points: 0

, It is completely fills device running on 2300mAh battery in just about an hour and five minutes.The 10000mah Portable charger is a strength of power bank as well as it will be priced well under INR 1699, which is quite lucrative. 10000mah Power Bank permits you to store electricity for your devices. The Feye shoppy is a online-shopping company.I don’t trust some of the products from China, except for Huawei and Lenovo, which appears to be producing world class goods. For more visit
..............................................................................................................................................
www.feyeshoppy.com/10000mah-power-bank

Bill Lawry · · Albuquerque, NM · Joined Apr 2006 · Points: 1,812

The following was not the OP's focus ...

For just a portable battery charger, I've used a Jackery Giant+ on a handful of week-long+ trips. Works great for car camping with an iPhone 5s when it is undesirable to leave a solar charger outside back at camp and the car is infrequently running.

And it has plenty capacity for charging two iPhones at the same time which is nice for a long weekend out.

The weight is too much for long backpack trips .... unless using pack animal services. :-)

BigB · · Red Rock, NV · Joined Feb 2015 · Points: 340

Lol, I've tried all of these ways for my bike packing adventures.
GZ sucks(heavy, unreliable), solar sucks unless your camped out for awhile.
Battery packs are sweet UNTIL they run out, then you have a recharge issue, also they're heavy when you start getting into the bigger ones and then when they're done they're dead weight in your pack. :( I finally settled on a energizer charger($10-15) that takes 3aa batteries and weighs nothing without batteries in it, it comes with a usb tip on it but I just bought a apple lighting/micro usb connector, with norml batteries you get 1.5 charges on a iPhone.
With lithium(also lighter than norml batteries by about 1/2) you get 2.5 charges per 3 lithium batteries store1.alumigogo.com/produc…
The beauty of this system is the ability to recharge the charger by just carrying extra sets of batteries(still lighter than a power block)getting new battery's at gas stations or stores or anywhere batteries are sold.
No waiting for your ph to charge in a lobby ;)

Downside: your being wasteful by not using solar.

Sean Burke · · Concord, CA · Joined Jul 2014 · Points: 75

the Solarmonkey is awesome. I used it on Aconcagua to charge everything, as well as when I go to Yosemite to climb. As a park Ranger i use it in the field a lot to charge random devices and have had a great experience.

20 kN · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Feb 2009 · Points: 1,346
Bryan Manning wrote: GZ sucks(heavy, unreliable), solar sucks unless your camped out for awhile.
Not to mention their prices are absolutely astronomical for sub-quality products. Even if you are camped out for awhile, they still suck. Their 30W panel is $250 MSRP. I bought a 50W panel for $70 shipped at full retail price....
Fat Dad · · Los Angeles, CA · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 60

I think mattm and bearbreeder have pointed out a big issue. I've been wanting to buy a portable panel as well but many of reviews appear to point out the benefits of the chargeable battery that comes with the panel, rather than how well the panel operates independently. If I were camping, a panel makes sense. However, if I'm packpacking, I'm bringing a battery pack until there's some modest improvement with the panels. I'm sure it's coming. Lots of tantalizing R & D on improving solar products, but nothing I've been willing to invest in yet.

RickG Gutz · · Moorpark, CA · Joined Nov 2014 · Points: 35

I was in the same boat - deciding between solar or battery. Read a nice post on whitneyzone and convinced me to go battery pack.

This is the one I got an do use it quite a bit. Works great. Even charges my iPad and iPhone at the same time.

amazon.com/gp/product/B00GK…

A little on the heavy side for my backpack, but not really an issue. Cost around $60 when I got it last year. Still running strong and water proof.

Nadya Metodieva · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Aug 2015 · Points: 0

I have the StrongVolt solar charger 7W and I like it a lot because its really light and I put it on my backpack, it folds and looks really small. Also it has this technology that protects the battery of your phone or ipad. It charges phones pretty fast. I really want to buy their power bank, heard it was good too. My boyfried had the Goal Zero but the problem with it was that it was disconnecting very often so we never had fully charged phones. I think StongVolt has better technology overall. You should try it, check their website.

Beean · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Feb 2014 · Points: 0

I'm going to throw my vote in for a power bank. I've got an UpStart battery 10400mAh power bank (250ish grams). It's a little more than most need for charging their phone, but it's got dual 2.1A and 1A output which is a boon for charging my camera batteries.

I've also got a Goal Zero Nomad 7 which I have used exactly once in the past 6 months. Solar is cool until you realise you have to carry that heavy bastard.

There are plenty of other companies that use the same panels as GZ but are half the price, they just don't have the marketing budget. Do a search on Amazon for plenty of results.

