Feeling the heat of the summer and yet, you can’t ditch the long sleeve shirt and tie formal attire even if you want to? Well, then Sony Japan has the solution for you. Meet Reon Pocket, the wearable air-conditioner born out of Sony Startup Acceleration Program (SSAP) that is being crowdfunded by Sony. Reon Pocket consists of an undershirt with a discreet pocket around back of the neck and the hardware itself.
The hardware, which is smaller and lighter than a typical smartphone, pumps out cool air through a series of holes. The temperature can be tweaked based on your preference using a mobile app, or you can chose to let device decide the optimal temperature for you. Turning on/off the device is also via the mobile app.
It is worthy to note that Reon Pocket is not just an air-conditioner for beating the heat (or body heat, to be precise); it is also a body warmer when the weather turns chilly. Snazzy. The device is essentially a thermoelectric cooler that uses Peltier effect to achieve heating and cooling, similar to that used in automobile and wine coolers. It is outfitted with a rechargeable battery, good for 90 minutes of use per two-hour charge.
The Sony Reon Pocket “Wearable Air-Conditioner” is currently being crowdfunded on Sony’s crowdfunding platform, First Flight, and at the time of this post, it has already pulled in 26,115,980 Yen (about US$241,500) contributed by over 1,500 backers. However, it is still far from its desired funding goal of 66,000,000 Yen (around US$610,000). But hey, it will likely make it since it managed 26,000,000+ Yen in just 3 days. Impressive. More so when you know that it is a Japan-only product which only residents of Japan qualifies.
And it is not cheap either. Reon Pocket is selling for 14,080 Yen, (roughly US$130). If you are intrigued and read Japanese, you can learn more this wearable air-conditioner in an interview with its inventor HERE.
Images: Sony Japan.
Source: YouTube (SCMP).
