solar charger

Some have the Lixada 10w and it seems to be ok.

I have one similar to the Lixada 10w mentioned above. Mine is a Solar Cycle, but I think the brand no longer exists. Mine has been in use at home mostly over the last 4 years or so to charge my phone. You should get just enough charge out of it on a sunny day to power a headlamp and phone. Also charges on cloudy days, but slowly. The only downside I can see is that it doesn’t fold down in size, but the type of panel does seem to be pretty robust.

Personally speaking, I don’t find solar chargers practical for backpacking unless there is some sort of base camp being set up. That’s why mine is set to home duty for charging my phone and I just take an Anker power bank with me that only weighs 7 ounces.

i use a 6.6oz, 5w renogy solar panel as shown below and really love the setup. to give you an idea – it charges my phone ~20% per hour in direct sunlight.

in practice, even w/ forest sections or slot canyons, 5w is way more than enough juice to keep my phone (aka track-recording gps), 2 headlamps (mine and her’s), gopro hero 8, and sony rx100 fully charged indefinitely. we usually charge cameras at camp every few days and the phone (aka gps) trickle charges while walking.

only real quirk is you have to make sure your phone’s screen shutoff duration is set as low as possible because the screen turns on when the charge starts (so annoying android!), and that can happen a lot while going in/out of sun through partially shaded areas.

we spend most of our time in the sierras or dessert, but we have 50+ days on trail w/ this setup and no complaints. we never worry about power at all. i guess if you hike primarily in shaded forest or run in to 4+ consecutive days of rain then that could be a problem.

that’s a lot of watts for not much weight

it weighs about the same as a 10,000 mAh usb power bank.  That would be about 36 Watt hour.  You might get 36 Watt hours from your 5 W panel in a day.  Or two.

A 10,000 mAh usb power bank is enough for about 4 days of use.  So, for a trip up to 4 days it would weigh the same to carry a 10,000 usb power bank.  Above that the solar panel would weigh less.

exactly! but unlike a power bank, this thing never runs out, so (baring failure) you’re never totally stuck w/o power.

on the bad side, i can’t find one these for sale atm. so now y’all have me paranoid about what i’m gonna do if this one dies on me.

quick search of amazon

$14

$14

6 watts, 8.8 ounces

In the future there will be cheaper/lighter/more powerful ones

https://www.outdoorgearlab.com/reviews/camping-and-hiking/solar-charger/renogy-e-flex5

Bob, I found the Renogy E.Flex 5W for sale at https://www.blackstarsurvival.com/5wattmonocrystallineportablesolarpanelwithusbport

A bit pricey per watt compared to what you can get from competitors these days but I haven’t been able to find much out there that’s similar in specs, not that I’ve looked super hard. Glad to know that even a 5W panel may be adequate!

Since I’m planning to use mine for bikepacking rather than backpacking and would like to be able to charge 2 devices at once for my intended application, I’ll likely get the Anker PowerPort Lite (15W) instead at 12 oz. The price of the even bigger 21W Anker PowerPort just dropped on Amazon to compete with the BigBlue 3, but I don’t think the extra watts are worth the extra weight for me.

Solar panel should be charging a battery-not picky about interruptions like many devices are. Can keep your bank topped off and on multi-day trips this is really helpful.

Caution going solar -> battery bank -> device. You’ll lose around 20-30% of energy (watt-hours or <grumble> mAh) at each step. But a necessary evil for many devices, especially smartphones.

Some backpackers (not me) solar recharge a smaller battery pack daily, reducing carried weight. “Smaller” is relative to your needs.

— Rex