One of the biggest problems with most of these solar charger products on the market at the moment is they don’t work. Simply put, it’s almost impossible to generate enough power from the sun’s rays on a small solar panel to keep the battery topped up on anything other than tiny devices. The result is people get fed up and simply charge the battery from the mains power socket instead.

Cue this High Capacity Battery and Solar Charger which features a stonking huge 54,500 mAh battery pack and 32 adapter tips for charging up anything from a laptop to mobile phones and beyond. When you consider that a standard cell phone battery is a measly 1250 – 1800mAh, you’ll immediately understand that this monster battery can charge up your stuff a lot of times, and cope with a wide array of devices before it needs a charge itself.

Which is where the solar panel comes in. The specifications claim that it will take 60 hours to charge the battery pack to maximum using direct sunlight, which sounds a lot, but when you’ve got this much power on tap, trickle charging is probably going to be good enough to cope with most needs unless you have to keep a laptop charged up every day.

Running a tablet, netbook or smartphone completely on battery power should be possible over long periods using the solar panel, although we’d still be happier with a solar unit twice or three times the size. The battery pack will charge up in 6 hours from mains power. Priced at $179.99.