Solio Portable Charger – Out of the Box First Impressions
By SolarPromoter - 08.12.2007
This week and I got started working with my Solio portable charger, a photovoltaic solar charger that also has a built in battery for transferring a charge to other electronic devices. First off the design packaging is relatively simple, and there are no tricks or anything peculiar that is required to get at the actual device.
The first thing I did was look at the quick start guide as I attempted to make heads or tails of what I was supposed to do with the device first. Now the quick start guide shows the device connecting to a laptop computer at step one. This does not seem to be necessary actually, but an option. There are two ways to charge the device:
- plug the device into your USB slot on your computer and charge it there, or
- set the device out in direct some light and let it charge from the sun
There were no written instructions on the quick step guide and no other instructions elsewhere in the package, so I guessed and stuck it out in the sun, while I went to get a Jura capresso for my coffee snob wife. That did seem to work just fine, and so I was off and running. Once the device is charged up my next experience with it.
I was somewhat impressed with just how slim this device is, how light it is, and the hiking like clamp connected to the top of in case you want to hook it to a backpack or something.
The buttons an LED readouts work very well and remind me of some extremely rugged equipment that I used to use the military.
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