Q-switched erbium doped fiber laser (EDFL) was passively realized using vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) embedded into polyethylene glycol (PEG) film as saturable absorber (SA). The laser could successfully generate stable self-starting pulses when the V2O5 film was placed in an EDFL cavity. It operated at 1 562.4 nm wavelength. The repetition rate can be varied from 91.7 kHz to 128.2 kHz while the pulse width shrank from 10.90 μs to 7.81 μs with rising pump power from 110.9 mW to 166.5 mW. The pulse energy recorded was 3.2 nJ at pump power of 166.5 mW. The results indicate that the saturable absorption of V2O5 has promising nonlinear photonic applications especially in fiber laser development for 1.5-μm region.