Stand alone GPS

[Krazykarl]

Op, get yourself a good battery pack that can charge via solar, or just get a solar charging mat that can charge whatever you plug into it. It won’t be that much extra weight, and will be worth the cost/weight to know things can be charged


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Do you have a specific recommendation? The last one that we had was terrible. I believe it was an Amazon purchase that was very disappointing...

[Allen]

Do you have a specific recommendation? The last one that we had was terrible. I believe it was an Amazon purchase that was very disappointing...

So the battery banks with a solar panel on them are more of a gimmick than anything else. Take for example one of these outxe.com (I have the 20K) with solar it takes 75 hours of direct sunlight to fully charge the bank. It's also heavy (~600g, 1.32 lbs) but that's the induction charger, flash light etc built in.

I have a few Nitecore battery banks and love them, my NB1000 weighing 150g, half the capacity of the 1.3lb Outxe gets me a 65% charge on my laptop, enough to survive a full day of work if I'm on site, or enough to charge 2 phones and my watch for 2 nights of camping. They have a small (30W) solar panel that I've seen good reviews on, but not used myself. Big thing is they need to be in direct sun for 8+ hours to get anything close to rated output, you'll see this in the reviews for GoalZero etc. What ever you do here, buy the panels & bank before the trip, make sure you didn't get broken ones, and figure out how you're going to secure them to your canoe.

FWIW Nitecore also makes the chargers that Cloud Defensive and a few others use for 18650's.

[Defaultmp3]

Also, if you really want to keep it standalone, there is the new Garmin eTrex Solar. It is quite basic, and offers only minimal maps if used by itself; you can integrate it with your phone for a lot more features, if you want, like topos and the like, but by itself, it's a barebones unit with essentially unlimited battery life (assuming good sunlight and above freezing temps)