I’m quite pleased with this little unit. It may not be perfect, but it’s only twenty bucks, so it gets five stars. Amazon says it has a 1000 mAh power bank, but the included manual says it’s 1200 mAh. I would estimate it’s between 1000 and 1100 mAh.
Overall impressions:
The flashlight is not real bright, but good enough for most general tasks in the dark. There are no brightness or flash modes, just simply on or off.
The radio works well enough – the volume goes up very rapidly with the volume control – at 10% of the way, it’s already quite loud. I haven’t tried it all the way up. The tuning is quite sensitive (tuning changes quickly with slow turning of the dial), but not too sensitive to be able to tune to stations when you’re careful. Sound quality is thin and bright, but who cares – this isn’t for music listening. There is no headphone jack. The antenna works fine for FM and Wideband, it’s kind of short, but helps with reception.
The charging crank turns fine, but it takes work to do so. One minute of cranking makes my hands tired and a bit sore. Five minutes of cranking is alot of work! Part of the problem is that it is hard to find a good place to hold the unit while cranking without having to grip it harder than you should have to. Also, the knob that you hold on the crank is somewhat small. But for a minute at a time it’s all fine.
You can charge the unit via USB with the included cable, which is definitely the easy way to accomplish that. You can also charge external devices from the internal battery. I don’t know the output current that it provides, but it charges my iPhone 5. More details below.
I made a few tests for your info:
With the unit completely drained, I cranked 130 revolutions (about 1 minute) and then turned on the flashlight. The first 20 minutes shone normally, then started to get dimmer and dimmer. But it kept shining. And shining. And shining. Finally, after over 9 hours of constant dim light I turned on the radio at the same time and very shortly everything went out. Who knows how much longer it would have shone on. Bear in mind almost all of those 9 hours were very dim light, but in total darkness, still very useful to not trip on things when pointed at your feet and do normal tasks when pointed at what you’re doing. Good for emergencies.
Then with the unit completely drained again, I cranked 130 turns and then turned on the radio. With moderate volume, it played for 12 minutes before dying.
How about charging phones? I have a rather old iPhone 5. With the flashlight completely drained, I cranked 1300 turns (10 minutes) – no small feat! Then I plugged in my phone to charge from the unit. It added about 2% to my phone battery before it stopped charging. I then placed a phone call (all with no cellular data, wifi, or location services on, and in low battery mode). My call lasted for 5-6 minutes until those 2% had been used. Bear in mind that my phone battery is not what it used to be so your mileage my vary.
I also tested the capacity by charging the unit fully via USB. I’m not sure how long that took, but for sure less than 6 hours. Then I charged my iPhone 5 (again with the battery saving settings in place). It raised my phone battery level by 75% before it stopped charging. That took just over an hour.
Another thing I tested: with the unit fully discharged, I connected my phone and started cranking. While cranking it was providing charge to my phone.
I haven’t specifically tested the solar charging, but I did set it in the sun and it looked to be charging. Actually, even under bright indoor lights it shows as charging.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.