Maybe there’s part of me that never left the fifth grade science fair, but solar stuff has always seemed super cool to me. All those dumb little kit projects they sell in museum gift shops that use a solar panel to do something silly? I probably talked my family into buying every one of those as a kid. So, when Anker gave me the opportunity to check out their line of solar chargers, how could I possibly say no? I’ve got the 21 watt variety, but there’s also an 8 watt variety that’s a little cheaper.
People who have tested the output of these chargers with a multimeter (which I don’t have) report the actual power output being lower than what’s being advertised, but that’s not really that surprising as most solar stuff I’ve seen mentions power output based on these crazy best case theoretical scenarios which unless you’re on the top of a mountain on a sunny day you’re probably never going to see. In practical usage though, it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference that it’s outputting slightly less power as it’s still totally capable of charging all your stuff through the power of the sun. 2 amps across each USB port can still charge your devices plenty quickly.
But how reliable is it as a potential primary charging solution in the event of you needing to rely on it due to a power loss, because you’re camping, traveling somewhere remotely, or something else? It’s actually… Surprisingly good. I originally assumed this sort of thing would be useful in a pinch, but would charge so slow that it would be impractical for day to day use, so I challenged myself to charge all my USB devices via solar power for an entire week. It was a weird shift, as typically I charge my stuff at night, but it totally worked. The Anker solar chargers have a little pocket on them to keep your device out of direct sunlight, but it’s sort of magical how you just plug into the two USB ports, let stuff sit in the sun, and they’re charged. If it’s a sunny day, they charge nearly as quickly as being plugged into a normal wall charger.
It took a few days to figure out what seems to be the best use case though, and that seems to be using the solar panel itself as a means to charge a battery to serve as intermediate storage for the power you’re generating. I’ve got a super-beefy 20,000 mAh battery I used for this, but really, any would work. This solved the weird problem of needing to have my iPhone just laying in my backyard for a couple hours during the day. Also, in doing this I was capitalizing on all the solar energy I could which resulted in a buffer to charge all my stuff on a day where it was too cloudy to really work very well.
But how does this relate to gaming? Well, as someone who was never too interested in the outdoors, a long camping trip meant rationing the batteries of your various handheld game systems to try to get you through sitting in the woods waiting to go home. If I could send one of these chargers back in time to myself, well, that would have been pretty amazing. But, really, the cool thing about mobile gaming is you can game from anywhere, and that often includes places that don’t have any kind of electrical outlet. Now, you can use the sun for something more than getting sunburnt. It’s magic, I tell you.
On a serious note though, with how nearly everything these days charge via USB, a solar charger like this seems like a real good idea to have in your house kept in the same box where you keep your flashlights and candles and other things for dealing with power outages. Particularly if you live somewhere remote, or where nasty storms are common, not needing to worry about how to keep your phone charged seems like a good way to spend anywhere between $40 to $55 depending on how much charging capacity you think you need. I’m definitely happy to have one, even if it’s something I only use once in a while.
