Van Life Essentials: I Bought Cheap Folding Solar Panels on Amazon

0:00 [Music] hey everyone welcome back to my next video well we're i want to show you a whole new i think category of solar panel systems uh up till now basically we had the the hard panels you mount on the roof and then you also had the suitcases which were usually 100 watt panels uh at 250 watt panels that

0:21 combined into a controller and they were hard and they were fairly heavy they were and kind of bulky and they had they were the best solution a lot of you don't have any money you don't have the money to put it on the roof you have no room on your roof uh you don't want a hole in

0:37 your roof well what i've been suggesting was the hard suitcase panels but they're still pretty big and awkward and heavy to take out and in every day and set them up and take them away another option that looked really really good and i and i was recommending to people for a while was the uh flexible

0:57 you know the 100 watt flexibles and you kind of they flexed around but their reliability has been so poor that i i don't recommend them at all because they just if you're moving it in and out and every day yeah they only weigh four or five pounds but they just didn't hold up they kept breaking and uh

1:17 just even that flexing so the best thing i could offer you was the suitcase the hard suitcases they are 20 pounds you've got to find room for them in your rig but they then the companies have come up with what i think of is a whole new category and it's kind of a soft flexible thin i mean i can easily hold this out

1:40 at one hand uh and look how much look how thin that is it just weight is nothing there and uh i think this may be a whole new category of product so i have five of them that i've bought and i'm going to test them and then i'm going to give them away to people who will take them and do a long-term test

2:00 we'll come back really often every six months i'm hoping and give you a report on how these things are holding up what is really unique about them is this one brand dokio uh has got super cheap systems and and i having looked at them they are fairly cheap looking uh but they're cheap this is an 80 watt panel

2:25 and it's uh a hundred and twenty dollars this might work for a lot of you with just a phone or a tablet and you know if you you want to run a fan a usb fan some usb lights charge things up this might be all you need and it's a hundred and twenty dollars and even if you're in a car

2:49 you can find a place to fit this i don't think this is even the smallest this is an echo power and the quality of this was quite a bit higher and i think it's actually smaller you can see that that it's actually smaller this one's a sits six inches uh it's about the same width and six inches

3:10 narrower i think it's a much higher quality and we'll go into all these details this is 105 watts and it has three panels and the quality appears to be much much higher so because there's three i think they're probably three 35 watt panels something like that and it's a little heavier because i think the

3:28 quality is better the materials thicker i think the backing on these panels is thicker i think this might going to be hold up a lot longer i don't know we'll find out if you're in a car here's a 105 watt solar panel and they're still kind of expensive this was 278 dollars it was the most expensive

3:46 we're also going to look at a renegy which is 100 watt also and it was 255. this was 278. uh this dokio um well let me show you they have uh the controller is in here it's just a cheap controller you can buy these if this breaks you can buy a new controller on on amazon for for uh 20 bucks or less so the

4:12 controller if it breaks you don't throw a carry you throw it away uh the big thing is will all the wiring internal to the solar panel continue to work that's that's your one real issue we'll talk more about the details in a minute uh so this is an 80 watt and it was 120 again really small really light

4:33 so this 100 watt doki oh was 155 and the uh this is a 200 watt now it's the same dimensions because they're all 50 50 watt panels but except that now you have four panels so it weighs twice as much and you would just take this out and set it on the ground 450 watt panels but even if you're in a

4:59 car you probably can still fit this in there somewhere and because the panels are stiffer and smaller they won't flex nearly as much as the flexibles and these dokios are so cheap i'm hoping that they're qua they hold up because this is the solution okay so now we'll do just a quick

5:20 unboxing so you can see how they come we're going to go we have the five of them we're going to go in order from most expensive to least expensive so this is the echo power uh it's 105 watts and it was 278 dollars the most expensive of any of any of them well let's see how how it's packaged

5:42 so here's the manual another manual oop that must still be in there celica gel all the standard stuff and then the panel now all of these will have the solar panels and the solar controller you have to be really careful though they're selling a lot of these things without a controller

