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Today was a nice sunny day here in the Arizona high desert at 4600 feet, the sky was blue and there were no clouds. Left it out there until twilight (just past 6:15 pm today). The iPod cleaned out the unit (red light indicating no charge). Used that charge to charge up a Motorola phone and had a bit of juice left to top up an iPod. Charged this up first time with the wall socket. This is a bit more useful than the pencil and for about three dollars you can not go wrong. Adjusted the angle and rotated the unit to face the sun about five or seven times as the earth rotated and the day passed (about once an hour seemed to be sufficient). There were no obstructions between the unit and the sun.
Seems like that is generally consistent with the informational material from the manufacturer. Using the Post that you should now find pictures of above (with notes on the parts), the unit was attached to a Tripod with a tilting head. That was relatively quick. The charge now reads as full (five green flashes). If you stood in the sun for a few minutes with a pair of black jeans on you could feel the heat. Put it outside facing the sun at around 9:30 am. Check out the post thing in the pictures. Sooner or later something like that is going to come out from a third party manufacturer for at least ten bucks (ok maybe 9.99).
The only thing I am concerned about is if it would actually hold up to a camping trip as it doesn't seem to be very durable. The solio magnesium charger is one of those products that I probably won't use until the power goes out and I need to charge my phone, but now that I have it I am kind of looking forward to a power outage. Included in the box are, a pencil to angle the solio towards the sun, assorted charger tips , an ac wall charger for filling it up without the sun, and a neat hemp bag to carry the solio and all of the charger tips. Pro'sAlways good to have a backup for small devices, just in case.Decent amount of charging tips included, many more available for purchase.AC charger for charging w/o the sun.Con'sSomewhat questionable durability, front solar panel is exposed. They really should include a cover.Takes almost a whole day to charge in 100% sunshine.
Great product - flexible since the Solio can be charged through an outlet or via sunlight. Big complaint is that there isn't a cover for the bottom solar panel - you can't see this in the product pics. Solio should really design a clip-on cover (or something) to protect that panel, and then this product would be perfect.
The unit works great and is pretty light. I would have to say they only thing I thought that was a bit odd was the word "Magnesium" in the title. I would recommend it. I mean I thought I was buying a tuff Magnesium device. This is not made of solid Magnesium but rather a thin Magnesium coat. A top product and looking forward for more things like this to come out. Casey Schultheis
But I have a mini tripod I don't use very often, so I attached it to a railing and then jerry-rigged the Solio to the tripod using a heavy duty elastic. I had to buy the special iGo charging tip, but it works fine.I was a little disappointed that the Solio takes quite awhile to charge, however. I use the Solio to charge my iPhone 3G. (See Customer Photos above). In one afternoon on a typical day here in New England, I found it charged only about 20%.Then I figured I might be able to get a better charge if I kept it aimed at the sun a little better. The only mechanism they give you to do this is a pencil. Whenever I go in or out, I just swivel the Solio a little to point it at the sun.I don't have enough data to say how much faster it charges (the system of "flashes" is not very accurate), but it's a fun and handy way to position the Solio. If I were to redesign the product, I would definitely add a tripod mount.
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