Me wearing the hat with the cable running to a power bank.
Like many middle-aged men, I have a big solar-powered area on the top of my head: It’s called a bald spot. If I work in the yard for too long, it turns very red and glows at night. So, I wear a hat but all of that lovely solar energy reflecting off my dome goes to waste — or it did until I tried the $129 EcoFlow Power Hat (currently $99 on sale), a new combination sun hat/solar power source.
The EcoFlow Power Hat features eight solar panels that feed into two USB ports (one USB-A and one USB-C) in a small box with a tiny LED under the back rim. While it adequately protected my bald spot, it failed to charge my phone in any meaningful way. Plus, it’s just a damn ugly hat.
Pros
- Covers my head, adequately doing the job of a hat
- Can technically trickle charge a phone, so I guess it works
Cons
- Very low charging rate at just 5 watts of power
- Needs a cable running down your back
- Design will only appeal to Wicked cosplayers (it’s ugly)
Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source on Chrome.
Design: The least attractive hat I’ve ever worn
There are eight tiny solar panels in the brim, but unless the sun is hitting them just right, you’re not going to get much power out of them.
If I wasn’t already clear: This is a truly ugly hat. Sun hats are not generally stylish but this thing looks like a melted flower pot or like a giant version of one of those awful flower pot holders made from vinyl records. I’m no fashionista but the Oasis reunion made bucket hats cool again and wider-brimmed hats like the Tilley TS1 keep the sun off without looking like you’ve been whacked, Wile E. Coyote style, by a falling satellite dish. I’m a big fan of practicality over style, but there are limits, especially as it’s not very practical.
Not easy to clean or wear
All of the electronics in the hat mean that you can’t wash it. When my baseball cap gets grubby, sweaty and covered in the soil of hard labor, I can throw it in the wash. Try that with the EcoFlow Power Hat and you’ll destroy it. You also need to have a cable connecting the hat to the phone, which isn’t very practical when you are trying to dig out weeds. I ended up running a cable down the back of my shirt, which just made the whole thing look even more foolish.
Charging: Can’t really charge anything worth using
A six-hour gardening session barely moved the needle in charging my devices.
The problem is how solar power works. Light from the sun hits a solar panel, which converts it into electrical energy. That’s called the photoelectric effect, first explained by Albert Einstein, who won the Nobel Prize for figuring it out in 1921. The amount of energy depends on the size of the panel and how much light hits it. That, in turn, depends on how the panel is positioned relative to the sun.
That’s why the solar panels on your roof are tilted south to face the sun. The EcoFlow Power Hat features eight small solar panels positioned around its large brim. That means that most aren’t getting much, or any, direct light unless the sun is directly overhead. The sun has an annoying habit of rising and falling, so most of the time, you’re not getting a consistent amount of direct sunlight.
What does all that mean in practical terms? It means this solar hat doesn’t work very well. I tested the hat in the full midday sun in my yard near Boston and found that, at best, it generated about 5 watts of power; that’s not a lot. It generated 5 volts on the USB port, but the current flow never exceeded 1 amp, meaning it was still only generating about 5 watts of power. In the morning or afternoon, when the sun was at a certain angle, the current generated fell to less than 0.3 amps, approximately 2 watts. EcoFlow claims it can generate up to 12 watts but I never managed anything near that.
100 hours to charge an iPhone 17 Pro
To test it further, I conducted an arduous gardening session. Well, okay, I stuck it on a pole, connected it to a hefty portable power bank and watched from the deck to make sure my local groundhog (we call him Wilbur the Whistle Pig) didn’t steal it. After six hours of this backbreaking work, the charge level had increased by 9%, representing about 225 mAh of stored charge. That’s about 5% of the capacity of an iPhone 17 Pro, so this hat would take about 100 hours to charge the phone. That’s assuming the phone is not running at the time.
The Power Hat needs 100 hours to charge an iPhone 17 Pro, if the phone is off.
Specs
- Two sizes: Medium-Large (56-58 centimeters) and Large-XL (59-61 centimeters)
- Dual USB-A and USB-C ports for charging two devices simultaneously.
- Has eight tiny solar panels on the brim.
- UPF 50+, sun and UV protection
- Claims 24% thermal-to-electricity conversion and up to 12 watts of power; tested to just 5 watts
- IP65 waterproof and dustproof-rated
Buying advice: Skip, there are better hats and better solar charging options out there
Many of the products I test end up being a case of a great idea but poor execution. The practicalities of manufacturing products and the compromises of real-world engineering often undermine the intended purpose of the product. However, at $129 full price or $99 on sale if you buy direct from EcoFlow, EcoFlow Power Hat is one of the rare exceptions that is a bad idea with bad execution.
It’s ugly and has solar panels that are too small to be effective for, well, anything. It might be better if they went with a flat cap design, or a sahara or hiking hat design with the solar panels on the top or neck flap instead. It’s also an inferior solution to simply getting a fast and compact portable charger, like the InfinityLab InstaGo 5000 or Anker 523 PowerCore Slim 10K PD. Another alternative is using a larger portable solar panel, which you can pair with a power station or attach to your backpack as you hike to charge your devices, as with the Bluetti Handsfree 2.
All of these options will provide you with more power than the EcoFlow Solar Hat, and they’ll do it better and faster. So keep the solar panels off your head and stick ‘em on your roof instead.
