Over in the
TB
storage for mobile devices thread we brushed across the idea of a small solar power system to recharge a liseuse. So I wandered around ebay for a while and ordered one of
these
wee gadgets from APlumDeal. It's not the smallest one or the
cheapest one but it did seem like one of the better ones. There's a huge
pile of them and they're all cheap trash, but this one looked better
designed and had slightly better panels on it (according to the specs
anyway).
It took a few days for delivery and now I've tested it a little. The
built-in battery is not big enough to recharge my phone and liseuse completely, it's more there as an emergency backup I think. It charges in under an hour in direct sunlight. Once charged, leaving the device in the sun and plugging in my Sony 505 brings that up from 2 bars showing to fully charged in about an hour (it was charged when I came back an hour later).
Overall I'm quite happy with it - it does what I need, works well and looks as though it should last a long time. It comes with adapters for a variety of phones and charges my Nokia quite happily, and has a USB-out so you can charge just about anything that way. USB voltage is high enough to charge the Sony.