The Best Portable Solar Panels and Chargers of 2019

Best Overall Solar Charger

BigBlue 28W

$59.99

(14% off)
at Amazon

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For us, efficiency is crucial when settling on our top choice in solar chargers; that's why the BigBlue 28W is our Editors' Choice award winner this year. With 28W of power, this panel will charge small electronics quickly and efficiently. With its built-in ammeter, you can also track the panel's output as it charges. It has a small storage pouch, no extra frills, and a reasonable price tag, making it our Editors' Choice winner, as well as a candidate for our Best Buy Award.

Unfortunately, this panel is on the heavier side, hence its name. The BigBlue has a total weight of 23.5 ounces, placing in on the heavier side of average among all the panels we tested. If you are looking for a panel that is lightweight and functional in the backcountry, the Big Blue may not be the best option. For front-country use, the effectiveness of this panel "outweighed" its bulky size.

Read review: BigBlue 28W

Best Bang for the Buck

Instapark Mercury 10W

$60 List

List Price

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The Instapark Mercury 10W is our Best Buy winner due to its simplicity, low cost, and effective charging capability. It won't break the bank, it works as intended, and it is designed to last a long time. In comparison to panels of a similar capacity, the Mercury had some of the best scores in charge interruption recovery and charging speed. It also has a large storage pocket and is overall one of the more durable panels we reviewed.

Like the majority of the panels in this review, the Mercury struggled to charge multiple devices at once. This situation is common, even though most of the units come with multiple ports, which means each USB port only gets about 5W, or less, in full sun. The panel is also a bit heavy and bulky, especially for its relatively small output capacity. That said, the Mercury 10W was one of the highest-ranking panels in terms of durability. Overall, this panel is excellent, as it offers an inexpensive price point and is effective.

Read review: Instapark Mercury 10W

Top Pick for Lightweight

Renogy E.Flex5

$20.15

(33% off)
at Amazon

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The two proceeding award winners are more focused on performance than portability, so with this award, we wanted to highlight a panel that is lightweight and portable, yet still receives high marks in terms of overall performance. The Renogy E.Flex5 is as small and light as a wire-bound notebook. The Renogy combines durability with sleekness, which is a difficult combination to nail. A comparable panel in size and weight is the Suntactics S-Charger 14, but this panel costs much, much more than the Renogy. The bare-bones design, light feel, and relatively low price tag make the Renogy a no-brainer as our Top Pick for Lightweight panels. This panel makes for a good alternative to the small battery pack/panels we have reviewed since it can charge off the sun.

For a panel of its size, the Renogy performed relatively well in terms of charging speed, though its small size means it can't handle interruptions very well; this fact also means that it charges slowly. For phones and other small devices, the Renogy performs adequately, but we should note that it took four hours to charge our battery to only 9%. This fact may seem shocking, but it is just the way it is with small capacity panels. If minor charging is all you need, the Renogy is an excellent choice.

Read review: Renogy E.Flex5

Real-world conditions that each panel purchased for this review was subjected to.

Why You Should Trust Us

Jane Jackson authors this review and spend 200+ days a year outside using and testing gear. For the past few years, she has spent the summer months in Yosemite and the High Sierra, working for Yosemite Search and Rescue. In other months, she travels in pursuit of perfect climbing conditions. Between Yosemite and the desert Southwest, Jane spends ample time in the sun, making her a solar-charging expert. When she's not living in her van, which is complete with its own solar set-up, Jane is in the backcountry, using these smaller, portable panels to keep her electronics charged.

We were interested in several aspects of these portable solar panels. The characteristics we chose to evaluate are a product of careful consideration of the types of situations you would likely want to use one of these devices. We looked at things like how quickly charging is resumed after a shading of the photovoltaic surface, how well each model handles multiple devices, how fast the charging is, and how durable and portable they all are. In all, we feel this is a comprehensive review which hopefully helps you to make a more informed buying decision.

