I Looked Ridiculous Wearing This Solar Powered Hat That Couldn’t Even Charge My Phone

Like many middle-aged men, I have a large solar-powered patch on the top of my head: this is called baldness. If I work in the yard too long, it turns very red and glows at night. So, I wear a hat, but all that beautiful solar energy reflecting off my dome is wasted — or it was until I tried the $129 model. EcoFlow Power Hat (currently $99 on sale)a new sun hat/solar power source combination.

It features eight solar panels that power two USB ports (one USB-A and one USB-C) in a small box with a small LED under the rear edge. Although it adequately protected my bald spot, it failed to charge my phone significantly. Besides, it’s just an ugly hat.

Benefits

• Cover my head, adequately doing the job of a hat
• Can technically charge a phone, so I guess it works

Disadvantages

• Very low charging rate with only 5 watts of power
• Needs a cable that goes behind your back
• The design will only appeal to Wicked cosplayers (it’s ugly)

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Design: The least attractive hat I’ve ever worn

Let’s be clear: this is a really ugly hat. Sun hats aren’t usually stylish, but this thing looks like a melted flower pot or a giant version of one of those horrible flower pot covers made from vinyl records. I’m not a fashionista, but the Oasis reunion made bucket hats cool again, and wider-brimmed hats like the Tilley TS1 protect from the sun without looking like you’ve been hit, Wile E. Coyote-style, by a falling satellite dish. I prefer practicality over style, but there are limits, especially since it’s not very practical.

Not easy to clean or wear

All the electronic devices in the hat mean you can’t wash it. When my baseball cap gets dirty, sweaty, and covered in the dirt of hard work, I can throw it in the wash. Try this with the EcoFlow Power Hat and you will destroy it. You also need to have a cable connecting the hat to the phone, which is not very practical when trying to pull weeds. I ended up running a cable through the back of my shirt, which made the whole thing even stupider.

Loading: I can’t really load anything worth using

The problem is how solar energy works. Sunlight reaches a solar panel which converts it into electrical energy. This is called the photoelectric effect, first explained by Albert Einstein, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering it in 1921. The amount of energy depends on the size of the panel and the amount of light hitting it. This in turn depends on how the panel is positioned relative to the sun.

This is why the solar panels on your roof are tilted south to face the sun. The EcoFlow Power Hat includes eight small solar panels positioned around its large brim. This means that most don’t get much, if any, direct light unless the sun is directly overhead. The sun has an annoying habit of rising and setting, so most of the time you don’t get a consistent amount of direct sunlight.

What does all this mean in practice? This means that this solar hat does not work very well. I tested the hat in full midday sun in my backyard near Boston and found that at best it generated about 5 watts of power; it’s not much. It generated 5 volts from 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 dropped to less than 0.3 amps, or about 2 watts. EcoFlow claims to be able to generate up to 12 watts, but I have never been able to achieve a comparable result.

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 big portable power bank and I watched from the bridge to make sure my local groundhog (we call him Wilbur the Whistling Pig) hadn’t stolen it. After six hours of this backbreaking work, the charge level had increased by 9%, representing approximately 225 mAh of stored charge. This represents approximately 5% of the capacity of a so this hat would take around 100 hours to charge the phone. This assumes the phone is not working at that time.

Specifications

• 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 small solar panels on the edge.
• UPF 50+, sun and UV protection
• Claims 24% heat-to-electricity conversion and up to 12 watts of power; tested at just 5 watts
• IP65 waterproof and dustproof

Buying Tip: Ignore, there are better hats and better solar charging options.

Most of the products I test end up being a case of a great idea but poor execution. The practicalities of product manufacturing and the tradeoffs of real-world engineering often compromise the intended purpose of the product. However, at $129 full price or $99 on sale if you buy directly from EcoFlowEcoFlow Power Hat is one of the rare exceptions that is a bad idea with poor execution.

It’s ugly and its solar panels are too small to be effective for anything. Maybe it would be better if they went with a flat cap designor a Sahara Or hiking hat design with the solar panels on top or on the neck flap. It is also an inferior solution to simply obtaining a fast and compact portable chargerlike the InfinityLab InstaGo 5000 Or Anker 523 PowerCore Slim 10K PD. Another alternative is to use a larger portable solar panelwith which you can associate a power plant or attach it to your backpack while hiking to charge your devices, like with the Bluetti hands-free 2.

All of these options will provide you with more power than the EcoFlow solar hat, and they will do it better and faster. So keep the solar panels away from your head and stick them on your roof instead.