 Solar power is awesome and harnessing it is awesome too because it's just kind of usually around during the day, especially in somewhere like Mexico while we are right now. Well, it can power devices if you have solar panels connected to them and it can power cities if you have giant networks of solar panels connected to them. It can also make it kind of hard to see, which is why I'm squinting. From now until June 20th, 2016, you can preorder the MSI GTX 1070 Founders Edition through Massdrop. Learn more at the link in the video description. One thing that has gotten rather popular lately is the advent of solar panels for stuff like hiking or solar panels for charging things like small battery banks or your cell phone. Seven 8-watt, 5-watt solar panels that claim to be able to charge your device. That sounds pretty cool and you see pictures of people strapping them to their backpacks and stuff and then going hiking through the jungle. How applicable is that? How well do those actually work? That is the sole reason why we came to Mexico. Okay, that's not necessarily true, but it is one of the things we'll be doing here. The first two solar panels I want to introduce are the Anker 8-watt and the All Powers 8-watt. They look actually almost identical, but there are some minor differences. They both claim 8 watts at 5 volts and 1 amp. So I might have limited knowledge here, but I don't think that's how that works. But oh well, we'll test that later on. Both of them have little cable loops where you can attach carabiners or something like that to attach it to your bag. Both have little pouches where you can manage things like maybe putting a battery in. And both have tethered USB ports so that you can move them around, which is actually rather nice. Neither of them feature a kickstand. Neither of them feature a battery. These are pretty bone standard solar panels. The Goal Zero offering is a 7 watt number, which closes using magnets, which is actually kind of nice. Has little loops for carabiners, comes with two carabiners, and has its pouch on the outside. Inside pouch there is a 12 watt connection, a USB connection, a connection for their Guide 10, which is another device that Goal Zero offers, and a chain input so that you can connect a bunch of these together. It also features no battery, no kickstand, and claims that it can charge your phone entirely in 1-2 hours. So we're going to see how true that is. So when it comes to these solar panels, they have lots of warnings and notices and whatnot on them telling you that efficiency will be hampered if you have a cloudy day, if it's not that sunny, if it's different various conditions can affect it, if it's not tilted towards the sun. Well, we're in Mexico. It's pretty obvious where the sun is. There are very, very few clouds. I really don't think that's going to be an issue. So let's see how well they stack up to their claims. So what I have here is a USB amperage voltage tester that is plugged into the unit and then hidden under it because it's incredibly hard to read in the sun. Then it's about noon-ish and the sun is right above us. So I'm just going to hold the solar panel basically like this and try to read the reader, which will be below it. And I'll tell you guys the readout and then maybe we'll try to get some footage of it, but that's going to be really difficult. So the All Powers is the first one that I'm testing. And with a little bit of plus or minus on both of these calculations, it's reading at about 5-ish volts, or 4.9, and it's reading at about 0.85-0.9 amps. The Anker solar panel is running at about 0.9 amps and about 4.9 to 5 volts, unsurprisingly extremely similar to the All Powers 8 watt. So the Goal Zero is a little bit harder to read because the connector is fixed into the body instead of being on a tether. But we're running at about 4.9 volts and waiting for it to switch over about 0.7 amps. So not quite as strong as the other ones. Eddl and I noticed some key differences between the Goal Zero panel and the Anker slash All Powers panels in between testing. One, Eddl noticed that there's a much more glossy finish on the Goal Zero and a very much matte finish on the Anker and All Powers solar panels. Also, the line density on the Anker and All Power panels is much higher than the Goal Zero panel, and the Goal Zero logo takes up more space than the Anker and All Powers ones, so there's just overall more panel. And this big guy gets a solid 5 volts, 1 amps in the sun. So what one is this one? I didn't introduce it. Well, this is a 20 watt Nectek, which looks like it's basically built in the same place as the All Powers and Anker solar panels. The reason why I wanted to show this off is the other smaller ones are often shown off as