Tech Review: JOOS Orange Waterproof Solar Panel & Battery

JOOS Orange Waterproof Solar Panel and Battery

April 14, 2012

Get your smartphone off the grid for good with the JOOS Orange Solar. The JOOS Orange is a 1.5lb solar panel with an integrated 20W/5,400mAh replaceable internal battery, and 8 bit microprocessor that regulates the power coming in and going out. In full, direct, unobstructed sunlight, it is capable of producing power faster than your iPhone can use it up. It’s what I call “fighting a winning battle.” Many portable solar panels made today are attached to batteries with similar capacities as the JOOS Orange. However, their solar panels are typically very small and do not generate power faster than your iPhone uses it. They are fighting a losing battle. They are great for emergencies, but they can’t keep your phone going forever. Most can’t get you any more then a couple full charges, if your lucky, before they run out of juice, and that’s if they are in the sun all day.

Some companies have tried to solve this by selling larger panels or multiple panels attached together that fold up. This does work, but it’s not very efficient, and most are not waterproof, let alone bulletproof. The reason they have to use bigger and/or more panels is that solar panels have one major “catch 22” drawback. They need bright sunlight to produce power, yet their efficiency drops as they heat up in direct sunlight. The same is true for their internal batteries. The JOOS Orange solves this in a number of clever ways that I would have thought other companies would have caught onto a while ago. They made the non-solar part of the front face white to reduce heat absorption whereas most other solar manufacturers make theirs black. This absorbs more of the suns energy, heating the inside of the housing and making the battery and the solar panel’s efficiency drop. Another way the JOOS Orange prevents overheating is the combination of its internal metal heat sink and its multitude of ventilation holes. The combination of these three simple means of dispersing internal heat help keep the efficiency of the solar panel and internal battery as high as possible.

You might be wondering how the JOOS Orange can be submersible with all those ventilation holes everywhere. Well, all the internal components are potted (sealed) with urethane. So, it doesn’t matter if it fills up with water. It has a NEMA 6P waterproof rating and the case is made from durable polycarbonate injection molding. I personally tested the Joos Orange by leaving it in heavy rain for over 3 days, and it worked flawlessly afterward. I also conducted a submergence test in 3 inches of water for 10 seconds and it continued to indicate that it was charging. I then re-submerged it for an additional 2 hours at the same depth. Afterwards I found the micro USB port full of water, even with the protective rubber cover securely in place. Luckily, even after 2 hours underwater it still worked just fine once I had blown the water out and let the port dry in direct sunlight for a little while. This proved my initial fear that the rubber cover is not designed well enough to keep water out. It does not sufficiently embed itself into the port or seal around the port. I suggest a simple redesign of the rubber cover to better seal around and into the micro USB port. What really needs to be done in addition to that is to further recess the entire USB port. That way the protective rubber cover becomes flush with the body of the case when in the closed position, thus reducing the chance of it accidentally getting bumped and pulled away from the USB port.

The JOOS Orange has an integrated security cable hole that I liked to use with a lanyard and carabineer to attach to my backpack. It’s too bad, though, that there aren’t similar holes on the opposite end. Having only one place to hang it from while attached to a backpack means that it frequently flops around and ends up hanging off one side of the backpack or flips over and is no longer being charged from the sun. One of its simplest yet most effective features are two foldout legs to help you properly angle it toward the sun. They conveniently fold flush into the case when not in use. Oddly enough, this much-needed feature is frequently missing from the majority of competing portable solar panels on the market.

There is another feature that nearly all-competing portable solar panels don’t have that the JOOS Orange does. This is its ability to be connected to your Mac or PC and give you a live graphical display of how many watts are being actively generated, total watts generated cumulatively since you opened the box, current battery voltage, and battery charge level. Plugging it into your computer to see all this data is cool, but it’s not very useful considering it does not charge laptops. People don’t bring their laptops outdoors much, let alone into the wilderness where the JOOS Orange is designed to go. A better solution would be to have an iOS & Droid app with the same, if not more, capabilities when connected to the JOOS Orange.

I tested the JOOS Orange in a variety of scenarios and lighting conditions and found that the claim by the manufacturer of a recharge time of 12 hours in direct sunlight is fairly accurate. That is if you continue to keep it angled perfectly at the sun throughout a very bright day. This, unfortunately, is not how every day is around the world. Therefore, I conducted further testing in mixed lighting conditions including: rain, shade, overcast skies, behind house windows, behind car windows, and indoor artificial lighting. These combined conditions took 36 hours to charge it from empty to full. This is a much more realistic scenario.

Finding out how many times I could charge an iPhone 4 strictly from the internal 20W/5,400mAh battery was next on my list. I left the JOOS Orange face down to avoid it being trickle charged by any ambient light. I was able to keep my iPhone running for 4 days during this test. In that time, I was able to charge my iPhone from 0% to 100% a little over two times. This is on par with results I have had while reviewing various other backup battery systems with similarly sized battery capacities. The main difference between those other batteries and the JOOS Orange is that they didn’t have such a sophisticated, efficient and rugged solar panel, or one at all for that matter.

My testing also entailed running my iPhone 4 solely from the JOOS Orange for 8 days straight while heavily utilizing my iPhone and keeping the JOOS Orange outside nearly all day and night. In that time, the lighting conditions varied heavily from 5 days of bright sunshine to 3 dark, rainy days. Each day I used the iPhone for several hours of online browsing as well as multiple phone and/or VOIP Video calls. Every day I also utilized a GPS app for at least 30 minutes. At the end of the third day of rain, the JOOS Orange was down to 20% even with my iPhone charging from it multiple times each day. At the end of each sunny day, the battery capacity was between 80%-100% even after charging up my iPhone 1-2 times earlier that day. I found this to be astonishing. This meant that I would be able to keep my iPhone fully charged on camping trips as long as I at least had one day of sunshine every 4 days.

Two amazing stories I found about the JOOS Orange surviving extreme situations really impressed me. The first is from the review done by WIRED Magazine in which it was accidentally dropped from and run over by a motorcycle and survived. The second is even more extraordinary. The manufacturer of the JOOS Orange actually shot it with a .22 rifle 5 times and it was still able to charge an iPhone. This bullet test was captured on video, and I posted it with this review. You can find the video near the top of the review, along the left side, below the main photo and slideshow photos.

To sum things up, I believe, in this class of solar panel, this is the one to beat on the market today. Not one competing solar panel that I have read about, seen, or tested has come close to the high level of durability and performance that the JOOS Orange provides. Its miniscule drawbacks are heavily outweighed by it phenomenal advantages. The ability to maintain its efficiency without having to resort to utilizing much larger, harder-to-carry panels is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. You will be hard pressed to find another solar panel on the market that can survive being fully submerged, dropped onto concrete, shot five times with a .22 and then still be able to charge up your iPhone. The JOOS Orange solar panel really should be packaged with scuba gear, Kevlar bulletproof vest and a full-face helmet because it can survive a lot more than you can. I highly recommend the JOOS Orange for anyone going on an adventure in the backcountry or out on the open seas and want to be able to charge your USB powered cellphone, GPS & walkie-talkies.

What’s in the Box?