SHTF Solar Power Lighting! Biolite Solar home 620+ Review

Guys, when it comes to power outages, there's a number of things that we depend on on a daily basis that we take for granted. But when the lights go out, the lights go out. And you could have a generator, you've got gas, you're keeping your refrigerator, you're keeping some lights on. But having something that is more sustainable to me has been something that I've always looked for. I was recently on Sportsman's Guide and I found something that was really interesting. This is the BioLite. It is a solar-powered light source. And there's some other features to this. But this is something that you can sustain for an extended period of time. In fact, they've been used pretty extensively in Africa and some of the areas that are just completely without electricity. And this gives those places a light source. And it's solar backup, so you have the sun as keeping this thing charged. This could be used for a temporary power outage, like a natural storm or things that just occur on a regular basis. But it can also be used as a long-term solution to have some kind of light source. And again, to be sustainable. Now, I was on Sportsman's Guide and I just happened to come across this and I decided just to check it out. And so you're gonna check it out with me. You do get a $20 off every $100 or more purchase using Sooch when you go to the Sportsman's Guide website. And that's always a big plus. But even though I do work with Sportsman's Guide, I purchased this on my own. Of course, you get the box. There are three lights and you have three switches. We have a power box and we have our solar panel. We're gonna open this up. I'm just gonna show you from start to finish, kind of give you an idea of what you're gonna be getting. All right, I've got it all unpacked. You get three lights and each has extension cords all the way throughout. You do have an on-off button here. Each one of these has all this going on. That's pretty impressive. I mean, you can spread these lights out into a pretty large area. You do get your solar panel and you get a cord that goes with it. So you can actually attach the solar panel, put it outside where you can get the sun, and then you can daisy chain it to each of these lights. We also have our base. And again, this has a radio, it has a light. I believe this has weather radio. And we'll check all this out. Volume controls, pretty cool little system. Also, these all have hangers. Each of these lights has one of these little hangers. And so you can hang these lights and then extend this through each of these to your base and to your solar panel. And you also get your owner's manual and we're gonna go through that. I'm gonna go ahead and get all this charged up and then we'll come back and we'll check it out. That gives you all the parts list, but here's a diagram to kind of give you an overview. You set your solar panel up to where it's getting light and then you connect it to your base. And then from your base, you connect the different lights. You can set this up however you want to. You can do more of a permanent kind of setup or you can use this and just put it away. And they also include mounting fixtures as well, even your cable hookups. And there's some wire in here to be able to put the solar panel wherever you need to. And the base for the radio even has an antenna. Two of the lights are just opaque. One has a motion sensor here. So this could actually set in front of your door outside. When somebody comes in, this just comes on automatically. Then the other ones are gonna be turned on by your switch. And this one can be turned on by switch as well. Now, each of the lights has a receptacle. And so you can take that third light and you actually place it right in here and it connects it with the other lights. And you also have this hook that's connected to the cables. And then you can just hook it to the top of the light around something that will hold this light. So let's say you have an existing light that hangs down or something, you can actually wrap this and that way you can have this ready. And this is adjustable. So you can make this any size you need to or you can make it pretty tight. Or for that matter, you could actually hang this just like this on something and the light would just direct down. According to the manual, full sun, it takes about seven hours to fully charge your system. But once you have this up, you're just gonna have it sitting out in the sun. You wanna put it in a really good place to be able to attract sun. And then also angling this just slightly, you can put this in the weather and rain won't hurt it. You just don't wanna set it down flat on something. Then the rain can settle on it. So you just have to have it at a little bit of an angle. Once you have it fully charged, you have 14 hours of battery life. Now, this is also considered a light, which we'll see that when we get this fully charged, but you have actually four lights. Again, according to the instructions, it says that it will give you 20 hours on low. If you go up to the medium setting, it'll do 10 hours. And if you go to the high setting, it's six hours. And then again, you don't have to use all these lights at that same time. And that will also conserve battery life. Now, with your solar panel, you put it up under the bracket and then there's a little sun diagram. You just put it in. And then for your lights, same thing, go under the bracket. And then there are