Gadgetory

so what power is awesome and harnessing it is awesome too because it's just kind of usually around during the day especially in somewhere like Mexico while we are right now well it can power devices if you have solar panels connected to them and it can power cities if you have giant networks of solar panels connected to them it can also make it kind of hard to see which is why I'm squinting from now until June 20 of 2016 you can pre-order the msi gtx 1070 founders edition through mass drop learn more at the link in the video description one thing that has gotten rather popular lately is the advent of solar panels for stuff like hiking or solar panels for charging things like small battery banks or your cell phone 7/8 watt 5 watt solar panels that claim VL to charge your device that sounds pretty cool and you see pictures of people strapping them to their backpacks and stuff and then going hiking through the jungle how applicable is that how well do those actually work that is the sole reason why we came to Mexico ok that's not necessarily true but it is one of the things we'll be doing here the first two solar panels I want to introduce are the anchor 8 watt and the all powers 8 watt they look actually almost identical but there are some minor differences they both claim 8 watts at 5 volts and 1 amp so I might have limited knowledge here but I don't think that's how that works but oh well we'll test that later on both of them have little cable loops where you can attach carabiners or something like that to attach it to your bag both have little pouches where you can manage things like maybe putting a battery in and both have a tethered USB port so that you can move them around which is actually rather nice neither of them feature a kickstand neither of them feature a battery these are pretty bone standard solar panels the goal 0 offering is a 7 watt number which closes using magnets which is actually kind of nice has little loops for carabiners comes with two carabiners and has its pouch on the outside inside pouch there is a 12 watt connection a USB connection connection for their guide 10 which is another device that goal 0 offers and a chain the input so that you can connect a bunch of these together it also features no battery no kickstand and claims that it can charge your phone entirely in one to two hours so we're going to see how true that is so when it comes to these solar panels they have lots of warnings and notices and whatnot on them telling you that efficiency will be hampered if you have a cloudy day if it's if it's not that sunny if it's different various conditions can affect if it's not tilted towards the Sun well we're in Mexico it's pretty obvious where the Sun is there are very very few clouds I really don't think that's going to be an issue so let's see how well they stack up to their claims so what I have here is a USB amperage voltage tester that is plugged into the unit and then hidden under it because it's incredibly hard to read in the Sun then it's about noon ish and the Sun is right above us so I'm just going to hold the solar panel basically like this and try to read the reader which will be below it and I'll tell you guys the readout and then maybe we'll try to get some footage of it but that's going to be really difficult so the all powers is the first one that I'm testing and with a little bit of plus or minus on both of these calculations it's reading at about five-ish volts or 4.9 and it's reading at about point eight five point nine amps the anchor solar panel is running at about 0.9 amps and about four point nine to five volts unsurprisingly extremely similar to the all powers 8 watt so the goal zero is a little bit harder to read because the connector is fixed into the body instead of being on a tether but we're running at about four point nine volts and waiting for it to switch over about point seven amps so night not quite as strong as the other ones idle and I noticed some key differences between the goal zero panel and the anchor slash all powers panels in between testing one heads will notice that there's a much more glossy finish on the goal zero and a very much matte finish on the anchor and all power solar panels also the line density on the anchor and all power panels is much higher than the goal zero panel and the goal zero logo takes up more space than the anchor and all one so there's just overall more panel and this big guy gets a solid 5 volts 1 amps in the Sun so what one is this one I didn't introduce it well this is a 20 watt neck tech which looks like it's basically built in the same place as the all powers and anchor solar panels the reason why I wanted to show this off is the other smaller ones are often shown off as hiking solar panels but in not completely perfect conditions aren't always that great so this one did exactly 5 volts one app in the Sun which a little weird considering it claims to be a 20 watt panel my battery can take 1.7 amps but it's only outputting one amp if it wanted to be 20 watts as far as I can tell at five volts because of USB 2.0 it should be 2 amps out of both of its output ports because it has USB 1 and USB 2 well USB number one and USB number two not USB version 1 USB really do don't anybody anyways so a little bit not stoked about the specs on all of these guys although if I'm doing something wrong in terms of calculations let me know in the comments down below but now let's test in the shade one of the most commonly showing off scenarios for these solar panels is just attaching them to the back of your backpack and going for a hike in the jungle or a forest that's going to cast shade on them for a huge percentage of the time and they are almost never going to be at an ideal angle so let's test that as well what I'm doing is I stepped into the shade just outside of the sunlight and I have them vertical while the Sun is directly above us this is not an ideal position the crazy 20 watt that we just tested is running at 5 volts which is great kind of expected that and at about 0.65 amps which is actually really solid considering how it's positioned that can probably be attributed to the fact that it not only has a third solar panel but it's also much larger per solar panel than the other guys the width is about the same but the height has increased a very noticeable amount this guy's much smaller standing in more or less the same spot the goal zero struggles to get to 0.1 of an amp sometimes going to as low as point zero eight sometimes going as high as 0.1 two not very much you're going to struggle to charge a lot of devices on this the anchor doesn't fare all that much better five volts just like all the rest of them all the time its amperage goes at about point one five to 0.17 still a little bit sketchy if you want to charge a lot of different devices my cheero tough would reject all of these the all power is yet again proving that the anchor and the all powers are probably more or less the same thing having the same voltage and save amperage as the anchor so our camera is giving us a temperature warning and to be completely honest I'm done we've tested it in the Sun we've tested in the shade we've tested improper angles all that kind of stuff I don't think brand ended up being a huge factor here what ended up being a huge factor here was surface area the big massive one with three panels and a taller overall design did quite well in the shade and in the Sun the anchor and the all powers which were more or less the same performed more or less the same and then the goal zero which had some glassy panels which as far as I know seems like a poor choice but I don't design these things so I could be wrong and had smaller overall panels didn't do quite as well as the others fairly straightforward one thing that I am frustrated about is the math on this kind of stuff maybe I just have no idea what's going on in terms of solar calculations you guys let me know on Twitter at Luke on a scroll a hard go there call me stupid let me know in the comments down below but I don't understand how five volts 1 amp equals 7 watts or 8 watts and how 5 volts 1 amp and 5 volts 1 amp on one solar panel equals 20 watts I have no idea how that's supposed to work and we didn't get those calculations here but we did get here was like in ideal conditions 5 watts on all of them so yeah let me know comments down below another thing that I did find was that you're probably not going to want to these 7 or 8 watt panels I would recommend something like the 20 watt panel at a minimum why because the wattage number no because of the three larger panels that were on that charger giving you much more dynamic positions that you can be and it can be on your backpack at a not ideal position and still charge a fair amount off the Sun another thing to pay attention to is what you're charging certain devices aren't going to like being charged at not one full amp I know my cheero tuff is a little bit particular about different things because it wants to save the battery that's inside which is a good thing for a durable battery and the slightly less scrupulous zero ingress charger didn't care as much and was able to charge off of all of them at pretty much whatever amperage you threw at it so pay attention what battery you're pairing with these things get a bigger better panel and I hope you guys enjoyed the video to use the mobile carrier that is focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first don't speak to a robot get put through directly to a person which is pretty sweet and pay for only what you use the average ting bill is only $24 a month per device if you're stuck in a contract and switch over to ting they'll cover 25% of your cancellation fee up to $75 head over to Linus ENCOM and try out their savings calculator which can help you figure out exactly how much you'll save on your bill and when you sign up we using our link 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