Review - FreeLoader Solar Powered Charger

An edited version was published on http://www.geeks.co.uk/

As a camping geek I love staying in the great outdoors, but not so much the lack of electricity that come with it. How was I to cope without my mobile for a week? Would I have to ration the amount of texts I sent to my boyfriend? The wind-up chargers looked way too energetic for me to be using after a long day hiking. Enter solar technology.
With its futuristic design, looking more like something found flying about space as opposed to lounging beneath a car windscreen, I fell in love with the FreeLoader at first sight.
It can be charged either by the sun or a computer and comes with 11 different adaptors that can be used on a range of mobiles, as well as digital cameras, Satnavs, iPods and portable gaming consoles such as the PSP and Nintendo DS. With many sites selling them for about £29.95 these gadgets are also a lot more affordable than many other solar chargers.
After a few hour-long conversations and dozens of texts by phone inevitably started to flag, so I attached it up to the FreeLoader – which I’d charged by computer before I’d left - and within about half an hour my mobile’s battery was about three-quarters full.
Unfortunately for campers like me, the instruction manual states that FreeLoaders hate any kind of water. In order to avoid it being attacked by condensation I ended up resorting to placing the charger in its box and burying it beneath a mound of clothes in my bag.
But the problems didn’t end there. As soon as the sun decided to show itself through the clouds I put the charger beneath the car’s windscreen. It was sunny all day, but when I came to tap the FreeLoader’s charge I found to my amazement that it barely had enough to make its charging light switch on...and then off again.
Here’s the issue – car windscreens are very good at protecting the driver from the glare of the sun. So what hope does a solar charger have of getting those much needed rays? I couldn’t leave it outside because, as with every English summer, it likes to surprise you by going from brilliant blue skies to chucking it down with rain within the space of 30 minutes. Taking it with me to the beach where sand would inevitably make its way into some essential component didn’t seem like a good move either. In the end I had to give up – solar-chargers don’t work so well when there’s a lack of sun!
I imagine if you’re going abroad to somewhere with a good deal more sunshine than England and where you can count on it not to rain, the FreeLoader would work well. Or if you have the time to leave it on a window-ledge for long periods then, again, this may be worth your while.
Despite the potential issues caused by a lack of sun, the FreeLoader is still a good way to charge your precious gadgets without having to spend god-knows-how-long winding up a handle in a desperate bid to generate enough electricity for that last text.