Top 10 tech essentials for the festival season

SolarGoPack 12k solar-powered backpack

A friend of mine owns one of these and swears by it. Essentially, it’s a conventional medium sized (27ltr) daypack with a detachable 5-watt solar panel and a removable 12,000mAh Li-ion battery. Yet the great thing about it is that using it requires no conscious effort to keep topped up, so long as you are actually out and about in daylight with it.

The manufacturer reckons that the solar panel can fully recharge the battery in just over three hours assuming it’s bathed in some quality sunlight. As a backpack, the SolarGo works just fine. It’s well made from robust ballistic nylon, near waterproof, has handy external phone and bottle pockets, a padded laptop sleeve and numerous internal pockets. It’s comfortable to wear too and comes with a sternum strap. The electrical gubbins does add a couple of hundred grams to the overall weight but it’s nothing you would notice in everyday use. You can also power up multiple gadgets on the trot.

Ultimate Ears Boom

The ideal portable Bluetooth speaker should be small, easy to use, cheap to buy, waterproof (or at least water resistant) and capable of producing an excellent sound. That's a very tall order but the new Boom from Ultimate Ears – now a subsidiary of Logitech – comes close to ticking every box. The Boom is the size of one and a half coke cans stacked one on top of the other, so it's certainly compact enough to go anywhere.

The drinks can circumference isn't accidental either, as it means the Boom can be placed in the cup holder of a car, the bottle holder of a bike or in the side pocket of a backpack. For a portable speaker, the sound quality is superb, battery life good and you can hang it from the cross member of your tent. It even has an NFC chip for easy pairing and works as a speaker phone. It’s only failing is it’s not cheap, but given its versatility, I'd say it’s worth it. ®