Solar Mobile Charger Review–Simple To Use, Minimum Usefulness

Posted on July 17th, 2011 by Natalie Bourne | Tags: Mobile Charger, Solar Mobile, Solar Mobile Charger, Usefulness

So the folks out at Light In The Box sent over one of their Solar Mobile Chargers for us to review for you, and while its a pretty simple setup to actually use, how much usefulness youll get out of it remains to be seen.

The Solar Mobile Charger offers up a basic charging unit with a 5.5 volt solar panel on the front, and a variety of plugs for your mobile devices as well as an AC adapter. Now, you can either plug it into the wall to charge it (takes about eight hours to get to full charge) or set it in the sun (in which case youd better hope youre on Mercury because that will take between eighteen and twenty hours to get to full charge). Then, plug your mobile device of choice into the Solar Mobile Charger and recharge your device.

The good part is that this is pretty simple to use. An LED light glows green when the device is charging, red when its expending charge, and, interestingly, both when its taking in and putting out charge (you left it in the sun while it was powering a device). The down side here is that its not going to put a lot of juice into your devices. You might get a charge enough for an emergency phone call out of thisI tried this with the GoGear Aria MP3 player I got in to review from Geeks.com, and managed to get a bar back into it with what charge was on it after two days worth of sunlightbut for those hoping for fully charged devices, forget it unless you go the AC approach, in which case you can probably recharge your devices in less than eight hours anyway on AC current.

It does work with most of your devicesI tried it out on a few othersand the end result was the same. It works, sure, but not very well. Considering, though, that the Solar Mobile Charger costs a mere $15.19, it probably shouldnt surprise me.

Still though, its a nice piece of hardware for the price, but if youre looking for actual function and value, youll probably do better elsewhere.

The Good

Simple to use

Works with most devices

The Bad

Takes a long time to charge

Doesnt deliver a lot of charge when it gets there

Score 6 / 10

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