Brunton's Solo and Solaris Lack Charge
We were excited by the idea, the look, and even the feel of the Brunton Solaris USB foldable solar array, and their Solo 3.4 watt USB power supply. The first item does indeed fold up nicely, and is supposed to have each panel work independently, even in low-light, to power small devices. The later item can simply hold the charge if you want, and then later plug into your devices to give them an extra boost when the sun might be down or obscured by clouds.
And solar technology is a great idea- we’ve reviewed Solio, which worked pretty well for us before. So, basically, if you put both of the Brunton products together, you get a product that does what the Solio does- only with a larger array and bigger battery, and generally handy native USB connections.
Or that’s the idea- in practice, we were pretty disappointed. The Brunton Solo 3.4 watt battery shows pictures of digital cameras and video cameras, and includes adapters for iPods, the Sony PSP, and Nokia, Motorola, and Sony-Ericsson cell phones. But, it failed to work with our iPhone, and apparently has trouble with many PDAs, as they draw too much power. As usual with external batteries, you can expect the charge to take a while- up to 8 hours for devices like a portable DVD player- and run times to vary widely depending on the type of device. Smaller devices will run for about 2 hours though, enough to be handy, but not enough to beat many other external batteries. The unit feels fairly sturdy and the included adapters are nice, but $65 or so is steep for a battery that doesn’t quite handle the range of devices necessary to make it truly useful.
The Solaris USB solar array offers the same compromises- aimed at recharging smaller devices, it can only handle the truly low-power ones. No full compatibility list was available, but it did seem to work well with the Solo power pack, better than trying to use it directly plugged into a device. Brunton does make a wide range of solar panels, ranging up to $1300, and this one runs around $100- but we had trouble getting much current out of it, even in moderate direct sunlight. It is light, and again feels pretty durable (waterproof and all), but you need really direct and bright sunshine, and a fairly narrow range of devices to make it worthwhile.
