Beat the heat with Sony’s wearable air conditioner

If you haven’t even wanted to step outside this summer, you’re not alone. It was the hottest June in Europe and July was the hottest month ever recorded on the planet.

Mussels are cooking in their shells, Britain had its hottest day on record, and manure is literally exploding and starting wildfires. It’s not a worldwide solution for climate change, but there is a little project in the works that’s aiming to cool you off a little. You might be surprised who’s behind it!

Sony is mostly known for their electronics, entertainment, and their weird mutual contract with Marvel regarding the rights to Spider-Man. We’ll be honest, we weren’t expecting a heatwave solution to come from them, but we got one, in the form of a wearable air condition chip. That’s right – this techwear slips right into your clothing and lets you cool yourself off on the fly. (It heats up during winter, too!)

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Reon Pocket

The device is called the Reon Pocket and astonishingly has already succeeded in its crowd-funding campaign (probably thanks to this summer’s record temperatures). It’s a lightweight gadget about the size of a credit card and it slips right beneath the collar of your shirt.

From there it’s controlled via an app on your smartphone, and can reportedly lower body temperatures by 30 degrees. Even better, Sony alleges that the Reon Pocket will be sold for about $117, a price we’d be more than happy to pay if the thing works as well as they claim.

If you’re already getting out your wallet, let us stop you real quick; it’s time for the bad news. To start, the device isn’t available just yet, and likely won’t drop until 2020.

Sony also plans to first launch the product in Japan, so unless you’re planning to get one imported (or you happen to live in Japan!) you’ll have to wait even longer.

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There are also some questions regarding battery life (the Reon Pocket is estimated to last just under two hours), so there are still some kinks to work out before we give the device our recommendation.

Still, the thought of walking outside and being able to adjust how hot it feels on the fly sounds awfully enticing. These days it’s a borderline super power.

For those of us braving the heat every day, 2020 is still a long ways off, but we’ll be keeping tabs on the Reon Pocket so that you don’t have to! Stay cool and stick with Softonic!