Portable Audio-listening Heaven, Part 3: The Solio Portable Solar Powered Charger

by C.K. Sample III Jan 26, 2005

Portable Audio-listening Heaven, Part 3:
The Solio Portable Solar Powered Charger

Week before last, in Portable Audio Heaven, Part 2, I discussed how the battery life of your iPod could be improved by using the Simpl A1 for amplification, keeping the iPod’s volume set low and thereby minimizing the internal power drain of the iPod. This is a useful tip, but if you really want to know how to crank long-life out of your iPod’s charge, you’ll need a Solio.

If you’ve ever thought about shelling out some dough for an external back-up battery for your iPod, save the money for the Solio, ($99 MSRP; http://www.solio.com) It is pitched as a Portable Solar Powered Charger for the iPod, but in reality it is a solar powered backup battery and charger for the iPod. Best of all, it works and works well.

I’ve been testing the Solio for a little over a month, and since I have started using it, I’ve never had that dreaded iPod power-outage. Keep in mind, that I didn’t starve my iPod in any way during the testing. I used it as I normally would, plugging it in to my Mac whenever I wanted to update songs and into the car charger whenever I happened to be in the car and managed to remember to do so. Then, whenever the battery indicator started to get low as I was out and about, I’d pull the Solio out of my bag / a pocket and charge away.

The Solio itself is very close in size to the iPod, albeit a bit lighter and a bit thicker. When collapsed for easy storage, it looks very similar to the white space eggs featured on the TV Classic SitCom, Mork and Mindy. Then a gentle push on the side feathers the device out into three solar-paneled “leaves,” which surround a hole in the middle. This hole is useful for catching the necessary rays to replenish the Solio’s juice. You can either use the included suction cup to stick the device to a window, prop it up tripod-like on two of the “leaves” and a pencil which sticks through the hole, or tie a string through the device and loop this to the back of your pack bag for catching rays as you trek up the side of a mountain on vacation.

The Solio also comes with a wire to attach to your iPod, and there are optional kits available through the Solio website filled with various adapters for other devices you may own, including various cell phones, PDAs, and even your GameBoy Advance (actually, for me, the only adapter it is currently missing is a USB adapter, so that I can recharge my iPod Shuffle).

Originally, I had intended to run a grueling series of tests, through which I would fully charge the iPod and fully charge the Solio (using the included AC adapter) and see how long the iPod ran non-stop while hooked up to the fully charged Solio. My attempt at this test didn’t work for two basic reasons. First, they never seemed to stop. I ran the iPod for a full afternoon and left it running over night with it still going. Come daylight, there was daylight recharging the Solio, so that it could again recharge the iPod. Second, unless the Solio is fully-charged and the iPod isn’t, you have to monitor its charging of the iPod. It isn’t designed to stay always connected to the iPod (this actually makes sense for portability reasons).

If your iPod is running low and you plug in a fully charged Solio, nothing happens until you press the button on the back of the Solio. Then the Solio checks the connection to see if it is an iPod, a cellphone, or what, and begins automatically routing the appropriate level of charge in that direction. It will continue routing charge in that direction until either the iPod is fully charged or its own internal battery is fully depleted / there is no sunlight present to help charge. Once either of these situations occurs, it stops charging the iPod and starts charging itself. It won’t start charging the iPod again unless you press the button on the back of the device.

This is not that problematic if your Solio is fully charged; however, for my testing, I only charged the Solio via the AC adapter once, when I first got the device, and since then, it has been fully solar-powered. On one very sunny day, the Solio, sitting on a suction cup attached to the window, fully charged within the advertised 8 hours of solar exposure. However, the majority of my testing went on during the dreaded New York winter. There have been very few bright sunny days for charging the Solio. The Solio will charge on cloudy days, but it charges much slower. During these days, if your Solio is running very low, the connection between the Solio and the iPod acts very much like it is suffering from a short circuit. It’ll start charging the iPod for a few minutes and then stop. You then try to place it in the brightest light you can find to charge it a little bit, then reinitiate the charge cycle on the iPod. It won’t start charging unless it has enough of a charge built up to do so, and if it only has the minimal amount of charge, it will start pumping juice into the iPod for a few minutes and then poof. It is dead again.

Even on very sunny days (there have been a few, thank goodness), if the Solio is entirely depleted and you start a charge cycle, one dark cloud can interrupt the feed of solar energy enough to convince the Solio to break the connection to the iPod, and you’ll have to fiddle with it to get it charging again. Moral of the story: keep your Solio charged and remember to keep it out in the sun charging even when your iPod is running at full blast with no need for the Solio’s help.

Despite the somewhat erratic behavior at low charges, I’ve run my iPod for over a month now with no fully depleted battery, and I owe it all to the Solio. It is a great little product and all of the above problems could have been solved by a little more careful user attention to the device. In other words, these problems aren’t with the Solio, but with me. The instruction manual for the Solio even notes to “Please ensure that the Solio’s internal battery maintains a state of charge at all times.” If I had been using the device properly and charging it regularly, whether via sunlight or via its AC adapter, I wouldn’t have encountered these problems.

I do, however, have one small complaint about the Solio itself. I really wish there was a battery indicator on the device. As is, if you push the button on the back of the Solio, it blinks to let you know how much of a charge it has. One blink means it is 25% full, two blinks means 50%, three blinks means 75%, and four blinks means it is fully charged. I’d rather have a series of lights, or a little screen with a battery indicator as is found on the iPod and most cellphones. Also, the Solio indicates that it is charging by this button glowing red, but unfortunately, the placement of the button is counter-intuitive. Depending upon how you have your Solio propped-up to suck in the rays, you will find that you will be bending over and squinting through full sunlight to see if it is in fact charging. It would be better if in the next version the charging indicator were located on the front of one of the device’s “leaves” so you won’t be staring at the sun while trying to determine if the device is charging or not.

That being said, this is hands-down the best iPod peripheral I’ve ever had. Get it. Unlike the Simpl A1 and the Shure E3c, which are both a bit on the luxury side of the iPod peripherals, the Solio is competitively priced with the other iPod back-up batteries out there and it does a lot more than they do in an environmentally-friendly way. In my opinion, everyone with an iPod should have a Solio. Just take the time to train yourself to keep it properly charged.

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