Review: Solargorilla and Powergorilla

Solar testing
Late September isn't a brilliant time of year for solar chargers in the UK, because the days get shorter and the sun's radiation is less intense. Broadly speaking, the closer you live to the equator -- leaving aside local air pollution, cloud cover and other factors -- the better the Gorillas will perform.

The Solargorilla easily charged my test iPhone and Nokia N95 8GB. It took the iPhone from a flat battery to 10 per cent battery in two hours; the Nokia charged from one bar of power to full in a day.

Charging a laptop directly was another story. I tried my Toshiba Tecra M9 and Sony X505 laptops and couldn't get the Solargorilla to produce enough electricity to even register on either laptop. Even two days of blue skies and sun couldn't get juice into the Sony.

In fairness, manufactuer Powertraveller does have a warning about this on its site. "Solargorilla is a charging option," it says. "It relies on the UV intensity of the sun. Therefore, at this time of year it may not be suitable for use in the Northern Hemisphere unless combined with the Powergorilla."

Powertraveller is right. The Solargorilla did successfully and regularly charge the Powergorilla, which I could then use to recharge my laptops. Even after three days in the sun, however, I failed to nudge the Powergorilla's charge level above four out of its six bars. That's not to say the Solargorilla didn't add any power -- it just didn't add enough to jump the Powergorilla up a bar.