Product Review :Powerpod Solar Phone Charger from Powerbee Ltd

Cross post from my renewables generation society blog.

This is a great little phone charger. I bought it in my continued quest to save energy.

Its about the size of an A6 sheet and you put in the light and it charges up. Then you can plug most mobile phones, digital cameras and any other small portable device in and it will happily charge it up.

The first thing to say is you don't need a lot of sun to charge it, so far it has charged on a non south facing windowsill on a grey autumn day, sitting on a shelf in the pool of light from a 50w halogen bulb and pretty much anywhere where there is a reasonable level of light. I suspect it will even charge at work under normal office lights, will have to check this out. Which basically means you should be able to get it to charge on the majority of days.

It worked for me straight out of the box, very easy to use, had the right adapter for my phone and charged it up easily just like it would if you plugged the phone into the mains.

On a cost benefit analysis it doesn't really stack up on pure energy savings alone. The considered opinion of the internet is that when charging a phone they suck up 4w of power, when already charged but still plugged into the phone 2w and when not plugged into a phone less than 0.1w.

In other words assuming that my phone is charged for 5 hours a week I would use just over 1kw over a year, so charging it by solar would save you approx 10-15p. So based on energy saving alone there is a payback time of 482 years.

However and this is a big one, your phone is solar powered so it is totally green, as it no longer uses electricity powered by fossil fuels. You can also take the charger with you and you don't need a plug, very useful if travelling. You can charge any device that uses 5, 5.5v or 9v and if you are using more than just a phone the cost savings improve.

If you currently have a car charger you can power your phone by attaching it the car window and you are not burning petrol to charge your phone.

Plus it is a very cool gadget.

I would definitely recommend it to everyone especially at the price of £24.11, you cant go wrong.

I give it the following scores:

Easy of use 5/5
Green Credentials 5/5
Cost / Benefit 3/5
Coolness 5/5
Overall 4.5/5

The last word on the matter is this text, I sent to my girlfriend:

This text was bought to you by the power of the sun. No fossil fuels were harmed in the making of this text.