Comments on: Gear Worth Buying for Africa: PowerMonkey Extreme

By: Toby Shapshak: You don’t need an app for that – [TED Talks] | mostly music

Sat, 12 Apr 2014 07:56:15 +0000

[…] Gear Worth Buying for Africa: PowerMonkey Extreme […]

By: Israel Kloss

Israel Kloss — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 15:16:28 +0000

Just because I traveled to 12 towns in 2.5 months across TZ AND KE with it (and all the parts are easy and cheap to find)… I would like to propose a cheaper solution for East Africans. It’s called Bootstrap Solar: http://www.bootstrapsolar.com/products/chi-qoo-solar-power-pack-kit

Israel Kloss
Findable.me

By: Samir Dave

Samir Dave — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 10:14:03 +0000

Hi Erik,

Perfect – I think all my questions have been answered. Though I shall soon be bothering you about info on the trip to Turkana and back as I plan my next roadtrip.

Thanks.

Sam

By: indra de lanerolle

indra de lanerolle — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 14:23:37 +0000

I’ve used the Powermonkey extreme for a while now. If you have regular access to power, its a bulky battery but if you really are offgrid in sunny places it really works. I have hiked with it off grid for days to enable me to use gps maps on my phone. In my experience it does take best part of 8-10 hours to charge via the solar panels. I tie the panel to my backpack and leave it out all day.

The first time i used it, I had exactly the same experience as Erik with the touch screen and swiping it. Now I’m used to it, I think its quite a clever design, but it would have helped if the packaging explained it better.

By: HASH

HASH — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 12:02:02 +0000

Michael, I usually carry a Mophie external battery for things around town, but it can’t take the beating of travel around Africa as well, plus it’s not made for juicing up via solar (as far as I can tell). I’m not sure about Limeade, and it’d be hard to drop 50% of your battery capacity at that level. What I’d say is that if you’re really going off grid for a while, then something that you can charge over time like the PowerMonkey Extreme works really well.

How long does it take to charge? If you have good sun, seems like most of the day to charge it.

By: Michael Downey

Michael Downey — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:52:59 +0000

Any more specific guess on how fast the solar panel charges the battery? It’d be nice to carry but I’m hesitant to replace my Limeade 18000 mAh battery with one half the capacity.

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 06:24:18 +0000

Thanks Erik – good tip for remote comms & tech charging. Power monkey looks well robust.