If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere that gets a decent amount of sun every year, investing in a solar charger to give portable devices a boost when out and about would be a wise idea and Korean company Zyrus has come up with something tidy and practical enough to hold genuine appeal.
The Sun Drive is a combination solar panel, USB drive and multi-charger and as you can see from the image above, is more than portable enough to tuck away in a pocket or bag. This makes its solar capabilities all the more impressive, though a full charge does require around 15 hours of sunlight so unless we manage to perfect charging at night its solar potential may be restricted to a quick emergency boost when necessary.
Luckily there’s a bit more to the Sun Drive than this and aside from optional USB storage capacities of 2, 4, 8 and 16 GB it also houses a rechargeable 400mA Li-Polymer battery, which retains charge from the solar panel over time and can also be fully boosted via USB in under 50 minutes.
It’s capable of offering up to an hour of talk time or 35 hours standby time on mobile phones, and with the right adaptors can be used with additional devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players and games consoles.
Available for a quite reasonable US$23 for the charge-only unit or $31 for the 4GB memory model, it’s well priced too.