Anyway, this Christmas, she excelled herself, bless her. She bought me a ‘powermonkey explorer’. (That’s not to say she hasn’t in previous years – but this year...she did more homework above and beyond the call of duty). Now this bit of kit is quite impressive and so far has done everything PowerTraveller boasts it can do. I’ve tested it here at home in good old southwest England and also in the high alpine mountain resort of Sestriere in Italy over the last few weeks and here are my initial impressions. I’ll give further updates when I get back out on the water.
My PowerMonkey portable lithium ion battery with its solar slave
Basically the ‘Power Monkey Explorer Solar Charger’ is a portable device that charges your electronic devices while on the go. It comes with a "solar slave", a detachable solar panel that can be used to recharge the power monkey's internal lithium battery. Also in the case are a number of other really useful items including a retractable usb plug, a multitude of various iPod, phone and PDA heads. You just select the one you need – push it onto the powermonkey jack and then plug the lot into your device and hey presto it’s being charged. So far, one complete charge of the powermonkey has charged two mobile phones and one iPod fully and I still had three bars of power left on its LCD display. You can buy extra heads for various other devices from ‘powertraveller’ so that you can use the power monkey to charge one device whilst using the power solar slave to charge another. The pack also contains 4 different international plug chargers (the one for Europe worked fine and re-charged the powermonkey in 4 hrs. There is also an AC and usb adaptor.
And just LOOK at what it comes with............
The battery unit itself has covers for both input and output jacks and is made of a tough rubberized outer case. It has an LCD display which shows charging and amount of battery life. The solar slave is rubberized and encased so panels aren’t damaged. There is no sticky transparent film to peel off as in other solar slaves (well I haven’t found one on mind – let’s put it that way). They say it is water resistant – it was certainly snow resistant in the Alps. I haven’t yet tested it on the boat. It certainly won’t take immersion and this may prove a major disadvantage – I’ll let you know how I get around this bit. Anyway, the whole lot comes in a Velcro bag inside a zipped wallet case (size of 6/7 CD cases) and this contains all the heads, powermonkey solar slave etc – self contained and very portable.
These are the advantages I’ve found so far:
• The battery pack comes precharged with about a 60% charge. I used this charge to charge up 2 mobiles and an iPod and still had charge left over
• It’s rugged design
• A long battery life
• All those adapter tips for many devices and the fact that you can purchase many more quite cheaply
• The multiple charging options (including international adapters)
• A solar panel that can be used independently of battery pack
• portability
Can be attached to rucksacs or around booms with velcro straps
Also comes in a yellow colour which might be a bit better for finding around the boat!!
Disadvantages
• Unbelievably, powermonkey won't charge a device while the powermonkey itself is being charged; which means you can't plug it into your phone/iPod and then connect it to the charger to charge them both overnight.
• Charging using the solar panels takes a long time! The manual states that it will take 6 hours to charge the battery by one third. So far I’ve managed to charge it just over 50% in 5 hrs brilliant sunshine in the high Alps. In cloudy old south west England – I suspect that it will take a whole day to charge it a third!
• Remember to switch off the LED when charging from the solar slave – or all that charge will be wasted powering the LCD – it’s true, believe me – I forgot! A red light means its charging from the sun!
• The owner’s manual states that it should take about 3.5 hours to charge a completely drained battery pack using the ac adapter – I did it in about 4 hrs; it’s 6 hours using the USB cable – I haven’t tried that yet. Basically, it’s a long charging time using the solar panel
So far, I am pleased with it. Going back to my Salcombe trip – the powermonkey would have re-charged my mobile three or four times – which I think is pretty impressive. I don’t know how many times it would charge a power hungry iphone – but someone somewhere on the internet will have a view on that. The solar slave hung off my rucksack in the Alps and charged the monkey well enough......so far, so good. In addition – it charges my wife’s Samsung camera – as I discovered the other day. I’ll report more when I’ve had it in the boat for a bit. In the meantime – HUGE brownie points to my wife (whose other Christmas pressie to me was a Gerber multi-tool!)
Steve
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