Japan’s new wearable air conditioner belt is here just in time for the Tokyo heat wave

Keeping you cooled down from the hips up.

Summer in Japan has reached the “mercilessly hot” phase, with temperatures in Tokyo forecast to rise as high as 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degree Fahrenheit) in the next few days. But even with the heat expected to continue, life goes on, and so does the need to venture outside for work, school, errands, and travel plans.

So the most comfortable solution would be to find a way to venture outside without venturing away from the air conditioner, and offering a way to do just that is Tokyo-based gadget company Gloture, with its new WearCool device.

WearCool is a belt, and the visual design, plus some of Gloture’s promotional model photos, might make it look like one of those scam products that says it can give you six-pack abs just by strapping it and letting it stimulate your abdominal muscles while you relax. But WearCool doesn’t send electrical pulses towards your core, it sends blasts of cool air towards your upper body instead.

▼ Don’t worry, this is just a visually dramatic artist’s rendition. WearCool doesn’t actually shoot out beams of light and vapor.

The belt’s casing contains heat-absorbing PCM (phase-change material), and a series of fans whose airflow is funneled upward as they leave the belt’s vents. The device weighs 488 grams (1.1 pounds) and shoots air at up to 5 meters per second. That second statistic can be hard to visualize, so Gloture has provided a helpful GIF of the WearCool in action.

The device’s mobile app (with both Japanese and English interfaces) lets you control fan speed and toggle between using all the fans or only those in the front or back.

Gloture claims a maximum battery life of 17 hours with continual usage, so if you’re getting a healthy 7 hours of sleep a night (like Snorlax wants you to), it’s essentially an all-day option. And while the people modeling it are on the svelte side, the high-stretch flexile waistband can accommodate wearers with waists between 70 and 105 centimeters (27.6 to 41.3 inches).

WearCool just went on sale last Tuesday, and can be purchased through Gloture online shop, Modern G, here, where it’s priced at 32,500 yen (US$225). And if you’re looking to maximize the efficiency of your at-home air conditioner, we’ve got a few tips for that too.

Source: PR Times
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Modern G
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