This kit seems to be very will made and durable. They are sort of pricy but Goal0 has a ebay store with lower prices noted. I only recently purchased this kit. The purchase thur the Goal0 ebay store was a good experience. Wayne does a good job but may get a bit behind on shipping, however he did everything he agreed to in my discussions prior to purchase. I have tested the kit only a couple cycles, discharging the battery and then recharging to see what the times are. The house ac recharge time was 4 hrs. I bought two 30w solar panels and hooked together to recharge the 150w batt with solar and that only took 3 hrs on a partial cloudy day! I was surprised and impressed. The briefcase panel is very sturdy, and heavy. Built in prop stands and carry handle are important. only issue I may see down the road is the briefcase uses some plastic hook things to keep the case closed, and those look like they will break sometime, but that will not affect the solar panel output, just the carry convenience. Other item that i found out is the kit did not come with a DC adapter to charge the batt when in your vehicle. the DC adapter noted in the kit is just for output to a DC device, like a dc charger for your cell phone.

I took this product on a 5 month road trip. It worked great for half of the trip and then the battery inputs started to become loose and it became impossible to plug the goal 0 light in. Eventually all of the inputs became loose and I couldn't charge anything. I probably overused the panel since it was on top of my vehicle most of the time and the panel stopped working at the end of the trip as well. The good thing about this was that after I got back they sent me an entirely new kit. If could do it over again I would have gotten their scout kit for my lifestyle.

Saw your product line earlier this year at Long Beach, and was impressed by your accessory lines, especially with its interchangeability and expandability with other products. Recently experienced the San Diego county blackout just a few days ago, and I was surprised to find a salesperson there offering the Escape 150 explorer kit, and a newly expanded line of lighting products, of which I was impressed. I would have considered purchase, but all of them were sold out, and he had a list of at least 30 other people on backorder for the combo! However, some of us noticed that the Escape 150 system (especially the scout unit) was not as chainable as your sherpa. If I were to buy this combo, I would like it very much if I could chain any other Goal Zero battery packs or panels to improve the performance. Your website has also improved since the show at Long Beach; I like how you organize packs by usage (I love the home emergency and laptop categories). Your dual use chain lamps/flashlights are a great idea. Other products that you should consider are rechargeable headlamps, and Red LED flashlights/camplights. Those would be very useful in situations where a person may wish to retain nightvision.