Solar JOOS Orange: For the Next Time You’re Stranded on a Cruise Ship

The Solar JOOS Orange by JOOS is the most substantial, powerful, and ruggedized solar device charger on the market. Testing it in the strong Florida sun showed us how valuable this could be during hurricane season. Photo: Patricia Vollmer.

I have a confession. I have to blame the Carnival Triumph cruise ship situation for this product review. Pictures from the passengers’ ordeals were circulating around the web, and this particular one caught my attention. Passengers were desperately trying to keep in touch with their loved ones and were working hard to milk every ounce of power available to keep their cell phones charged.  There were accounts on the news of friends and family on the mainland receiving erratic texts from the passengers, and how valuable those little tidbits of information were.

Similar accounts circulated after Superstorm Sandy’s and Hurricane Katrina’s devastations.

In a day and age where texting, Tweeting and other forms of micro-blogging are the standard, it’s now expected for people to be well-connected, and sometimes we take for granted that a critical part of that is having enough battery power.

This is where solar device chargers can really come in handy: so long as there’s sunlight, you can keep your cell phone charged. This can be absolutely critical when it comes to disaster preparedness, as folks along Tornado Alley and the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States can attest.

The last solar device chargers I reviewed were the Etón FRX-2 and FRX-3 devices, which were extremely weak when it came to providing device power and were clearly for emergencies only. The focus of the solar panels in both systems were to power the emergency radio and flashlight; the USB device charger was a bonus capability.

On the other hand, the Solar JOOS Orange system is meant not just for emergencies, but is marketed as a must-have piece of equipment for any tasks that take you away from electricity: boating, camping, and backcountry adventuring.

I received the JOOS Orange Bundle Package for review, which included the JOOS solar charger, along with a neoprene case and reflector mirrors. You can explore the technical specs at the Solar JOOS website. Let’s explore more, shall we?

What’s In the Box

JOOS Orange

• JOOS Orange
• White-colored USB charging cable to connect JOOS to a computer
• Black-colored USB cable with open end for choice of connector to connect JOOS to device to be charged
• Charging tips: iPad/iPhone (up to 4S, not for iPhone 5), micro-USB (such as for Kindles/Blackberries), mini-USB and female-USB (which accomodates any other USB-charging cables)
• Zip-top carry pouch for the cables/charging tips
• User’s guide

Neoprene case

“Power Boost Reflector Kit” contents

• 2 mirrored reflectors
• 4 easy-grip thumb screws
• User’s guide

The top LED blinks while the JOOS is taking in power. The bottom LED blinks relative to the amount of charge it has on hand, the number of times it blinks in succession = %20 worth of charge, up to 5 blinks. Photo: Patricia Vollmer.

Setup and Basic Use

To be honest, all you have to do is stick the JOOS in the sun. When it detects a useable amount of sunlight, the JOOS’s top LED will begin to blink red as it takes in sunlight.  While strong sunlight is best, the JOOS also blinked for me in lower light conditions, such as in the shade, and even indoors while sitting on a table near an incandescent lamp. It will charge its internal battery, or it will pass the energy directly to a connected device.

As for the charging of devices, simply plug in the black-colored connection cable to the port at the bottom of the JOOS. From there, choose which connection tip you require. iOS devices, Blackberries and Kindles will be conveniently covered with the connectors provided, as will many digital cameras. If you don’t have a device that had a connector tip include, don’t despair: use the female USB cable and plug in your device’s charging cable. Other charging tips are available at the Solar JOOS website. Nintendo DS, GameBoy, Sony PSP, and older Samsung and Motorola cell phone tips are available, retailing for $5.99 each from their online store.

It’s all pretty simple, even for the most gadget-phobic users. If you don’t want to do any more than what I just described in the two paragraphs above, you’d still be very happy with the device and it’s still worth the investment.

But you’re on GeekMom, meaning you want to know more, right? Blinking LED lights won’t be enough information for you, you might want to know exactly how much power is in the device? How long does it take to charge? What’s the difference between charging it in the full sunlight versus on a cloudy day? Well read on, we have that information for you to.

Reflector Kit

This is the JOOS with the reflector panels fully assembled. I’m using the built-in collapsable legs, but it isn’t very stable this way. Photo: Patricia Vollmer.

The reflector kit includes the two mirrors and some thumb-screws that attach the mirror to the sides of the JOOS device.

I wasn’t really able to measure a discernable difference in re-charging times whether the mirrors were on the JOOS or not, but this could be because I didn’t completely replicate both environments. I think it was fully sunny when when I tried charging without the mirrors, and partly sunny when I applied the mirrors. I write more about the timing tests below.

Something I noticed about this configuration: You cannot plug anything into the bottom of the JOOS when it’s charging “upright” with the reflector plates on. However, I was able to invert the JOOS just fine and could allow the plug to be at the top.

myJOOS

The myJOOS dashboard is a very simple GUI that you can download from the Solar JOOS website for Windows or for Mac**. Once downloaded, you can plug the JOOS Orange into your computer with your white-colored USB connector and the GUI will provide more detailed information about the amount of charge in the battery and the strength of the incoming light energy to the solar panels.

