A nifty gift my wife got me for Christmas last year was a mobile power pack. This one has an integrated solar charging grid along with a plethora of charging options for multiple devices. You see, I’ve been looking for a mobile power solution for the last couple months, and had thought of one of the larger LimeFuel devices in the 24K mAh range. My wife got me two gifts, they are getting a post each, after reading Josh Cullen’s extensive guide she knew exactly what to get me, tune into my next post!

There are a number of these kinds of mobile power packs out on the market. Some more expensive than others, and I was looking for a quality device, with a few charging options for multiple devices. Apparently, my wife was picking up on this and found one with a twist that I hadn’t even thought of: Solar charging!

Enter the PowerAdd Apollo Pro

The beauty of this power pack is two-fold. First is the obvious feature that covers the front of the device. The solar panel incorporated in the Apollo Pro is a great feature to have. However, this small panel doesn’t make for speedy solar charging. Rather, it merely supplements a trickle charge to the existing reserve on the power pack. It really needs to be charged from an AC outlet before being used. It can charge from the solar panel, but it would take over 48 hours to top it off, so supplemental trickle charging is the key aspect to that feature.

The second feature is the multiple charging options. This power pack not only charges standard USB devices a single port, but also includes a set of multiple charging tips with a selectable high-output 12/16/19 volt port designed for charging laptops. Yeah, that’s right – laptops.

The battery in this unit stores 23,000 mAh worth of power. Compare that to your average 3,000 mAh smartphone or 5,600 mAh tablet battery, and figure out how many charges you have from a fully charged unit! Figure that you can ‘top off’ the charge on the unit itself from the solar panel, and you’ll have multiple charges for several of your mobile devices while away from a power outlet.

In any case, there are a number of options for mobile power supplies these days, and I’m looking forward to being able to using this unit for some adventures throughout 2015 the rest of the year.