Counting On Mother Earth For A Recharge
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Are you so attached to your device that you just have to take it everywhere with you? Be it to the toilet for your morning ritual or to the beach when you are enjoying the day with your family? Or maybe on a weekend camping trip? If these scenarios sounds familiar, you’ll know by now that you needed something to keep your juice (on the Pocket PC that is) going. So what do I have in store for you this time around?
Introduction
It’s a solar charger from Proporta. Yes Proporta. The brand we’ve all come to love and go to for our Pocket PC accessories fix. Most of you might be familiar with their cases but Proporta is more than just that. The Solar Charger For Mobile Devices as Proporta calls it (SKU:2212) retails for $59.95 (excluding VAT) and is described as a charger that allows you to charge your device wherever you are. It is rather steep for a charger but when you consider the convenience and your role in a greener tomorrow, do they all add up?
Package
Before we get to that, let’s go through the package shall we?
Solar Charger
This is the bulk of the package. This is what is going to absorb the sun’s rays and convert it to electrical power for you to juice up that Pocket PC (or just about any other electronic device as you will soon see). The charger folds into the size of a HTC Universal but for those who prefer numbers, that’s 120mm x 85.5mm x 19.5mm for you. It packs 3.7V Lithium-Ion battery which can hold up to 1400mAh of charge. There are some functions on the side of the device but I will cover that shortly.
Connecting Heads
Here’s what I like about the package. Proporta has included not 1, not 2, not 3 but 7 different connecting heads. Which was why I said earlier that you could charge just about any electronic device with it.
Now you may be wondering, why isn’t a connecting head for the iPod not included. Well you can use the USB cable that came with your iPod and connect the other end to the USB cable of Proporta’s Solar Charger For Mobile Devices. So you see, almost all your portable electronic devices can be juiced up on the go.
Manual
There was some instructions on a piece of paper that showed me how to use the device. Unfortunately, it was meant for another model of charger so the manual was not really that useful. Nonetheless, Proporta was helpful enough to guide me along the way and the rest of it, I found out through common sense. How difficult is it to use a solar charger right? I am not sure if Proporta has fixed this problem but in case you find yourself in a similar situation, you don’t have have to worry.
Fiddling With The Charger
I mentioned earlier that there were some controls on the charger so in this section, I wanted to cover it in greater detail.
Starting from the bottom, we have the slider which goes from CH to OFF and then to LED. Slide it to CH when you want to charge YOUR DEVICE. The green LED beside it will light up and the juice will flow (provided your device is connected). In a couple of hours, your device will be charged and the charger’s reservoir will be drained.
If you want to recharge the charger, you’ll slide the to the OFF position and place it under the sun. You’ll notice the red LED will turn on when the unit is charging. The manual stated that it will go through 3 color states (from red to orange and finally to green) to show the various charging completion stages but in my experience, I did not notice that. Nonetheless, I had no problems with charging my device so it could be that I have a different model which behaves slightly differently.
The other LED is that of a white one at the other end of it and it glows really bright when you flip the slider to LED. I guess this allows you to use the charger as a torch light which makes for a great camping tool as well.
There are 2 ports, one labeled IN and the other OUT. As you might have guessed, if you want to charge your device, you’ll connect the wire to OUT. If you want to charge the charger through a wall outlet, you will be connecting to the IN port. I have never tried charging through a wall outlet as I was told that it only works for those with a 240v outlet. A useful feature though not something I can use. If only there was a way to charge it via my USB cable from the computer.
Charging It Up
So before we can juice up anything with the solar charger, you’d need to juice the charger up. I did encounter some abnormalities with the charger. For one, when the charger got extremely hot, it would stop charging, even if it was not fully charged. I found this rather interesting because it IS a solar charger to begin with. I guess if such a feature actually protected the device, then by all means have it there.
The other thing I noticed that the sun had to hit the panels on the charger at the right angle. Now this only happens when the sun is rising or setting and not during the mid day when the sun is overheard. While the range of angle required is a rather large one, I did notice at certain times (mostly an hour or 2 before sunset) that my charger was not charging because the angle was wrong. Another thing to take note of.
With that in mind, how does the solar charger perform in the real world?
Real World Test
So how long does it take to charge up the internal batteries of the solar charger? Proporta claims that it takes about 34 hours depending on the strength of the light available. That’s about 3 days of sunlight. Other users have claimed that it takes about 16 hours. For me, I’d say about 2 days. 2 days of sunlight that is.
What about charging up your device? For me it took about 2 hours to bring a dead Glofiish X500 back to almost full capacity and drain the internal battery of the solar charger. My Glofiish X500 has a battery capacity of 1540mAh while the solar charger’s capacity is 1400mAh at most. That means it could never fully charge my device. Nonetheless, the charging time is pretty much standard if compared to me charging my device through the computer or mains. So pretty good so far.
It Works, Somewhat
So charging and discharging works as expected. Now before you take it out into the woods, you’ll want to make sure that the cables work with your devices. The package comes with a mini USB connector but it does not charge my ETEN Glofiish X500 when plugged in. However, using the supplied USB cable that came with my ETEN Glofiish X500 works just fine.
Before I blame the cable, I tried it out with another device and it did charge. So it looks like even though your device might sport the same connection, there might be a slightly different connection that would prevent it from otherwise doing what you expect it to do.
What I Like About It
- Solar charger that comes with a built-in battery to hold charge.
- A whole host of connectors to hook to a number of portable devices.
- Very portable.
- Comes with mini LED to double up as a torch light.
What Could Be Improved
- Instead of using different colors for battery capacity, to have a several bars as this would make reading it easier.
- Provide a carrying case to hold the charger and all the connectors.
Conclusion
The solar charger from Proporta is really useful for those who spend a lot of times in the outdoors. Charging it up might be a problem because it takes quite a while but considering that you would not be using your device that often while in the outdoors, it looks like a great companion to have.
At $59.95, it does not come cheap but when you consider that it’s a one time investment and you no longer have to pay for electricity to charge your devices, it sure looks like a pretty good investment. Couple that with the fact that you now have a ‘green’ solution, you’ve done your fair bit in protecting the environment.
What: Solar Charger For Mobile Devices
By: Proporta
How Much: $59.95
SKU Code: 2212
Where To Buy: Here
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