Nomad Guide 10 Plus Solar Kit - first review

I've had this Nomad Guide 10 Plus Solar Kit for a couple of weeks now, and so far I'm impressed.  The kit consists of a rechargeable battery pack (The Nomad Guide 10), along with Goal Zero's Nomad 7  Solar Panel.  The battery pack gives you a 2300 mAh USB battery pack, based on 4 AA batteries which you can take out and use separately.  It also has an adapter which allows you to charge AAA batteries, which I'm going to try next to charge batteries for our head torches - I don't want to be throwing away non-rechargeables all the time as they're expensive and even though there 's a recycling stream to feed them into in Sweden I don't imagine it's very good for the environment.

The solar panel is very effectively, feeding charge directly to a mobile phone even on a cloudy day in February just shy of 57 degrees North.  I'm impressed by the build quality and the thought given to it as a package.  It all folds up into a package the size of slim book, and clicks shut with a magnetic in a convincing way. There are a bunch of small loops around the edge so it's been easy to hang in a Southern window for charging. All the accessories fit into a zipped pouch, where they can sit and work while everything is charging as well as for storage. I'd want to have a look at what is poking out before I transported it like this, but I can see it would be a great little setup to have along on a cycling or canoeing trip, and might even be light enough for hiking if it was important to be able to charge a phone/tablet/mobile internet set up.

I'm looking forward to seeing how well it runs over time, but so far very encouraging.