Learn more about myJOOS here.

**myJOOS is not yet available for Mac OX 10.7 (Lion) or newer.

Alternate Use of JOOS

Let’s say you’re taking a short trip away from electricity, such as to run a half marathon where your phone will lose most of its power while using the bluetooth headphones, a workout GPS app, Pandora for music, and your camera app to photograph of all your new friends on the route.

Quite a workout for your smartphone, huh?

You can just treat the JOOS as a backup battery. Plug the JOOS into your computer with the white-colored charging cable and the computer can give the JOOS a full charge. Pop the fully-charged JOOS in your bag and it can be ready for when you cross the finish line with 1% battery left on your device. Plug it in while you’re guzzling your water and waiting for your race results. Then you can retweet your results to everyone!

If it’s a sunny day, double bonus word score! Your mobile device will recharge even faster.

Timing Tests

I decided to run some timing tests to give readers an idea of just how fast the JOOS Orange was rejuvenating my iPhone and iPad. These are very basic test, and over time I’d love to perform these more scientifically in a way that would incorporate time of day, latitude, elevation, etc. While I’m presenting what looks like constant charging rates, in reality I’m sure that the charging speeds will vary depending on the angle of the sun in the sky, whether there’s a cloud in front of the sun, the thickness of that cloud, etc. If I had a means to measure insolation, that would be perfect! I present the results in units of “percentage charge per minute”. Again, I cannot emphasize enough that this was NOT a controlled scientific experiment, these were very ad hoc.

Test #1: Full sun, clear sky, no reflector plates, propped up in direction of sun, iPhone 4S.

• 3:50pm: Plugged in iPhone with 45% charge
• 4:55pm: Unplugged with 94% charge

49% charge in 65 minutes = 0.75% charge per minute

Test #2: Partly cloudy sky (approximately 40% clouds), with reflector plates, pointing towards the sun, iPhone 4S.

• 11:00am: I plugged in my iPhone 4S at 33% charge
• 1:00pm: Unplugged with full charge

Sadly, I’m not sure what time the phone reached its full charge. So let’s just say 67% in 120 minutes = 0.56% charge per minute.

Test #3: Indoors, after receiving a full charge in the sun, iPad 2.

• 5:35pm: I plugged in an iPad 2 at 74% charge
• 7:01pm: Unplugged at 97%.

23% charge in 86 minutes = 0.27% charge per minute. Note that this is a bigger device and was fully pulling from the JOOS battery. There MIGHT have been a little bit of additional charge coming in as the JOOS was sitting inside in my kitchen during the day. I can’t assess how much.

Test #4: Indoors after receiving full charge from computer, iPad 2, iOS connector tip.

• 8:25am: I plugged in the iPad with a DEAD BATTERY.
• 10:05am: I walked past the charger and noticed that it wasn’t charging. It was at 24%. I had to wiggle the iOS cable to get it to resume charging.
• 12:00pm: I noticed again that it had stopped charging. The iPad was at 59%.

Conclusion: I had too much trouble with the iOS charging connector to continue this test. Loosely speaking, I got about 59% charge in 3 1/2 hours = 0.28% charge per minute, which is par for the course for an indoor charge.

Test #5: Indoors after receiving a full charge from computer, iPad 2, female USB connector with Apple’s iPad charging cable

• 2:00pm: Plugged in the iPad with 73% battery
• 3:00pm: Unplugged with 97% battery

Other Notes

It’s clear here that your best chance at a quick charge is to have the solar panels in full sun.

Regarding the bad iPhone/iPad connector, I haven’t fully troubleshooted that yet. My iPhone works perfectly well with it, but my iPad had trouble. So I don’t think it’s a problem with the product. Luckily I was able to just use the female USB cord and could continue to charge my iPad easily. That being said, every time you introduce a new junction to a power connection, you’re introducing more room for error and disability at each junction.

There are two prongs on the backside of the JOOS device that you can pop out to help it aim at the sun better. I found those prongs rather flimsy. When you want to use them, you have to turn the JOOS on its side. I attempted to keep it upright with the stand, along with the reflector plates, but it wasn’t stable at all.

Be prepared to only charge one device at a time. I haven’t seen a say to rig more than one device, although I’m sure it could be done.

The Solar JOOS is substantial. It’s made with ruggedized polyurethane that claims to be waterproof and can withstand temperatures ranging from -4F to 140F. It weighs in at 1 1/2 pounds. I would love to strap this to the back of a backpack for a day hike later this spring and see how it does. That cool hole at the top might help secure it…then again, so might duct tape.

Conclusions

Compared to other solar device chargers I’ve used in the past, the JOOS Orange is the most rugged, fastest and most versatile one I’ve ever seen. If you are looking for items for your emergency preparedness kit, I highly recommend this. I can’t wait to test its limits on camping trips and day hikes later this spring and summer!

The Solar JOOS Orange retails for $149.00 at their company’s online store. You can get the holiday value bundle for $175.00 which includes the reflector panels and neoprene carry case, these items separately retail for over $200! You can also buy these items at Amazon.

A complimentary Solar JOOS Orange holiday bundle was provided for purposes of this review.