I hate summer in general and Japanese summers in specific. With scorching heat and humidity so high you might as well be swimming, taking even a single step outside my house makes me feel like I need another shower.
So when I heard that there was a wearable air conditioner out there, Sony’s Reon Pocket, I had to get one. Of course, I was too late to be able to pre-order one by that time. Then, when they came out for general release, I missed out again when they all sold out within a day. So I finally swallowed my pride and just bought one from a scalper.
Since mine arrived, I’ve worn the Reon Pocket every time I have had to go out this summer (which is admittedly a lot less than normal thanks to the pandemic) and now with the temperature finally coming down a bit, I feel it’s time to give my thoughts on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C56zONHJryk
The Reon Pocket sits between your shoulder blades, held there by a special undershirt with a pocket in it. The front of the device, which touches your skin directly, has a panel that gets cold within seconds of turning it on. On the backside of the device is a fan that blows air (also somewhat chilled by the cooling panel) into the area between your special undershirt and normal shirt.
If I were to give a simple explanation of what it feels like to wear one, it’s like someone is constantly holding a rather large ice cube between your shoulder blades–well, until you get used to it anyway. As expected, it only takes a few minutes for your body to get used to the cold sensation to the point where you can’t feel it anymore. This is where the app comes in.
Image source: Sony | REON POCKET (Japan) on Twitter.
While you can manually set it to cool, adjusting both the temperature and fan speed on your smartphone as you wish, it’s better for the most part to let the auto feature handle it. It’s set up in such a way that it adjusts the power and temperature of the unit based on your body temperature. Moreover, it doesn’t keep the setting constant. When your body gets used to the coldness, it’ll drop it to a lower cold setting for a bit until your body adjusts to the hotter temperature before cranking up the coldess again so you can feel the chill.
In general, this works quite well–though I have to admit that sometimes I would just turn on “boost mode,” the coldest possible setting (which has a 2-minute auto-cut-off safety timer), because I couldn’t wait for my next hit of coldness.
Now for the sad part. Apart from the cold panel touching my skin, the device never really made me feel cooler overall. Commercials and ads act like the little fan is going to take the cold air the panel is putting out and cool your entire back. Honestly, whether the fan was on low or high, I never felt any noticeable cooling for my back in general.
In the end, the question becomes is it worth $136 (plus two $19 undershirts) to feel like you’re walking around with an ice cube intermittently taped between your shoulder blades? And honestly, that’s a hard one for me to answer. While the Reon Pocket doesn’t work quite as well as I had hoped, I still happily wear it whenever I go outside to face the Japanese summer. And with a battery life of two hours, it lasts far longer than any low-budget alternative. So if you hate summer as much as I do, you probably won’t regret your purchase.
Now all that’s left is to see how the Reon Pocket fares against Japanese winter–because yes, it also doubles as a wearable heater.
The Reon Pocket retails for ¥14,300 ($136) in Japan and can be purchased from any number of sellers.
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