Photos and first test: Hymini, the hand-held wind turbine

Since solar chargers became old hat -- there are now over half a dozen of the buggers -- we've been dying to get our mitts on the Hymini, a pocket charger that promises to power your gadgets with wind power. Handily, it's just gone on sale in the UK for £40 and Nigel's Eco Store sent us one which we've been having a play with.

You can see in the photos below what you get in the box, but the big question remains: does the thing actually generate any electricity? Or is it a piece of tat begging for the Woolies bargain bin?

To find out, we took it for a bicycle ride yesterday. In the absence of the official (£10!) bicycle bracket, we opted for a lo-fi and literally tacky approach of taping the Hymini to our helmet. Every time we stopped and had a look, the fan was spinning away very fast. The weather conditions couldn't have been much better as it was warm and very windy. Perfect, surely, for generating free green energy.

Well, we cycled for four miles at an average and moderate speed of 13-14mph. Here's what we generated: just one bar of energy on a Nokia N73 phone. It charged our old phone for around 20 minutes before running out of juice. On that basis, we'd need to ride for 28 miles at a decent pace to charge our phone to full. Which is quite a lot of cycling in anyone's book, though we did once have a job that entailed a slightly insane 28-mile round cycle commute.

We'll be running a full in-depth review of the Hymini shortly, but in the meantime we've jotted down our first impressions here. One thing we liked was the use of an expanding ZIP-LINQ cable for the USB adapter that you use to connect the Hymini to gadgets for chargers. Supported gadgets include anything that charges via mini USB, new and old Nokia mobs, plus phones from LG, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola. There's also female USB built into the device, which means you can plug in an iPod or anything that charges via USB off a PC.

We were certainly relieved that the design is as slick as it looks in photos. This is a sexy green design that's solidly built and will certainly inspire gadget lust.

You can buy the Hymini from Nigel's Eco Store, which also stocks the bicycle mount. While you wait for the review, take a look at the photos below.