This thing charges pretty slow if you are using the sun. You would have to let it sit somewhere for a long time(like a couple of days). Instead, I have just been using it to recharge my mobile devices like the Kodak Zi8. The solar part ended up becoming a 'nice to have' feature that rarely gets used. The product works and I still carry it around. Currently, I just swap in fully charged AA batteries to charge my devices with it.