One of the main joys of an eReader is that it allows you to carry enough books around with you to keep you happily in reading matter when you are traveling, without having to cart a whole case full of heavy paper books with you.
Whilst the batteries in most eReaders can keep your friendly eReader going for days on end, inevitably there comes a time when the thing runs out of juice. This has been known to bring fervent readers such as myself to the brink of suicide!
If you are traveling with your laptop, or have a direct charger for your eReader and are staying with friends or in hotels, this isn't really a problem as you can simply charge it up using mains electricity. However, if you are like me, and tend to wander around the less organised parts of the world and sleep in tents or some other non-electric place, sooner or later you will find yourself with a problem (the same applies to your laptop, of course). Do not fear, there is a simple and rather wonderful solution to this problem.
Solar and mobile battery chargers!!
There are a number of these handy little gadgets on the market, but there is one company who have really thought it through and come up with a whole range of interrelated solar and battery chargers that can help your laptop, your mobile phone, your eReader and any other smallish piece of electronic equipment you are carting around with you as you travel.
This is the range of chargers that are made by an innovative British company called Portable Power, whose range of products glory in the most unlikely names - Power Monkey, Power Gorilla and such like.
The models that are of interest to us are mostly inter-linkable too, so one can start with the cheapest and sort of work one's way up to the top model, as you will see as this post goes along.
So, here they are, the entire menagerie of solar and battery chargers that will perhaps interest you.
I shall start with the cheapest model which is capable of recharging not only your eReader, but also your laptop and all your electronic gear when away from base.
This little gadget is really nothing more than a spare battery, which you can recharge (either from mains electricity or by means of a car cigarette lighter type plug whilst in a car or with their solar charger, more of which below). As you see in the picture, it can either recharge your laptop battery, or be used to run your laptop as it can deliver a wide range of voltages, specifically:-
- 8.4 Volts
- 9.5 Volts
- 10.5 Volts
- 12 Volts
- 19 Volts
The capacity of the batteries is 9000 Ampere Hours, so it will keep things going for quite a long time.
PRICE, ABOUT 100 BRITISH POUNDS.
However, this little fellow, though useful, will only recharge your eReader about once I reckon, so it isn't enough if you are going really into the bush for a long time. Then you need the following model to make yourself truly independent of civilization.
This wonderful creature is capable of directly running all manner of electronic equipment - laptops and so forth, but what is more important here, is that it can either be used to recharge your Minigorilla or be connected to your eReader and recharge it for you while you sit and contemplate the wondertul view from your tent as it does so.
It comes with a bewildering range of little plugs, so it should be capable of being connected to just about any piece of equipment you have with you, and should you have something that needs a different plug, then they seem to be good at supplying you with a plug that will fit.
In spite of its name - the solar bit - you don't actually need to have strong direct sunlight to make this small gorilla work, it uses the Ultra-Violet in sunlight which is always present, even on cloudy days, though obviously it works better in strong direct sunlight.
Obviously you can use it to charge any of the other rechargeable battery units they make. Their website is very informative on this subject, and well worth a visit to snuffle around to see if any other products of theirs are of interest to you.
Price: Around 140 British Pounds.
WHERE CAN YOU BUY THEM?
You can buy the entire range directly from the company itself, or from Amazon, who also sell them.
SHARE WITH US:
If you have used any of their products, and have thoughts about them, please let me know and I shall publish them. Equally, if you have come across any other similar gadgets, do let us know about them too, and what you think about them, so we can spread the good word.
Source: Powertraveller.
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