Wearable AC | GIZMODO.cz

Air conditioners are great except for their most obvious limitation. They’re static. Whether it’s in your house, in your office, in a mall, or in your car, the AC stays right where it is. It doesn’t move with you from space to space, or room to room, and when you step outside, your body has to deal with a sudden blast of heat from the outdoors. Conventional ACs aren’t designed to be wearable… yet, but that hasn’t stopped companies like Dyson and Sony from experimenting with body-worn cooling devices. Leading that charge, with a US patent as well as a Red Dot Product Design Award and iF Design Award, is the Coolify 2S from Torras. Styled like a slim version of your travel neck pillow, the Coolify 2S is a horseshoe-shaped appliance that sits around your neck and uses a combination of cooling plates as well as targeted airflow to cool you down by 30°F in under a second. Going above and beyond those neck-worn fans that only generate a breeze, the Coolify 2S actually cools you down like an air conditioner… but in a lightweight, sleek, wearable form factor.

Designer: Deng Xiao Yong (Eddy)

Click Here to Buy Now: $199 ~~$299~~ ($100 off total with coupon code “YANKOCOOL”). Hurry, deal ends in 48 hours!

‘Iconic Cooling’, is what Torras calls the technology within its Coolify 2S device. While most neck-worn coolers just use a combination of a fan, water vapor, or cooling agents like peppermint essential oils (that’s what the blö device from 2018 uses). The Coolify 2S actually has a miniature refrigerator built into it. Relying on a set of cooling plates powered by a semiconductor and a HyperVortex air-flow system, the device actually cools you down like an air conditioner would.

You could wear the Coolify 2S in the heat, or while working out, trekking, or even on outdoor shoots. The Coolify 2S even works remarkably well indoors, letting you cool yourself without needing to sit right under the air conditioner, with a smartphone app that lets you control your neck-worn AC’s temperature. You can toggle its fan settings, as well as choose the intensity of the cooling plates (they apparently have a heating function too) right through the app, while the Coolify 2S device works on a sizeable 5000mAh battery to cool you for up to 11 hours when used on its highest setting.

The Coolify 2S also has another understated advantage over an actual air conditioner. Sure, it’s portable, and can be worn everywhere you go… but more importantly, it’s a personal cooler, rather than a space cooler. That effectively means you get to control your own personal settings without it having to affect anyone else. Instead of fighting for the AC remote because one person’s sweating and the other person’s freezing, the Coolify 2S takes an ‘each to their own’ approach, giving the wearer absolute autonomy, with three levels of cooling to choose from.

The technology’s impressive for sure, but you don’t land 2 major design awards unless your product looks as cool as it behaves. The Coolify 2S is made to look incredibly sleek and feel ergonomic and lightweight around your neck. The wearable sits fairly securely on your person, letting you do things like work, walk, or even exercise with it on, and lets you adjust its angle from anywhere between 0° to 160° for that extra bit of custom comfort. Each Coolify 2S also ships with a pretty remarkable-looking donut-shaped soft-shell case for carrying around, and an 18W charger that juices your wearable AC from 0 to 100 in under 2 hours.

Click Here to Buy Now: $199 ~~$299~~ ($100 off total with coupon code “YANKOCOOL”). Hurry, deal ends in 48 hours!

The post Neck-worn air conditioners are gunning to be the next breakthrough piece of wearable tech first appeared on Yanko Design.

Summertime brings relentless heatwaves and the frustrating spells of chapping under the sun. Sure you can take shelter in the cozy confines of your home cooled down by the air conditioner, but in real-life situations, you’ll have to step out from time to time outside in the scorching heat. There are battery-powered portable AC’s that last for two hours on a single charge – but if you like something that can go on and on without the need to worry about the battery running dry in the middle of a meltdown spell, this creative wearable has got you covered.

Saiga is the result of a team project by the Royal College of Art & Imperial College London, Innovation Design Engineering students – Harry Barber, Kevin Chiam, Wei Haw Huang, and Nacho Vilanova. This wearable neck air conditioner makes use of conduction to cool down the area around the neck using the user’s own breath. So why did these mindful students design a prototype that needs very negligible external battery power? For a simple reason – the air conditioners are energy demanding and adversely affect the environment as they increase the environmental temperature and are also polluting in the long run. How one feels around the neck contributes a lot to the perception of environmental temperature, and the Saiga neck wearable does exactly that.

It provides cooling by conduction of air onto specific parts of the neck and breathing in cold air through the mouth further provides added relief when the temperature gets too hot – thereby improving the thermal comfort when in hot environments. The device works when sweat is detected – making it work in tandem with the body to feel comfortable when it is needed. The prototype version makes use of the Peltier chips (running at under 2W for a low power alternative) strategically placed around the neck area (back and the sides), and a phase-changing material that cools down the air when breathed through the mouthpiece. It is basically about cooling down the neck area rather than the whole environment to give the sensation of a perceived colder environment that it actually is!

Designer: Imperial College of London Students – Harry Barber, Kevin Chiam, Wei Haw Huang, Nacho Vilanova