Scosche Solbat2 solar charger

Even though the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’ remains a truism, however cynical, it doesn’t seem to stop Scosche from using the promise of ‘something for nothing’ to tempt you to buy its Solbat2 solar-powered backup battery. Scosche solBAT2 Scosche's Solbat2: Simple, idiot-proof design for charging and …

[thesykes]

Sooooo....

If it takes 5 sunny days to charge up... if I started now, it should be fully charged by, oh, err... about... April?

[Lottie]

t'other halfs phone

This would be ideal -assuming we had decent weather- for my other halfs phone. It usually goes about a week between needing a charge so if we left it in the bedroom window for a week, then charged the phone every now and again it would be cool.

[Ed Cooper]

Even..

..if it charged in six hours, the idea that a lump of plastic with a solar cell and a lithium ion battery shipped for the far east is going to be less environmentally damaging or more economic than taking 5Wh from the grid/car/plane is just stupid.

As a reserve battery I guess it works ok, I bet however if someone did the maths the 1KWh or so of energy this thing is going to provide in its lifetime, won't offset the carbon used to manufacture, integrate and ship that solar panel.

[Annihilator]

Five days????

I'm appalled. Why even sell such a thing?

I'm planning a two-week cycling trip which will mostly involve camping, and was looking for a way of charging on-the-go, specifically for charging music player/phone for tweeting etc. Looks like I won't be going the solar option...

At least they're honest about it though.

[frank ly]

Bio-Power

"I'm planning a two-week cycling trip .."

Fit your bike with a dynamo and recharge your batteries from that. If you want, you can reach down and disengage it before you go uphill, or only engage it on the downhill stretches; but watch your fingers! (Do they still make them? I remember them from 'the old days' when I had a bike.)

[Danny 14]

indeed

There are quite a few cycle dynamos, some with USB sockets, some with car cigar sockets. Not such a silly idea for people who commute into work (or go on cycle holidays)

[FanMan]

You could....

overcome the time and weather by buying 5x for 5 sunny says plus a few more depending how non-sunny you expected it would be. So a string of about 25 of them dangling from your sporran would sort you for a week of Munro bagging.

[lumpenfolk]

Not clear...

Is this 5 days based on UK weather, or that of a warm & sunny country? I can see a few uses for it in the latter, in bars with a "we don't let you plug in your charger for insurance reasons," for example, or simply on the beach.

[Robert Carnegie]

A full charge takes x days. How much is a full charge?

I mean, say this thing can charge your phone ten times before it's dry. Then charging it from the sun only takes a few hours per phone charge. You can top it up, I suppose.

However, I have doubt about charging batteries from other batteries - that includes driving this from the laptop, too.

[Antipodean]

Scosche kit

If it's like anything else under that brand name, it's nicely made, very attractive but not competitively priced. The Seppos who run the company are rather excessively profit motivated.