IKEA Sunnan for the win!

I've been at IKEA yesterday, just for the fun of it - but found "SUNNAN" - a solar-powered and battery-backed desk lamp with a multichip LED as "bulb"! The Nerd I am I had to take a closer look, and when I found out that IKEA donates another one of these lamps to UNICEF when bought, I couldn't resist getting one, though I actually didn't even need a desk lamp, especially one that costs around 18 €...

At home I was curious to find out how well it might perform, and I was not disappointed - I got a bright, useful lamp. See for yourself:

Nifty features:

• flexible bendable arm to point your lamp wherever you (usually) need lighting
• removable combined solar cell/battery pack so that you can put it into sunlight during the day (it takes about nine to twelve hours to charge in direct sunlight, longer in shady areas)

When fully charged the lamp is said to last 4 hours; I haven't tested that (yet).

Simply put, this lamp is ideally suited for the regions of our planet where electricity isn't available like here in Europe.

I wonder, though, how long the batteries are going to survive, as they will be regularly charged and discharged. Disassembling the battery pack I found three standard AA NiMH cells w/ a capacity of 1200 mAh, so theoretically one could replace them when they're dead. Here in Europe that shouldn't be too much a problem, but what about the regions they're donating it to? Unfortunately I don't know the availabilty of AA cells there, but even if they are available - what would it cost the owner of a donated lamp to buy them?

Aside of this future problem, the idea of donating these lamps to UNICEF is a great one, and that's why I bought one to support this project. And to have a nerdy solar-powered LED desk lamp, of course :)