Travel Light & Charge Anything
Christian Nimsky
Last year I read a book called The Four Hour Workweek which contains not only a thought-provoking philosophy but also little tips and tricks the author has learned along the way. One of those tips was using a Solio charger to simplify the task of packing all the chargers for your electronic gadgets.
I bought one of the original Solio devices and was impressed. Recently they’ve improved upon it however with the Solio Magnesium Edition.
You can learn more about the Solio at their website but I’ll summarize it as a portable power supply that charges small electronic devices such as phones, GPS units, cameras, etc. It won’t do laptops. This power supply can derive power from a wall plug (it comes with international attachments) or the sun. And unlike most solar chargers, it has its own internal battery to store that charge for when you need it, for example when your BlackBerry runs out of gas in a place where you can’t plug a charger into a wall socket. This internal battery also ensures speedy charges every time since it uses the battery to charge the device and then deals with charging itself back up as a separate process.
What makes the Magnesium Edition so cool (aside from it’s brawny-looking metal exterior) is that it is compatible with iGo tips so the Solio is now compatible with a whole lot more devices, including my Pioneer Inno and my Iridium satellite phone. I can literally use this thing to charge every device I now use, with the exception of my Sony Alpha DSLR camera.
These things can hold their charge for up to a year (unlike many other battery-powered devices) so I now have a couple extras that reside in our household emergency kits.