Related: How We Tested Solar Chargers

Analysis and Test Results

Now more than ever, solar technology is growing in popularity, and we have many well-tested options when shopping for a portable model. Traveling around the southwest US during this testing period, we saw large solar arrays, from the grid homes with panels outside, to campers charging their smaller devices on the go. Not long ago, it was difficult to find a rigid, monocrystalline panel in a foldable, light design. Portable options were bulky, finicky, and didn't last long when exposed to the elements.

Related: Buying Advice for Solar Chargers

Nine panels catching rays under the watchful eye of Castleton Tower in Southern Utah.

Now, dozens of companies produce affordable, effective monocrystalline panels ranging from small 5W models to more substantial and more powerful 20W options for a faster charge. These monocrystalline models are much more effective and lightweight than their polycrystalline forefathers.

Folded up, the panels range in size from the large X-Dragon on the left, to the Goal Zero and the Renogy which have much smaller footprints. The Anker panels are discontinued.

We tested small wattage models that were portable, like the Renogy 5W and the ever-popular Goal Zero Nomad 7. Another addition to the non-traditional panels is the Suntactics S-Charger 14. This panel was one of our new favorites, though it comes with a hefty price tag. This panel is thin and durable, like the Renogy panels we tested in past years but is much more efficient.

We re-tested some of our favorites from last year, including the Instapark Mercury 10W. We also chose some with some extra wattage for faster charging, like the PowerGreen 21W and Voltaic Systems Arc 20W. Solar technology is improving as a whole; while each panel performed well, their metric ratings range in scores, mostly due to their output capabilities (i.e., wattage), rather than the design of the models themselves.

Of our 2019 update, three panels have large-capacity battery packs that have 2W solar panels on them for back-up. We found that in general, these batteries charge our devices quickly, but they take eons to charge via the sun. We often opted to top off the battery packs from a wall charger before bringing them out on trips.

This year we have also included two solar setups that are designed to charge laptop computers: the Voltaic Arc 20 and the X-Dragon 40W. Both had their hold-ups, and our overall take away was that there is room for improvement in this technology. The recently updated Voltaic and the new design impressed us with its larger capacity and ability to charge Mac computers with ease. The large capacity battery still takes a good chunk of time to charge via the 20W panel, but we are excited about the improvements.

Value

Unlike some other products we test here at OutdoorGearLab (we've tested bikes that cost more than our cars!) portable solar chargers all tend to be on the affordable end of the spectrum. However, even with such a reasonable price point, some models had much better value than others. For example, our Best Buy winner, the Instapark Mercury 10W had the same overall score as products that cost twice as much. Our Editors' Choice Award winner, the BigBlue 28W is not only an efficient panel but also comes at an affordable price, which won us over.

Charge Interruption Recovery

Is your panel going to quit on you just because one little cloud passes overhead as you left it out on what appeared to be a clear afternoon? Or is the solar model strapped to your backpack, causing your phone to constantly vibrate as the connection goes in and out of the USB port? These are the questions we addressed in our charge interruption recovery metric. To test these models, we measured the amount each one charged within a half hour span first in full sun, and then again in intermittent sun and shade. We also measured the output power before and after the charge interruption to see if the model could get back on track after being shaded.

The highest performing models in this category were the ones with greater wattage. The Renogy 5W scored low in this category because it has a small wattage, which makes it more difficult for the Renogy to return to full output after an interruption. Those with a larger surface area also tended to do better in this metric, because there are more cells exposed to the sun at one time, which is a benefit of the Instapark Mercury 10W, which unlike the other two medium watt options, has three panels of cells, rather than two.

The Instapark Mercury 10W working to charge a battery in prime conditions and sun orientation.

The included battery pack of the iClever BoostCel 12W helps in this metric, as the panels can fall back on the battery to continue a charge, even when the cells become shaded. That said, the iClever 12W was better able to recover from an interruption since it has more surface area overall and stronger output capacity.

Here the iClever works to charge our external battery as we test its ability to recover a charge after an interruption. The panel works well because it can rely on its internal battery when the cells are blocked.

