I’ve used these solar LED lights for reading at night for over a year. There are three models and I have one of each — the Heavy Duty Compact model, the Compact model and the Mini, which I attach with Velcro to my backpack and then to my bike helmet when I need it for night riding. On full brightness, the Mini lasts 12 hours (recharge time is advertised as 7 hours).The Heavy Duty charges completely in 10 hours and, at full brightness, gives 12+ hours of light, while the Compact charges completely in 6 hours and, at full brightness, gives 12+ hours of light.<\/p>\n
I’ve never run the lights until battery drain so I can’t speak to recharge from zero. I use them for reading at night so that is usually only an hour or two a night and they are always connected to the solar panels in my south facing window.<\/p>\n
I took all three lights on vacation to Jamaica last December, and used each of them except for the Mini (no biking). After the trip, I gave two sets of friends the extra lights I’d bought. Both couples like these lights, too.<\/p>\n
They also offer a variety of connectors, which work with all models of the lights, that allow you to charge your phone, camera, computer, etc. I bought all to test for compatibility and found it to be a very good system (although at $20 a pop the connectors are a little pricey). It’s worth noting, I use them only for demo purposes<\/a>. I haven’t tried to run my computer, for instance, on the Compact model.<\/p>\n I settled on this brand because they were the first I’d seen with a natural form factor. They looked sleek and useful and have turned out to be all that I expected. The only quibble I have is that there’s a light sensor that will not allow the lamps to go on in the daytime. I’d prefer a switch so that I can decide when to turn them on or off without being overridden by the sensor. Still haven’t seen anything that is comparable on the market.<\/p>\n Gotta tell ya, it makes me feel good to use these things. Finally, after all these years, this renter has one room that is solar-powered. They made me an honest solar advocate, somebody who not only talks the talk but walks the walk as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read at night (compliments of the Sun)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[12],"tags":[691],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}