Sometimes, solar charging isn’t worth it

July 21st, 2008 • 4 comments environmentalism
Tags: freeloader, solar charging

Last week I received my Solar Technology Freeloader (I actually bought mine at Firebox.com) in hopes of eschewing my Sidekick’s charger for a solar-powered charger. Well, it got charged but it was because I used the included USB cable to charge the Freeloader’s battery not from solar charging. I’ve charged the Freeloader in the extremely abundant Florida sun twice and twice has my phone completely drained the battery in less than 15 minutes. Could this be a defective battery? Quite possibly. Do I believe it’s a defective battery? Not at all. Before I bought the Freeloader, I looked for reviews and very few actual reviews were found and those there were found were either from England OR they were reviewing the press release for the device from 2005. I should have taken this as a warning that it may not work or at least, not work so well.

This is pretty much the wrong product for someone that’s environmentally-minded. The packaging isn’t recyclable at all except for the inside box that holds the charger and cables. It’s regular paperboard without any finish. The charger itself is a mix of small photovoltaic panels (2 of them), aluminum, and plastic (whose number is not defined in the manual) and the Li-ion battery. I know the aluminum can be recycled but the rest of the device body itself is questionable. The battery is replaceable but according to the manual and agreement, an end user cannot replace the battery themselves but they can buy as many replacement batteries as they want to. Why would I buy a replacement battery that I can’t replace? It’s different if I have to take the device to the company to replace the battery a la iPhone. This really hinders any widespread adoption for the product especially since they only ship inside the UK and nowhere else for consumers. Solar Technologies may not want to pay for shipping to other countries but it seriously will limit the use of their device.

There are three LEDs on one side to show charging/discharging status and two ports on the other side for charging by USB or discharging with one of the 18 included charging tips. As instructed in the manual, my first time charging the device was using the supplied mini-USB cable to charge via my computer’s USB ports. OK, fine, I did that. It charged up in about 3 hours and then I then used the Freeloader to charge my phone. It did so for a little under 2 hours which is what the packaging materials claim. Great, I thought I’d found a reason to no longer use my wall charger. I was wrong. Since I fully discharged the Freeloader in the middle of the day, I stuck it outside to charge in direct sunlight for at least 5 hours. I had no way to tell if it was fully charged up or not since the device only uses two of the LEDs to show ‘solar charge’ status although, one of the LEDs is used for showing the device charging by USB *and* it will shut off once fully charged by USB. This cannot be done via solar charging at all and is a bad product design. The LEDs never shut off when solar charging but they do with USB charging, why would it only work for one function? This confusing design aside, I still decided to use it.

After it had charged for 4-5 hours and I figured it was fully charged, I slapped on the mini-USB connector tip and plugged the charger into my phone. 10 minutes later I got a call from my dad so I unplugged the charger but once I was done I plugged it back up. Well, it was dead. Completely. No juice left at all. This was after 10 minutes of use and 4-5 hours of charging. If that length of time — which is specified in the manual to be the required solar charging time — is not sufficient then what is? I live in Florida so we get tons of strong daylight year round but am I supposed to believe that I need to leave this outside for 8+ hours to charge when the manual does state that’s not needed? There’s an “add on” called the Supercharger however I’m not sure what its purpose is at all. Solar Technologies claims it can charger the Freeloader in as little as 4 hours — the manual states it can charge itself in as little as 5 hours — and their other promo material states it can charge the Freeloader in “half the time”. Half of what? 4 hours is not half of 5 hours by any math I know of. Overall, the Freeloader doesn’t meet expectations or even what’s in the manual.

The build quality isn’t all that great either. The device is comprised of plastic clamshelled inside thin aluminum which should add at least some structural rigidity and protection. While I don’t plan on dropping this to find out the latter part, I know that the product feels very cheap overall. The solar panel portions of the device can easily torsion from side-to-side which means you could very simply snap them if you accidentally sat on them. Yes, I know they’re glass but I’m talking about when the solar panel halves are put together! Overall build quality simply feels cheap and does not give the end user a great deal of insurance that their Freeloader won’t simply fall to bits if it’s dropped from small heights.

Friday, the 18th, I left my charger in the car all day charging. To my surprise one of the solar panel’s plastics had warped in the sun. It warped in such a way to actually push part of the panel out of the battery compartment (they’re push-connected like pushing a phone charger tip into a cell phone) and so it wasn’t charging properly. I did not know when this had happened or if it was affecting the ability to charge. So when I plugged my Freeloader into my phone, I gave it a 15 minute time limit before I would check it again. Sadly, it didn’t last 12 minutes. And this was after charging in direct sunlight for over 6 hours — remember, 5 is all that’s required according to the manual. So either I’ve gotten a defective unit or this just doesn’t work in the first place. The device manual says it supports iPods (up to 18 hours) and PSPs (up to 2.5 hours) but I can’t get it to charge my cell phone for more than 15 minutes, how it will do anything more demanding like a PSP is completely beyond me.

I was extremely disappointed by this solar charger. I haven’t been this letdown by a product in a long time. I should have known from the very small number of in-person product reviews that either it was a bum product or a gimmick or simply no one bought it. Now I know that it was both the former and the latter. With seemingly poor quality control done on these, I can’t feel comfortable charging my device in the sun any longer for fear or warping one of the other connections and it no longer charging at all or simply short circuiting completely. I am not going to request an exchange from Firebox because I don’t want to wait another week for the device that may or may not work; a refund will suffice. I will then use this money towards another solar charger such as the Solio or Solio Hybrid 1000HD.

Would I ever buy a product from Solar Technology again? Not if my life depended on it. If I’m going to use a product such as the Freeloader to charge my electronic devices, well, it better do just that.