The Renogy 15,000mAh and Qi 10,000mAh have such small surface areas (with cells on it) that they run more of a risk of becoming shaded as the sun's orientation changes. It also just isn't able to gain as much power from the sun as a more substantial model can. Since they are powerful batteries, they can manage shading since they will continue to charge your device off the battery. On the flip side, the panels are too small to receive substantial power from the sun anyways, making their solar function more of a back-up than a primary power source.

These are the types of conditions we wish for when charging electronics using solar power.

Some panels, like the BigBlue 28W and the Suntactics S-Charger 14, now come with a built-in auto-restart function. This feature allows the panel to reconnect to your device after being shaded automatically. Though the unit will still charge slower in cloudy conditions, this feature will help continue the flow of power in less-than-ideal charging conditions.

Charging Speed

The majority of the time, these solar panels are being used to charge cell phones when electricity is not available. Because this is typically the case, our highest rating metric in testing was Phone Charging Speed. We wanted to know long it took each model to charge an iPhone 6 (the main phone used for testing, though we've also added in a Google Pixel 3) as well as our small external battery packs. We set each one out in the direct sun for 30 minutes and measured how much the phone charged.

This way, we could obtain a good read on how efficiently the individual models worked over extended periods. We also timed how long it took each one to charge our 6,000 mAh portable battery packs, so we had that data to compare as well. In general, this size battery can charge an iPhone from 0 to 100% about two times.

The X-Dragon 20W panel has multiple loops to hang it up oriented toward the sun. However, we found that it worked well propped up on the ground instead, especially since it is such a sturdy panel and can hold itself up easily. This model also had the fastest charging speed out of any in our fleet.

We found a broad range in the ability to charge batteries, from the X-Dragon, which charged to full in 3 hours 30 minutes, to the Renogy, which took four hours to get the same battery only 9%. This considerable variability is due to the extensive range in output power of the contenders we tested. Twenty-one watts is four times as powerful as a 5W device, so it makes sense that panels like the BigBlue earned the highest in our testing. In this metric, the BigBlue outperformed all by charging our external battery pack the fastest. The Instapark Mercury 10W held its own among the 15W and the 20W models.

Using this USB multimeter, we found that the measured output was often less than what the manufacturers' claimed.

For its size, the Renogy E.Flex5 held its own in both phone and battery charging efficiency. The RAVPower 16W was our slowest performer, as it could not fully charge our battery pack over an hour, unlike the other 14W and above models in this review. Overall, it's a better idea to invest in a contender with a higher wattage since a fast charge is what we look for in a solar panel first and foremost. For speed and efficiency, a more significant watt option is more efficient. That is unless you're trying to save weight or money, in which case a less powerful model might be a good compromise.

Multiple Device Charging Speed

As you might guess when tasked with the challenge of charging multiple devices at once, the more powerful models performed better than the less powerful ones. Ten out of the 17 chargers in this year's testing had multiple USB ports. The 5W and 7W models don't have the power to sustain two gadgets at once, which might not be what you're looking for anyway. That's why on the metrics chart, the low watt models get a 2 out of 10, compared to the models that can charge two devices.

The Big Blue and Renogy 15,000 were high scorers, followed by the X Dragon. Some panels, like the Wildtek Source 21W, now have three USB ports, but we found this panel to have the same issues as many of the 2-port versions out there. It appears that models with higher wattage are more effective at charging multiple devices at once. With this in mind, consider the BigBlue 28W or the X-Dragon 40W if this is a feature you find important.

The PowerGreen is the largest, and heaviest of the panels we tested. But, it was one of the top scorers that could charge multiple devices.

Durability

Since their job is to lie out exposed to the elements, we had high hopes for these models when it came to their ability to hang tough as we took them through deserts, mountains, sun, wind, and rain. Through months of testing, nearly all the contenders stood up to the challenge. The canvas protective fabric is like an exoskeleton-guarding the important insides of the panels. Solar technology seems to be advancing too, with companies working to make cells more durable and resistant to sun and water damage.

