Free Power! For life! (Freeloader Portable Solar Energy Charger)

Member Name: dosftw

Product:	Freeloader Portable Solar Energy Charger
Date:	04/10/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its a Solar powered charger? what other advantage do you need! Free Power good selection of adapters

Disadvantages: Maybe in the future company will release a higher capacity battery? Maybe 1500mAh?

The FreeLoader is a Solar charger that holds its charge in a central battery that when a device is plugged into it will receive a charge in order the recharge its battery. This is very useful if you will be spending prolonged periods away from a wall socket to charge your devices from mains power.

The battery that the solar cells charge is a Lithium battery which is charged via the 3.7v supply from the solar cells and has a reasonable 1000 mAh capacity which is fantastic as it will give your device a good kick up the butt and bring it back to over half battery (in every case I have tried)

The manual that is supplied with the device recommends that the first charge that the battery receives is delivered via the included USB cable and charging from USB can take anywhere between 3 to 4 hours but the first charge can take up to 8 hours.

Now please remember that this is a solar charger AKA designed to be charged using that giant glowing ball of flaming gas in the sky we affectionately know as the sun, and as most people here reading this will be from the UK, you will probably all be thinking "well we barely get sun here"well not to worry. Sure in the archaic days of solar panals, you needed completely summer weather to get a charge from solar cells, but those days are long gone! even on a cloudy day the FreeLoader will still charge, albeit it will not charge as efficiently but it will charge nonetheless. As I have just said light 'quality' plays a key role in the charging of this device, the charging time from sunlight/daylight can vary from 5 hours to 10 hours and also, I will say this now as a lot of people shun this amazing device because they dont take it into consideration, as most of us have double/triple glazed windows in our glorious country of the UK, THIS WILL HAVE AN EFFECT ON THE CHARGING TIME, DOUBLE AND TRIPLE GLAZED WINDOWS HAVE 2 OR 3 VACUUMS EACH. Please refer back to GCSE/O level physics - Convection cannot occur in a vacuum, Conduction cannot occur in a vacuum, only radiation can occur, and because the are 2 or 3 vacuums in your window, this will radically increase charging times. If it is sunny let it sit inside, if its cloudy and looks like its going to rain either charge it inside, or plug it into USB.

This said, do not leave this device over night to charge, you may damage the battery by over charging if left plugged in over night.

Now obviously I am sure a lot of you are thinking its all well and good having a solar charging battery, but what adapters does it come with to charge a near infinite number of devices all with different adapters? well here is a list of the adapters that come with the device:

1 x Master power cable
1 x Adapter for Nintendo DS Lite
1 x Adapter for iPod
1 x Adapter for LG Chocolate series phones
2 x Adapter for Nokia Mobile phones (Old style and the new 2mm adapter)
2 x Adapters for Samsung mobile phones
1 x Adapter for Sony Ericsson mobile phones
1 x 4mm jck for PSP, Tom Tom, Digital camera etc
1 x USB 2.0 Female socket cable for MP3 player, PDA's etc
1 x Mini USB adapter for Mototola RAZR, Blackberry etc

I got this gadget for my birthday from my girlfriend and I have to say it is fantastic. I have spent all day charging up various battery operated devices (obviously discharging them first so that it is is fair test)

But these devices included several old phones of mine and my girlfriends as well as my iTouch and her iPod Nano, the iPods both had brightness turned to full and in my iTouch's case, also had Wi-Fi turned on.

Each device we experimented with recieved roughly between 70% and 80% capacity after draining the FreeLoader of its power (luckily it was very sunny this afternoon so was possible to get multiple charges for the FreeLoader. The device is fantastic and is definitely something that I will be taking camping with me as no doubt my phone will die whilst searching for signal!

As you can see this device is fantastic, it comes with a whole host of universal usage straight out the box, and with the option of buying an additional 20 adapters online I feel this is a must have.

In conclusion; I love it.

Summary: Brings sunshine into any person whose phone/ipod died on them on the way home