6:02 they want you to use their own brand of solar generator to use as a battery so here you can see this has three solar panels and you would just set it out in the sun just like this so that would be 30 they'd be like 35 watts each all the good goodies so here is the little inexpensive these

6:26 are all going to be really cheap uh if you break them you throw them away and you go buy a new one the huge advantage this one has is mc4 cables and that is a huge advantage because mc4 cables are standard uh you have a problem with the controller you're not going to have any problems

6:41 just disconnecting the mc4s and reconnecting a different controller so i really like that it looks like it has a really long cable we'll look at the details later but the standard this is the norm i think they'll all be like this they'll just have a little cheap controller alligator

6:56 clips to go on the battery so i think that's what we're going to see on all of them this is 207 dollars by far the most expensive of all of them you can see very light very easy taking this in and out every day is not a burden in any way shape or form the next most expensive is a renegade renzi has actually gotten

7:18 into this this renegy is uh 254 dollars so it's a little cheaper than that echo power andrew energy is a good name i like the energy name a lot it's physically a little bigger so this is the renegy it's basically the same thing you can see it's very thin

7:43 here it has a little snap and it opens and you have two 50 watt panels this is 100 watt total and you can see that it's looks like a quarter inch and so you can see that hauling this thing out in and out every day is not going to be a burden and yet the panels aren't doing that constant flexing

8:07 that the flexible panels do uh same thing these are much cheaper that other one was had much higher quality uh clips so here's the controller and also mc4s another really good thing to use an extension to move this further away and you're going to want to move this further away that's the whole point

8:30 as far as i'm concerned uh all you got to do is buy a uh an mc4 extension cable and you can move it as far away as you want from the rig it does come with a nice little display that'll be good and the velcro which will attach it and again it's tiny that's the key thing it weighs nothing it's tiny but it

8:51 should last a whole lot better than the flexible i'll give you a table with the price and the weight and the dimensions of all of them i'm just i'm hoping their longevity is going to be far better because they're not flexing the only bend is in this cloth the cloth bends the panels don't bend

9:15 and i hope that's going to save these from the quick death flexible panels get now here we have three dokio that's the brand name dokyo and and i bought three of them i bought an 80 watt 100 watt and a 200 watt and the and i went out i there's a reason i did that well bob why'd you buy

9:40 three to test because they are so cheap i can't believe the price on these things they are just cheap the 80 watt is only 119 with the controller and that's just an incredible price and so i i would really like to do a long-term test on all of these to find out uh how they're going to hold

10:06 up and for a lot of you for 119 80 watts will be enough i mean if all you have is your laptop or even your ipad just your ipad and your iphone pad to phone a light a little usb fan 80 watts would be enough and so for 119 dollars wow that is a screaming deal

10:31 same thing it's got the pocket a little cheap controller and much higher quality than those renegy i'm really embarrassed that renegy sent that little cheap crap that they did uh now these are using uh what's called an sae connector and it's not nearly the quality of mc4 you can get an extension for an sae

10:53 connector uh this one has usb has two five volt usbs on it that's really nice it's the same thing it's just a standard little cheap controller oh and here it is so here is a again it's got the sae coming out of it and that's uh it's a it's a really universal connector but they're not the very best connector

11:13 and it's the same thing it's two hard panels this one i think might snap off i'm not sure no i think it's sewn on it it does this feels my immediate impression this feels uh kind of flimsy and thin it's still i mean it's impressive that they're giving away that cheap the reason i bought three of them is because

11:32 i really want to know if they will hold up so i have this is now a tokyo 100 watt and this one is uh a hundred and fifty four dollars so this is a hundred watt and 154 dollars the 80 watt is a little cheaper per watt i have a table and i'll show you what they are per watt and it's you know it's basically just

11:57 going to be the exact same thing uh just a little slightly bigger panel because this one has 50 and 50 for a total of 100 same thing the controller probably probably the exact same controller would work on both the same uh alligator clips the same saa connector so all this would be interchangeable

