Here’s a product that finally seems to combine all you’d ever need in a universal charging solution. The Sunny Universal Solar Charger from Brando incorporates a high-capacity battery to charge your various mobile devices many times before the juice runs out and then you have the option of opening the compact device and exposing the solar panels for unlimited power away from wall sockets.

On a sunny day of course...

I don’t like to rain on Brando’s Sunny but there were a few issues that made this device less than optimal.

Let’s have a closer look.

I so wanted the Sunny Universal Solar Charger to work as from the moment I first saw it I fell in love with the concept and the design! Build quality appears great as the Sunny looks the part with a soft velvety rubber finish and good workmanship evident.

Even the box was high quality. The prototype unit we got sent to us had this mysterious slogan on the box: Let Love Scintillating...

Mmm... don’t know what you meant by that, Brando, but I was pleased to see it “translated” to Enjoy the Sunshine on subsequent boxes.

My desk is awash with chargers and plugs from dozens of mobile devices. I’ve had to label some of them as plugging in the wrong voltage can be rather painful for your wallet. But it’s the clutter of wires, cables and fat transformers plus the mishmash of prongs and jacks that is really getting to me.  I’m glad that finally some device makers like Nokia have agreed to the Micro-USB standard so we’ll get some sense back in this whole game.

For now, the Sunny Universal Solar Charger seems a great solution to bring a bit of order.

The Power Out from the Sunny is through a standard USB port. A coiled USB cable with an adapter plug accommodates 7 plugs for the most commonly used devices, including mini-USB.

It would have been handy if these were marked because it’s now a bit of trial and error to see if they fit your device.

To cater for the various voltage needs there is a sliding switch on the side that gives you the following: 4.5V, 5.0V, 6.3V and 9.0V.

Make sure you set the correct one first before plugging in. An automatic way to have the device select the right output would have been better.

As a bonus the unit also has a high power LED which can act as a flashlight. Quite handy indeed.

The other LED indicates charging. This red LED will turn to orange and finally green when the internal battery is fully charged

Being a Universal Charger it can be charged from 100-240V AC power points. It comes standard with the round Euro plugs. Surprisingly, there was no car charger with it to make it really universal.

Testing Times

We received the Sunny right before a week’s trip to the Outback here in Australia.

Auspicious timing as we would be having plenty of sunshine and be away from the electricity grid for some days. The battery in the Universal Solar Charger must be charged 3 times for 12 hours on AC before it is ready for solar charging. This is all in the little manual that comes with it. This was duly done and we set off. As a backup I took my Nokia charger with me.

We had the Sunny opened up on the dashboard for hours on end but when it came to charging our devices in the evening it was a hit and miss affair. Sometimes, it would charge for a few minutes then stop. Sometimes it would not play ball at all... We followed the manual in everything but began to suspect we had a faulty device. Even when the battery was fully charged on wall power the Sunny could not be relied upon to charge our devices. In the end it was very frustrating and we mentioned this to Brando.

They were kind enough to replace the first unit and we tested the next one extensively as well.

Alas, there must be a generic problem either with the circuitry and perhaps also with the efficiency of the photo-voltaic cells. We noticed a white discoloration on the solar cells after a few weeks of use.

This is a great pity as I love the concept of this design. However, the net result is not a unit I can recommend (yet) because of its unreliability. Needless to say we spent hours and hours  to make it work  and tried endless combinations.

We sincerely hope that Brando will continue to work on this product and also implement a way to see how much power is left in the battery. A simple solution could be in the form of the 4 LEDs in the USBfever model we recently reviewed.

Summary

Great design and concept, flawed implementation.

Price at $69 US is right when the unit works as advertised.

This can and should be an excellent product.