Highgear Solar Pod

This is a good looking device used best as a door stop. It does not charge. It has no functional use in the pack.

The only reason this even got the half star is it looks good. But it does not charge, it does not do anything. I was very disappointed in its lack of quality.

I followed the instructions and could not get it to charge up even halfway in the full sun of a Las Vegas summer day. As a result, I cannot trust it.

I could charge it off my computer at home, but I was really looking for something self-sufficient when I bought this and will have to keep looking.  As a result of it never charging, I have not gone further to test if it would be useful hooked on to a device to charge the device or run the device from the solar battery. I was just done.

I bought this solar charger in Wyoming while hiking from Mexico to Canada on the CDT. I used it to charge my cellular e-mail device and my I-pod shuffle music player. I found it to be a very robust design and it survived light rain and one accidental soaking in a spring overnight. (It's a long story) I did have to disassemble it to dry it completely after that.

The carabiner made it very easy to attach to the webbing on my pack and angle to get the best angle on the sun. I found it the panels battery to reach full charge in about a day and a half under sunny skies when I did not pay much attention to it. If I carefully angled it to catch the sun as I hiked it definitely seemed to charge quicker. Most of the time I just clipped it on my pack and ignored it until I needed a charge.. about once every three days.

I also carried the I-Pod shuffle's wall plug charger cube and found it charged the Solar Pod's battery in 1/2 hour while in town.

The Solar Pod charged my cell battery to half charge in 1 hour after which time the panel's battery was exhausted . It also fully charged my I-pod shuffle in 1/2 hour and still had juice to spare. If you are planning a long hike and want a bombproof backup power source in a compact design this solar panel might work for you.

I found this solar charger to be durable and useful for it's 5 ounce weight.

It came with a bunch of different power adaptors, most of which I chucked out as excess weight.

Sadly, even though I carried my Highgear Solar Pod from Wyoming to Canada, it got stolen from my pack on the plane ride home. Not only do I recommend this panel, I fully intend to get another one for my next long distance hike.

This was the first solar charger I tried for my cell phone and mp3 player. It didn't work for either of them. I got my money back and bought a Solio Rocsta, which works great!