12:20 it is nice that with the sae you can get an sae extension from amazon and extend it out quite a bit that's the main thing you want to do is you want to be able to park your van in the shade and then move the panel out and that's the big uh there's an sae connector and there's the uh 250 watt panels

12:43 making a hundred if if these things hold up at all uh they're an incredible deal 154 dollars again 200 watts would be 300 really really good deal this is uh the final tokyo and it is 200 watts so it's the grand mama so it's basically going to be the same thing

13:08 except this 200 watts and they do that by giving you more panels that fold up those seem a little better i'd have to compare directly basically it's all going to be exactly the same it uses sae quick connects here's all the manual it looks like a lot either a lot more cable or a lot heavier cable

13:32 and okay how does this open opens got good velcro on it so it has four that's all it has four 50 watt panels that velcro is good so now you have 200 watts and again the standard sae connector you cannot connect them wrong and you can

13:58 buy an extension from amazon or a lot of places and there is 200 watts 450 watt panels it is substantially heavy it was twice but it's still not any big deal you know i can hold this straight out you i think anyone could take this and throw it around without any problem okay one more thing i want to show you

14:19 i bought a battery i want to test these with a battery now i'm going to give all these away and so ultimately i'm not going to keep any of this stuff i'm going to test it for a while then i'll give it away to someone who can use it and they will test it probably the same with this battery so

14:35 what i'm going to do is set up this thing as a complete separate system and run like my fridge off it just off this battery and then we'll test them that way uh this is a windy nation there it is it's agm it's deep cycle it was 200 on amazon it's a prime item which is one of the prime main reasons i

14:55 bought it was because it's prime and i like windy nation winning nation in my experience makes good stuff it was 200 199 198 something like that and it was because it was prime it was two days shipping i had this thing in two days and i do mean literally i ordered on on wednesday and it was here on friday

15:16 because it's a prime item and that's how prime items go also i didn't have to have a core your core is probably 35 bucks so because i didn't have a core if you deduct the core that makes it about 165 bucks for for this deep cycle agm and i think that's a good deal and probably and we

15:36 want to test it that's the whole goal here i want to do a long term testing on all of these the tokyo 200 the dokio uh 100 the dokio 80 and then uh the renogy 100 and the accu power 100 now by far the smallest most expensive is the accu power so far

16:01 just at first glance it looks to be the highest quality of all of them to me just this is my first class glance i haven't seen any of them before so far the quality of these of that is dramatically better than any of the others these are just much more solid and you're always going to be better off

16:23 with actual mc4s and so just my initial impression is there's a reason these are so cheap and there's a reason this is so expensive their energy is kind of in the middle okay so i think that will be it let me give you an idea of my testing procedure the main thing i want to see is will they hold up

16:44 are these things if i t if you take this thing out and set it on the ground and you're constantly moving it back and forth that's what kills the flexibles is they're constantly moving the back and forth and they're flexing and eventually they just wear out inside so i'm planning on taking them out setting them

17:01 up putting them away taking the mountains setting them up putting them away at least twice a day every day for a month that's the minimum so they will have had 120 cycles just to see how they hold up in that repetition and we'll also put them on the battery i'll let the battery run down until it's

17:21 hungry and then we will compare them with a uh an amp meter and a volt meter and see how many amps are actually flowing through it and how many volts are actually flowing through it so we'll give you all that information and then uh once i've got everything i can do in a fairly brief period of time i'll give

17:37 them away and we'll check back with that person i give them to uh in every six months in six months i'll do a long a test then i'll do a test and i'll check with them a year i'll check with them at two years and we'll know long term will these things hold up okay that's all i know

17:53 right now you know every bit as much as i do i just want you to know we're going to do it so that's it that's what i'm going to do for this video and we'll come back in a few days and give you a video of the initial testing with the voltage and amps that we're getting out of them uh from the sun okay thanks a

18:09 lot for watching this i hope you got something out of it if you did like us on youtube subscribe to the channel and we'll talk [Music]