A REVIEW OF THE SOLAR LAMP I JUST GOT

image made with Canva

I recently had to purchase a solar lantern in Lagos but due to the fact that the semester was still in session, I had to wait a bit for it to end before I travel down to Lagos to get it. I finally got the chance to go pick it up during the week. In this post, I’ll be making a detailed description of the product.

I live in a place known as “Camp” in Abeokuta, and anyone familiar with that area knows that the name “Camp” is synonymous to poor power supply. Camp is an area along the Abeokuta-Ibadan axis. It’s mostly populated by students like myself.

For some reason best known to the power distribution company, electricity is scarcely supplied to us. This causes a lot of problems for everyone living in the area, especially us students who need to have our electronic gadgets and appliances charged at all times for our online lectures and assignments. I almost missed an online test last semester because my device was out of battery power. While I was lucky not to have missed a test, some of my colleagues weren’t so lucky.

It was during the course of this ordeal that I started thinking of what to do to prevent a reoccurrence. And after searching for likely solutions, I came across the Sun king PRO 400, a solar lantern equipped with a mobile phone charger – the perfect solution. I contacted my folks in Lagos to get it for me and after a while, they told me they had gotten it.

So, here is my review of the product.

PRICE:
I bought this product at a price of ₦15,500. Doing a quick search online will bring up varying prices. For example, I found this same product going for ₦16,900 on Jumia and ₦18,000 on Jiji. So, it can be concluded that the average price in Nigeria should be around ₦16,000.

COMPONENTS:
The PRO 400 comes with;

• A 5.5watt solar panel equipped with a 5meter cable

image of the solar panel

• A 440 lumens LED

NOTE: lumens is the unit used to measure light intensity

• A 5volt USB cable and Adapter pack

• A 5100mAh Lithium-ion battery: This is inbuilt in the LED.

HOW TO USE:
The mode of operation is pretty straightforward and easy.
There are three power modes; the low power mode, the normal mode and the Turbo mode. Each of these modes, with a fully charged battery, can last for 100, 12 and 5 hours respectively.

AS A MOBILE CHARGER:
To charge your mobile device, connect your USB cable to the mobile charging port and your phone starts charging.

HOW TO CHARGE:
The battery level indicator has four bars.

indicator level on the LED

The lantern itself can be charged in two ways – electrical or solar.
To charge electrically, all one needs to do is connect the USB charging cable to a charger head and then proceed to connect it to the lantern.

To charge it using solar, you have to position the solar panel to a place where it can receive sunlight and then plug the attached cable to the lantern. It automatically begins to charge. It’s as simple as that.

Its worthy to note that while using the solar panel to charge it, the intensity of the sunlight determines the rate at which the lantern is going to charge. For example, I live in an area where it’s always sunny, and it takes an average of 12 hours to get a full charge from low power.

MY OVERALL REVIEW OF THE PRODUCT:
For the past few days of use, the PRO 400 has been serving me well in terms of providing me with a light source without having to rely on the one being provided by the electricity distribution company.
As a mobile device charger however, I have come to realize that the PRO 400 isn’t much suited for mobile charging. It tries its best, but it’s no match for my 5000mAh mobile device.
So overall, I’ll give it a score of 7.5 out of 10 because it pretty much performs all the functions it was marketed for, even though I was expecting more battery power. I hope they consider this in newer models.

And I feel I should also chip it in that the PRO 400 comes with a 2-year warranty.

Thanks for reading through this post. Bye for now.