Thursday, December 7
    Products & Technology

    Sony’s Reon Pocket Is A Wearable Air Conditioner

    wearable air conditioner

    Stay cool wherever you are with these ingenious wearable air conditioners that you can take with you anywhere. In July 2018, large areas of Northeast Asia experienced a record-breaking heat wave which caused a great number of fatalities due to heat stroke and other heat-related causes. The natural disaster spread across Japan, China, and Korea. With people taking precautions against the extreme heat, the demand for air conditioning spiked 35 times more than the previous years. While ACs keep us cool especially during warmer months, excessive use of these cooling systems can harm the environment as they emit greenhouse gases that further contribute to climate change and global warming.

    Furthermore, traditional ACs can only cool down indoor spaces, leaving you vulnerable to heat stroke when you’re outside. And we could only wish to somehow carry the cooling unit to the outdoors. So we can walk or play outdoor sports even under the scorching heat of the sun sans heat stroke. Well, consider this wish granted as Sony releases the Reon Pocket, a small portable AC that can be worn as a lightweight neck harness. These wearable air conditioners are designed to keep the wearer cool for hours on the go.

     

    Wearable Air Conditioners That You Can Wear And Use Outside

    The concept behind the Reon Pocket was conceived by Kenji Ito who is now the general manager of the REON Business Office. After the devastating effect of the 2018 Northeast Asia heat wave, Ito was motivated to design wearable air conditioners to reduce the risk of heat stroke for those who are spending most of their times in the outdoors. To make his concept a reality, Ito launched a crowdsourcing campaign in July 2019. The campaign quickly reached its target amount of ¥66 million ($485,000) on its first week. After which, Sony began production of the units for retail and released the Reon Pocket in Japan the following year.

     

    The wearable air conditioners were a big hit in Japan as heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more intense than the previous years. In fact, July 2022 has put Japan sweltering under its worst heatwave ever recorded since 1875. To make it worse, weather officials had already warned of a looming power shortage and called for energy conservation where possible. Apparently, the extreme heat could only force people to use air conditioning to an excessive degree. And the Reon Pocket can serve as the ultimate solution for these problems.

     

    The pocket-sized cooling unit measures 20mm high and 54mm wide only weighing 92g. It is attached to a flexible neckband that allows you to easily wear it around your neck. Wear it under a collared shirt to hide the unit that delivers cool air down your back. The built-in battery fully charges in 1.5 hours via USB-C to power the unit for 8 – 61 hours depending on the cooling intensity. Desired temperature can be controlled and set using a smartphone app. But the most recent model, the Reon Pocket 3, offers more features and practical upgrades from the previous one.

     

     

    The new Reon Pocket 3 has improved cooling efficiency due to the unit’s newly developed thermo module and heat dissipation mechanism. Its added feature, the Smart Cool Mode, automatically adjusts the cooling temperature according to the current environment and the wearer’s behavior. Selecting this mode allows the unit to set the temperature according to the changes in the surrounding temperature. It automatically increases the cooling intensity when you’re walking outside and decreases the cooling intensity when you’re having a meeting indoors.

     

    These new wearable air conditioners also has Auto Start/Stop feature that automatically turns on when the unit is placed at the back of the neck and switches off when it is removed. This feature can help prolong the battery life and also saves you the hassle of manually turning it off/on using your smartphone.

    “The project was started with the vision of contributing to energy saving by reducing the dependency on air conditioning indoors as much as possible, in addition to giving a feeling of coldness outdoors,” Ito explains.

     

     

     

    Although it is advertised as a cooling unit, the Reon Pocket also acts as a portable heater as it also offers warming mode for those living in cold icy countries. For only ¥14,850 ($109), it’s no wonder this wearable air conditioner is all the rage in Japan and it won’t be long before it becomes a worldwide must-have.

     

     

     

    Source: Twitter | Sony

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