Brunton Solar Chargers

[5Sport]

I was looking for a solar charger for when I go camping. Something for my phone/GPS/AA batteries.
Does Brunton make a good charger, and if so, which model is best (something compact). Iwould like something that works and is low maintenance.

 

[filibuster]

Go with a Goal Zero Solar Charger instead

I've looked at many different options and the one I've been most pleased with is the Goal Zero Guide 10 with the Nomad 7 solar panel kit.
The solar panel can be used to charge USB devices directly but the best thing is to leave the Guide 10 AA battery pack plugged in which charges 4 AA NiMH cells and then you can charge your phone or GPS directly from the Guide 10 which also works as a USB powerpack providing about 10 watt hours of power.

Depending on the amount of sunshine available I can recharge the 4 AA cells in as little as 2-3 hours. Note that the Guide 10 requires that all four AA batteries be inserted before it will charge any of them. It won't charge just one, two or three cells by themselves.

If needed you can also plug the Guide 10 into any USB outlet and charge it up that way though it takes longer to do so because USB outlets typically don't provide as much power as the Nomad 7 solar panel does in full sun. I have a little 12v to USB car adapter I use to plug the Guide 10 into to top it off while I'm driving to where ever I'm going. I also keep a spare set of AA batteries (eneloops) and swap a charged set in if I need more power for my USB devices.

For me it's been very low maintenance and is compact enough when folded for my needs. The only thing I can think of that would be overly prone to problems (because NiMH batteries and high temperatures don't go well together) would be the batteries but if that were the case I can easily replace a flat set with a new set of NiMH cells.

I tested the Guide 10 as a solar AA battery charger and though it didn't get as much power into the cells as my Maha C9000 it did very well considering it's having to do things to account for terminating a charge when power might up and disappear as the sun gets hid behind a cloud at any point during the charge process. It has a balancing circuit that equalizes each individual cell so I can place say two fully charged cells along with two discharged cells and it will recharge the discharged cells without over charging the full cells.

A nice plus is that the Guide 10 has a built in little 100mw LED that you can switch on or off and will run for almost a 100 hours. I much prefer however the flexible Luna USB light because of how much light it outputs especially when I'm reading though I might only get 9-10 hours of light using it per charge.

I've been pleased as well with the support I've had with Goal Zero too. I bought an early version of the Guide 10 which had some problems and they replaced it no questions asked, just shipped me a new one. There is a new version of the unit called the Guide 10 Plus which works better with iPhones and such and has a 1.0 amp USB power output ability to charge some USB devices faster. I think it's circuitry is more efficient too.