When scanning through customer reviews online, we noticed complaints about various models withering and warping in the sun. Because of this, we were extra vigilant, even when we set them out in the blazing southern Utah desert sun. Thankfully, in our testing period, none of the chargers endured much damage at all. These are hardy machines, and with technology advancing every year, solar panel companies have come leaps and bounds in the construction of portable options.

There is a fine line between exposure and turning your panel into a frying pan. Be aware that some panels will warp if left out in very hot conditions.

Models with external storage pockets, like the Powergreen 20W and the Instapark Mercury 10, won us over because their pocket not only protects extra gadgets but also keeps the USB port dry and covered when charging. Some of the models, like the Goal Zero Nomad 7, have a mesh pocket, which helps to see what is inside, but also tends to wear out faster than canvas. Others, like the Renogy 5W and the Suntactics S-Charger 14 lack pockets, which makes them more streamlined but also harder to keep track of your cables. The Renogy 5W's USB port is well-protected on the back of the panel, but the ports on the Suntactics panel are exposed to the elements and often got dirt in them when we propped it up on its side to charge.

Sometimes a landscape orientation works better for the charging location. The versatility and durability of the Renogy are some of its best features.

Weight and Portability

Since the primary function of all these portable models is to be, well mobile, this is a relevant category. A model that is too heavy or bulky will be left behind to collect dust in the closet when you set out on your next adventure.

The models range from a mere 5.6 ounces, like the Renogy 5W, the only model to earn a 10 out of 10 for portability, to the Voltaic 20 or RAVPower 24, which weigh in at around 26 ounces, or the X Dragon, which is around 37 ounces. For the most part, smaller options will be less powerful, but some of the low wattage panels, like the Goal Zero Nomad 7, weigh almost as much as the 20W powerhouse panels.

Compared to the Anker 21W, the Renogy is pocket sized. Its charging capabilities are much less than the Anker 21W, however.

Some come with lots of accessories and extra features, which make them easier to use and more exciting, but also make them bulky and unappealing to carry on long trips. There is a happy medium between overkill and overly simple. Though portability is vital, we found that we focused more on performance in our testing, since the panel is just dead weight if it doesn't work at all. That was our reasoning behind handing out awards to more massive panels like the BigBlue 28W and the Mercury 10W.

Here's the tiny Renogy panel in comparison to a standard Climbing magazine. They are about the same thickness, but the Renogy has a much smaller footprint.

Accessories

To make the review more standardized across the board and to simplify the testing, we used a standard battery pack and USB for all the panels. We used the 1byone 6,000 mAh Portable Charger, as it was an inexpensive external battery with good reviews, used mainly for charging phones and small gadgets.

Accessories can quickly add up to create a heavy, cumbersome set up. These small external batteries work great to keep your electronics charged without creating a junkshow on the panel.

Many people choose to combine a solar charger that doesn't have an internal battery with an external battery. This arrangement allows the panel to charge the battery during the day while you're using your devices (phone, GPS unit, and the like) and you can charge your device at night via the external battery. External batteries are an essential addition, too, because as our tablets and smartphones demand higher power (like 2A charging ports); this becomes harder to produce from the sun (which is variable at best), and requires higher wattages, and thus more panels, meaning more weight and bulk. The best option, in our opinion, is to have a less strong (and lighter weight!) solar charger that charges a high-quality external battery, which can, in turn, produce the necessary 2A of current for our devices.

Conclusion

Deciding on the right solar charger can be an overwhelming task. To make it easier to wrap your head around, figure out what you will be using it for, and go from there. Are you running a mobile office and need to keep multiple, energy-hungry devices happy? Or are you concerned with having a fully charged phone on a weekend excursion? The smaller watt options are going to be less expensive, and often less powerful. As you increase the wattage, the panels become more and more efficient. The sky is the limit, but it depends on how much money you are willing to spend. We put all 17 of these competitors to the test and found that there are some that perform better than others, and a higher price tag doesn't necessarily mean a better product. We hope that our thorough tests and reviews of these products will be useful to you as you shop around for your new solar charger.