two different places to be able to attach your light cables. Obviously, this one will daisy chain with one of the second lights. And so you only need two ports. Okay, so now we've got this in full sun. We're just charging up. And you can see that it's already starting to show the LED. And we're just gonna let this go for a little bit and see how it runs. We're gonna fully charge it, obviously, because we wanna get the full capability and we'll test it out. But there is a lithium ion battery inside here and it is being charged right now. Now, obviously, you don't wanna leave this sitting out in the sun while you're charging up your panel. I'm gonna just cover this up for right now until I get this mounted. But until we test it, I wanna wait and then we'll mount it. Now, here is your control panel. And you just hit one of the buttons, the prompt buttons either way. You bring up your time, your day, and the date. Hit it one more time. We go to battery life. You're at 97%, 24 hours left to empty. And then we have the sun. We don't have this solar panel outside, so no solar power is detected. And then you have your radio, which your button's right here. And there we go. So we have some music here. I'll turn that off before YouTube gets me on a copyright strike. Then we can go next to the MP3. This has a small little port for your micro SD card, and you can put music on there, and you can play whatever music you wanna play. And then we go to back to the time and date. And then you have, of course, volume buttons. You have fast forward and back. And then we have the light. And so connected right here to the top is your light. Press it again, it just gets brighter. Maximum output, it's 100 lumens. And that's on the base itself. Now you have two USB ports. You can plug in a cable or any kind of USB compatible charging, and then we can plug this in, and now we're charging the phone. And of course, you can charge a lot of other different devices. And you do have this USB cable here. This is an adapter, and there's a number of different ways you can set this up. Even for a GoPro, they have different adapters. But mostly you're gonna be using USB, so you have those two adapters there. And here we have your light, and you have your control panel right here. Of course, this is attached to the cable, which is 18 feet in length. So you can really put this in a lot of different places. Of course, we have it hooked up in the back. And you'll notice when I hit this button, we get our light, and then it just continues to get brighter and brighter. Again, up to 100 lumens. And then you can daisy chain these lights, and you can have three lights plus the console. So you have four total lights. And again, on high, it's 100 lumens. So it's 400 lumen total. Now it's a 20 watt hour control panel. The solar panel has a 21 foot cable that leads to the control panel. And it's a six watt panel. It's 11 inches in width. It's seven and a half inches tall, and it's 0.6 inches in thickness. And it's made of aluminum, so it's really sturdy. There is a rechargeable battery inside. It is a 3,300 milliamp battery. So guys, again, you have your control panel with a light, radio. We have charging capability. Then we have the solar panel. And then you have three additional lights that you can daisy chain. And then you have a adapter for different charging devices, and all the hardware to mount it. One of the great things about this is you can take it anywhere. I mean, you can take it camping. You can be outside in the outdoors. You can have a cabin that doesn't have power. And this is gonna give you power. And again, you can just use this on its own, or you can use one, two, or three of the extra lights. Gives you a lot of capability. One thing I do like about this particular light with the motion sensor is that I can set this outside of a tent, and if anything comes up, it'll automatically come on, and that'll give you a warning. And then you could have one of your other lights inside, or even just the control panel itself. Now, the Sportsman's Guide website, it's $179.99. Of course, if you're a member of their Buyer's Club, it's $161.99, and you still get a $20 off every $100 or more purchase. And so that brings it down, if you're part of the Buyer's Club, to $141.99. And if you're a member of the club, you get free shipping. So it's a really cool deal. There's a lot of things you can do with this, and it's very easy to use. Easy to set up, easy to use. So then again, guys, needing light. I mean, it is important, especially in a power outage, for long-term type use. And this is really safe, better than lanterns or candles that have that open flame that can really cause some problems on top of your power outage. But this just gives you a great light source, and also with the radio, it gives you a way to communicate. So check out the BioLite. Again, pick this up on Sportsman's Guide, and you do get a $20 off every $100 or more purchase using Sooch, no zero, zero. Be strong, be of good courage. God bless America, long live the Republic. Brownouts or blackouts because of the coal shortage. You can have natural, it's okay, I don't wanna go straight into that. I mean, those have happened regularly in different areas for different reasons. Just according to what kind of, whether it's a snowstorm, you could have tornadoes, you could have whatever. Okay, you could have whatever. Okay, we're gonna look at a little detail before, well, I don't know what the heck I'm even looking at.