Glastonbury's essential gadget: the Solio charger

The Solio solar charger range - a Glastonbury essential!
The Solio solar charger range - a Glastonbury essential!

Festival season kicks off with a bang this week with Glastonbury, the daddy of them all, and there is one gadget you need to pack (besides your mobile) as you pray for good weather this weekend – a Solio solar-powered charger.

Solio now offer three different types of charger - the original flower-shaped Solio Classic (£50), the Hybrid 1000 (£40) which you can dangle from your rucksack or, our personal favourite, the biodegradable Magnesium Solio (£100).

Away with the fairies

If you are packing a Solio, then you are far more likely to be in the embarrassing situation of finding yourself without mobile power (and therefore you can - theoretically - never lose all your friends at the stone circle and end up befriending some strange ladies dressed as fairies… again).

Of course, aside from festivals and long safaris, it is hard to think of many other occasions when you are really going to need to have a solar-powered charger with you. Unless perhaps you have a dreadful memory and keep forgetting to plug all of your mobile devices on charge overnight.

Still, it's nice to feel that you are, potentially, always fully charged.

A fully powered up Solio Classic will charge an average mobile phone twice over or provide you with over 20 hours of iPod music, should you REALLY not want to listen to Jay-Z on Saturday night.

Sun not included

The Solio Magnesium provides even more of a power boost on the go, charging your mobile phone at least three times over. You can also get Nintendo DS and Sony PSP attachments, so you need never be without any form of entertainment on the move ever again.

Providing, of course, that the sun shines at Worthy Farm this weekend. And that those Scallies don't nick your tent. Again.

Adam Hartley