Portable Solar Chargers Pick Up Speed and Portability

You’re out with your friends, ready to take some great selfies, when your Smartphone battery flashes that annoying “low batt” signal. You need a charge and you need it fast.  If you’re lucky, one of your friends is tech savvy and just happens to have one of many super-lightweight solar chargers handy. From solar chargers for in-city emergencies to heavy duty chargers for extreme adventurers, companies are scrambling to hit the market with a solar charger to fit every need and budget.

 World’s Fastest Solar Charger

Products like Evolution Wear’s RapidSol charger represent the new breed of solar chargers that are both fast and entirely powered by sunlight. In the case of the RapidSol, you get a 2.7 amp USB power outlet that can juice up your smartphone, tablet or other portable device in a very short time—for phones, it’s a full charge in less than 60 minutes, or up to 3% per minute.

Evolution Wear claims that their Solar Wafer and circuits offer increased efficiency and stability, stating that their raw wafer efficiency as high as 24%, compared to others who are still at 18% or less. The wafer’s flexible mono-crystalline design enables the charger to provide up to 14 watts of total power, more than enough for most portable devices. Charging times are based on solar technology and battery technology. Not just the battery alone.

These new solar chargers consist of an easy to carry panel that’s portable enough to take on camping trips and ideal for those off-road emergencies. The chargers are also lighter than most because they carry no batteries to weigh them down. Evolution Wear even offers a wearable solution: the Winter Solstice Solar jacket. It lets you attach the solar charger to your back and comes with a laptop sleeve, USB cable loop, and other and useful features.

Skinny, Compact Solar Charger

Solar Paper is one of the thinnest, most compact solar chargers available. Its Yolk charger is not much larger than an iPhone 6, yet it unfolds into two solar panels delivering up to 5 watts of usable power. The handy device can charge a smartphone in about 2.5 hours—or roughly the same amount of time as a conventional wall charger. The Solar Paper is capable of charging virtually any device that has a USB connector, including rechargeable batteries, cameras, and portable game consoles. More solar panels can be added to charge larger portable devices like tablets or laptops. The panels can be magnetically accordion-folded for easy storage.

Carrier Doubles as Solar Charger

Voltaic Systems offers the best of both worlds: a carrier that keeps your mobile pads safe and dry, while charging them with four heavy-duty solar panels. Its Arc 20W can fully charge an entire iPad in just 10 hours of direct sunlight. Or you can enjoy an hour of full video playback for just an hour of sunlight charging. The solar panels are waterproof, lightweight, and compact, so powering up mobile phones, cameras, and other handheld devices is easy.

Solar Charger for Extreme Outdoors

If you take yourself and your gear through rainstorms, snowstorms, and even sandstorms, you need a solar charger that built to survive. The Solar Lizard SLXTREME Waterproof iPhone 6/6S Case not only keeps your phone protected through extreme weather, it’s even waterproof, so you can take it diving with you for some extreme underwater photography or video. Snow Lizard claims that the SLXTREME’s poly-carbonate case features “military-grade ruggedness” that “meets the highest U.S. Department of Defense rating.” A solar panel on the back of the case charges the unit’s built-in battery, providing 10 extra minutes of talk time for every hour it’s charged in the sun.

Whether you need a solar charger for those selfie “emergencies” or a heavy duty charger for an extreme outdoor adventure, solar chargers are increasingly coming to the rescue.