hiking solar panels, but in not completely perfect conditions aren't always that great. So this one did exactly 5 volts, 1 amp in the sun, which is a little weird considering it claims to be a 20 watt panel. My battery can take 1.7 amps, but it's only outputting 1 amp. If it wanted to be 20 watts, as far as I can tell at 5 volts because of USB 2.0, it should be 2 amps out of both of its outputs. Because it has USB 1 and USB 2. Well, USB number 1 and USB number 2, not USB version 1 and USB version 2. Don't worry about it. Anyways, so I'm a little bit not stoked about the specs on all of these guys. Although if I'm doing something wrong in terms of calculations, let me know in the comments down below. But now let's test in the shade. One of the most commonly shown off scenarios for these solar panels is just attaching them to the back of your backpack and going for a hike. In the jungle or a forest, that's going to cast shade on them for a huge percentage of the time. And they are almost never going to be at an ideal angle. So let's test that as well. What I'm doing is I stepped into the shade just outside of the sunlight and I have them vertical while the sun is directly above us. This is not an ideal position. The crazy 20 watt that we just tested is running at 5 volts, which is great. Kind of expected that. And at about 0.65 amps, which is actually really solid considering how it's positioned. That can probably be attributed to the fact that it not only has a third solar panel, but it's also much larger per solar panel than the other guys. The width is about the same, but the height has increased a very noticeable amount. This guy is much smaller. Standing in more or less the same spot, the Goal Zero struggles to get to 0.1 of an amp, sometimes going as low as 0.08, sometimes going as high as 0.12. Not very much. You're going to struggle to charge a lot of devices on this. The Anker doesn't fare all that much better. 5 volts, just like all the rest of them all the time. Its amperage goes at about 0.15 to 0.17. Still a little bit sketchy if you want to charge a lot of different devices. My ChiroTuff would reject all of these. The All Power is yet again proving that the Anker and the All Powers are probably more or less the same thing, having the same voltage and save amperage as the Anker. So our camera is giving us a temperature warning, and to be completely honest, I'm done. We've tested in the sun, we've tested in the shade, we've tested in proper angles, all that kind of stuff. I don't think brand ended up being a huge factor here. What ended up being a huge factor here was surface area. The big massive one with three panels and a taller overall design did quite well in the shade and in the sun. The Anker and the All Powers, which were more or less the same, performed more or less the same. And then the Goal Zero, which had some glossy panels, which as far as I know seems like a poor choice, but I don't design these things so I could be wrong, and had smaller overall panels, didn't do quite as well as the others. Fairly straightforward. One thing that I am frustrated about is the math on this kind of stuff. Maybe I just have no idea what's going on in terms of solar calculations. You guys can let me know on Twitter at Luke on the Scroll AFR. Go there, call me stupid. Let me know in the comments down below. But I don't understand how 5 volts, 1 amp equals 7 watts or 8 watts and how 5 volts, 1 amp and 5 volts, 1 amp on one solar panel equals 20 watts. I have no idea how that's supposed to work and we didn't get those calculations here. What we did get here was like in ideal conditions, 5 watts on all of them. So yeah, let me know. Comments down below. Another thing that I did find was that you're probably not going to want these 7 or 8 watt panels. I would recommend something like the 20 watt panel at a minimum. Why? Because the wattage number? No! Because of the 3 larger panels that were on that charger, giving you much more dynamic positions that you can be in. It can be on your backpack at a not ideal position and still charge a fair amount off the sun. Another thing to pay attention to is what you're charging. Certain devices aren't going to like being charged at not one full amp. I know my ChiroTuff is a little bit particular about different things because it wants to save the battery that's inside, which is a good thing for a durable battery. And the slightly less scrupulous Chiro Ingress charger didn't care as much and was able to charge off of all of them at pretty much whatever amperage you threw at it. So pay attention to what battery you're pairing with these things. Get a bigger, better panel and I hope you guys enjoyed the video. 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