klara King wrote:
Don't buy cheap ones from ebay - you won't be getting a bargain. I
bought four last year and looking outside now (9.20pm) one is full
brightness (a smidge above the brightness of a dying torch) and
another is going steady at about (0.75 glow worms). They'll both be
dead by midnight and no others can be seen :-(

Someone will know more than I about this - but isn't it down to the
battery? Unless it is a light with NiMh batteries, you get a memory
effect: however much/long the light on the very first time you use it,
that is the limit to which it will charge forever after - so unless
you first put it out on the morning of a long sunny day, you've had
it?

Not quite. Once it decides to discharge, it discharges until the NIcad
reaches some rather low voltage - no significant memory effect that I've
been able to discern. I am thinking of trying NiMH batteries this time, for
a laugh.