These days, it seems that my backpack keeps getting filled up with more an more electronics. While I enjoy being away from technology in the woods, there are a few electronics that make the experience a bit nicer. Unfortunately, that also usually means that you’ll have to bring quite a few batteries along for the ride if you plan on using those electronics. Thankfully, Brunton makes a pretty large line of solar panels that can reduce the number of batteries.
The Brunton Restore is a bit different than the usual solar panel that the company makes. Traditional solar panels require you to unroll the panels when you get to camp and attach the device you want to charge. The Restore on the other hand combines a solar panel with a battery so you don’t have to keep your electronics attached to charge. This means instead of only charging at camp, you can keep the restore on the outside of your pack during the day and then recharge your device at night.
If you’re a little closer to civilization, Brunton also includes a couple handy adapters so the Restore can be charged in a couple hours via a USB port or even a car’s cigarette lighter. The restore itself will charge anything that can be charged by some variant of USB. So in my case, this was perfect for keeping an iPod charged. I found a bit of webbing and a carabiner worked to attach the Restore to my pack. While you have to make sure you don’t hit the restore against a tree or branch, it works pretty well for charging on the go.
The Restore will hold 1000mA in its internal battery. In my case, this was good for 3 charges of my iPod. A full charge takes about a day with a decent amount of sun. If you have shade or an overcast day, recharge time will increase dramatically. That said, the internal battery was more than large enough to keep my iPod charged through an overcast day.
Retail prices for the Restore seem to be between $60 and $90 at the moment. At that price, the Brunton Restore is a pretty decent deal. If you’re going on a long backpacking trip and want to keep small electronics charged, take a look at the Restore.
Product sample provided by the manufacturer for review purposes.
I have been putting my new Brunton Restore through it’s paces recently. Some comments:
a) Upon opening the box there were missing components. Called Brunton customer service at 5:10 MST (I live in Colorado, USA), unfortunately they close at 5:00pm MST – so we will see if and when they get back to me.
b) Charged the unit per instructions before use. The unit is fully charged when the green blinking light subsides and the four blue led’s stay lit. It would have been nice if this was documented in the user manual – otherwise folks are confused as to when the unit is “really” charged.
c) The user documentation is very poor (as noted in b above). It is not clear what is the “input” side and what is the “output” side of the device. Most will quickly figure this out, but again why make those that are not so savvy have to struggle with unclear, sparse documentation.
d) Fully charged Brunton Restore went dead and failed to fully charge my iPhone 4 after 3 hours (only achieved 93%). Close, but sorry. The package says it will charge a “smart phone” 1-2 times in 2 hours. It is obvious the device was not tested with devices people use today (maybe 5 years ago?). This is very disappointing and misleading.
I have yet to test the Solar functionality, but given the poor performance with my iPhone, I do not expect to be impressed. I will give Brunton the benefit of the doubt if my unit is defective. I fully expect them to replace it. We will see. At this point, I cannot recommend the Brunton Restore to anyone that requires high quality, reliable products. My trust must be earned in the field with real results, not green wash hype.
-Jeff
I bought a Restore whilst hiking around Europe to supplement my decision to carry only a smart phone instead of separate camera, GPS, watch, compass and phone.
By carrying the Restore and a smart phone (HTC Desire), I was able to trim a fair bit of weight and bulk from my normal cross-country kit.
Yes, it can’t totally recharge a modern, large screen smart phone back to 100%, only about 90%. No problems, I justed limited the phone usage so that it only needed a top-up from the Restore at night.
I too hung the Restore on the outside of my rucksack during the day. It performed quite well, but it will stop charging in semi shaded areas or if it becomes overcast. The water resistance and resilience to passing branches etc was very good.
OK, the documentation is a little sparse, but it works just like you’d expect and is easy to work out. The pass-through mode allows you to charge the internal battery and an attached USB device when you have it hooked up to USB power source.
In all, I’m very pleased to own a Restore and think it is great value. Yes, perhaps the internal battery capacity could be a little greater, as the solar panels would be quite capable of keeping it charged. It also would be nice if the internal battery could be user swappable, rather than discard the entire device when the batteries reach their cycle limit.
[...] the battery pretty much anywhere and in the woods you can top it off with the solar panel. We reviewed the Restore last year and it’s been sitting on a shelf in our gear closet since. That means [...]