Gone are the days when people took the heat as one of the many types of climate and today, we are met by detrimental threats such as rising temperatures and global warming. This is synonymous with how we usually hop between the air conditioner in the living room to the bedroom or the house and the office to take a breath of relief. However, thanks to the ongoing technological innovations, there’s something new as portable as a wallet but as cool as an air conditioner.
I am talking about Reon Pocket which is a part of Sony’s First Flight crowdfunding project. The Japanese giant launched Reon Pocket as a pocket-sized Bluetooth enabled a device that uses thermoelectric cooling phenomenon and Peltier effect to bring down the user’s body temperature drastically and that’s all while staying as close to the size of a card wallet.
The AC unit has a mobile app that let’s manual control although an automatic version is in the pipeline as well. The pocket AC comes with a custom silicon-material undershirt that users can wear, slam the Reon Pocket in a carefully made pocket that sits near the neck and connect it to the phone and that’s all. Instant cooling or heating according to your prerequisite is supplied to the user to keep the body temperature warm during cold while bringing down the body temperature during summer and so on.
Sony cites that it has conducted tests and simulations on this instant cooling or heating pocket-sized air conditioning which uses Peltier effect that passes conditioned air when current passes through the junction. It has a versatile range of bringing down the body temperature to as low as 13° while it can warm up the body temperature as well. It has a battery life of 90 minutes and can be charged via USB-C for two hours and supports both iOS and Android app functionality. Finally, the device weighs just 85 grams and thus, you wouldn’t feel a thing when it is tucked under the office attire or sports attire or whatever you choose to wear over the custom undershirt.
The project has already surpassed 98% of crowdfunding and it is expected to be on sale sometime in March 2020 at a price tag of around $110 (INR 7,700) for Lite version and $130 (INR 9,100) for standard version, however, the catch is that the Reon Pocket from Sony is limited to Japan only and thus, might or might not make its way outside the land of the rising sun although it is yet to be confirmed.
