Solar Clock Review
Solar Clock Review
Product review for the Suck UK Design solar clock
shopping | solar
Pictured above is the
Solar Clock designed by
Adrian Allen for
Suck UK Design (who produce the
Sun Jar and a huge array of other eclectic products).
Solar Clock
The
solar clock is exactly what it sounds like - a clock powered by a
PV solar panel. The solar panel itself is quite large at 90 x 60mm, but needs to be since the clock is used inside (away from direct sunlight), and must charge up the internal back up
rechargeable AA NiMH cell (700 mAh) during the day sufficiently to provide power all night.
The solar clock is
free standing, but can also be
wall mounted (no fittings supplied). The clock is supplied with two sets of hands, one short set (pictured above) and one long set (pictured at the start of this article) with the long set designed to be used when the clock is wall mounted, and the short set when it is free standing. The clock can be orientated horizontally or vertically according to your own personal taste.
The instructions for the
Solar Clock can be downloaded by clicking here:
Solar Clock Instructions (PDF). These are very basic since they only need to explain how to change the hands of the clock, and how to reset the hands when the orientation of the clock is to be changed.
Overall Conclusions
The clock keeps
good time which is of course the most important thing. It's movement is very
smooth and completely
silent (i.e. no
tick tock). The solar panel is easily big enough to generate sufficient electricity to keep the clock going even when located in a room which is poorly lit.
Obviously every product which is
solar powered does not necessarily have fantastic
green credentials. The
carbon footprint of this (Chinese manufactured) clock must be relatively large, but at least it is well made, great looking, and therefore unlikely to find itself going to
landfill any time soon. The NiMH rechargeable cell can be replaced in the future - and will probably need to be within 5-10 years when it can no longer hold sufficient charge to power the clock through the night. (Maybe a future version of the Solar Clock will be designed to use an
ultracapacitor instead of the NiMH rechargeable AA cell thereby giving decades of self-powering.)
Pricewise it is pretty expensive at around
£25-£30 here in the UK, but at least at that price people will be more likely to make the effort to replace the rechargeable cell in the future.
Buy the Solar Clock
The
Solar Clock is available best priced from
Ethical Superstore at
£24.95. Click here to
buy Solar Clock now.
Article Last Modified: 11:14, 27th Feb 2009Comment on this Article
If you have any comments on this article, please email them to
neil@reuk.co.uk.
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