There’s a market for personal cooling technology and companies that offer freezable bra inserts for women and freezable underwear for men.
Now Japanese consumer electronics company Sony has come out with a smartphone-sized air conditioner you can slip into a pouch on a special T-shirt.
The Reon Pocket is being crowdfunded through Sony’s First Flight acceleration program in Japan, and prices will start at around $117, USA Today reported.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 31: McKeever Conwell II
Jamarlin talks to investor and serial entrepreneur McKeever Conwell II about being inspired by a teacher to become an engineer, getting recruited out of college by a U.S. intelligence agency, and making pre-seed investments for Maryland’s tech development state fund, TEDCO.
The device will cool you down as by as much as 23 degrees or warm you up when you’re cold — up to 14 degrees.
Instead of blowing noisy conditioned air like the ACs in homes and buildings, the wearable device uses something quieter called the Peltier effect. It absorbs or emits heat by transferring heat between two objects using electrical currents.
You have to manually control the temperature via a mobile app.
At launch, the battery-powered wearable will run for 90 minutes on a single charge, and takes two hours to fully recharge, according to Sony. However, Sony eventually expects to get 24 hours out of a single charge, Engadget reported.
With 11 days left on the crowdfunding campaign, Reon Pocket has exceeded its 66 million yen fundraising goal ($622,182US) by $30,000.
The device is expected to ship in March 2020 for Japan only.