Maxt66 · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Aug 2016 · Points: 5
Fat Dad · · Los Angeles, CA · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 60

I bought a Goal Zero that I took backpacking with the kids this summer. Overall, it worked reasonably well. We were only three nights in the backcountry and the goal was to keep our phones from dying (since they also served as our cameras), and for this it worked pretty well. I u derstand a battery pack serves the same purpose, but on a longer trip, after you've tapped it out, you've got just a dead weight. Ours weighs about 1 lb., but given all the other crap I had to carry for the kids, it was no big deal. Definitely taking it again.

mattm · · TX · Joined Jun 2006 · Points: 1,885

Mid 2016 and I still think, unless you're going over 2 weeks away from power or have hungry power demands, power banks are still your best best bet, particularly if you'll be on the move on trails and variable shade. For small power needs, Anker is my go-to favorite at the moment for small power needs (Although there are others that are worthy as well such as RavPower)

An Anker Astro E7 is 94.72 Wh and weighs 485g for $50 = very conservatively 1 week iPhone6
The newer Anker Powercore 20100 is 74.37Wh, 356g and $43

RavPower has great options as well.

The latest Anker 15W panel is 355g, $50 and MIGHT, under ideal conditions, put out enough in a day to charge your PHONE once, but that's assuming it will get ideal sun, exposure and temps.

The weights are a wash for me so I look at it like this. I can carry a guaranteed weeks worth of power for 1 unit of weight. The second week, I could have guaranteed power for 2 units weight or 1 week guaranteed and 1 week "maybe" for 2 units weight. Beyond two weeks the threshold changes and the solar makes more sense, again assuming you'll get the sun you need to stay up on charging.

EDIT: Reality is probably even more than 2 week before solar as you're likely not burning through your Phone battery all the way each day. I which case, 2lbs of battery could get me 4 weeks of use. Real world testing would be needed to confirm the "threshold" time and items powered.

Wirecutter Testing - Long but good.

Fat Dad · · Los Angeles, CA · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 60

^^^
You know what, I did get the Anker, not the Goal Zero. It did not provide the amount of power that mattm's battery did, but it did suffice for our needs, which is what my intended goal was. I could see using a battery if I were somewhere where I could not rely on the sun for extended periods of time, but for a daily top off, I was happy with the performance.

Arlo F Niederer · · Colorado Springs, CO · Joined Mar 2009 · Points: 515

The way to decide is look at what your useage will be on average per day.

I spent 25 days backpacking in the Wind Rivers last summer in 3 separate trips. We needed to charge 2 GoPros, an Olympus TG4, and two Android phones which we used to control the GoPros. We also used the phones for music and dowloaded videos when stuck in the tent because of weather.

We used a Goal Zero Nomad 13 solar panel and a GZ Sherpa 50 battery pack.   Also, the GoPros were a 3+ and a 4, which use different batteries, so I bought a cheap, dual GoPro battery charging base which can charge either version of battery. I will do things very differently this summer, as I describe below.

As a note, we would hike in and setup basecamp and then do dayhikes from there, so we could leave the solar panel at camp charging batteries and the Sherpa 50.

We would use 4 or 5 GoPro batteries every day, recharge the TG4 once a week, and a phone every 3 days. So the amount of charge needed every day was:

5 x 1050 = 5250 mAh (GoPro)

1400 mAh / 7 days = 200 mAh (TG-4 charged once)

 3000 mAh / 3 days = 1000 mAh (phone)

For a total of 6450 mAh per day.

The best routine I found was to charge the Sherpa 50 and 2 of the GoPro batteries with the Nomad 13 during the day, and recharge the GoPro batteries and phone or TG-4 when returning to camp.   I would setup the Nomad before going to bed so that it could start charging as soon as the sun came up. I could manage if there was a day without much sun, but not two days. A key is to keep everything topped off, since you don't know when the sun won't cooperate.

What I would do differently is change out the Sherpa 50 for a much lighter power pack with higher capacity (Sherpa 50 is 1.2 pounds and 5200mAh - came with the Nomad 13). I would consider dropping the solar panel and substituting a couple of battery packs instead.   The Nomad 13 weighs 25.6 ounces - two Anker 20,000mAh power packs weigh a total of 25.4 oz. Two of these give me almost a week of charges for my needs.

So advocating power packs instead of solar panels are a compelling option...

Even if you go the solar panel way, I'd highly recommend also carrying a battery pack (light and cheap) for those days when the sun doesn't cooperate! And you can use the battery pack to gobble up all the extra sunlight your phone doesn't use when the sun IS cooperating!

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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