Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/16/the-nordic-hygge-airchill-is-c.html
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The Nordic Hygge AirChill is cold, portable room-cooling power that won’t blow up your electric bill
I am confused now.
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Wait, what? Where does this “recycled” water come from? That’s not even a claim on the manufacturer’s site. Do I need to save grey water from my shower? Maybe empty the sweat from a Dune-style still suit into it? Or, perhaps, there is another BoingBoing Store product I need buy to get this recycled water? 
(Not really sure I’d want to use “recycled water” in a humidifer/evaporative cooler - kind of seems gross and unhygenic, the water cycle not withstanding.)
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Wow, get to the point. WTF are those first 2 1/2 rambling paragraphs for? We know what A/C is and we know we don’t like our power bill being high.
Ads are bad enough, but looonnnnnng ads are just painful. You’d think they’d want to keep them concise and to the point for their own sake, as well as ours.
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Gotta make 'em long enough to SEO well? 
Or maybe Fiverr copywriters get paid by the word?
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Hmm…
I can’t tell if the BoingBoing Store Evapolar EvaChill and Nordic Hygge AirChill are same, or if one is a knock off, or if they are both just up-marketed and up-priced cheap generic Chinese imports.
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Yes, you have to purchase 500 of them and then you’ll have to pay shipping, along with import duties.
Well, yes, those are wholesale prices, though the minimum quantity is actually 300 pieces. Note, though, that the BoingBoing Store “discount” price of $70 is still a rather steep markup from $12.
Where does the heat go?
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And with this one simple sentence you’ve exposed the bullshit.
It goes into changing the state of the water from liquid to gas, just as it does when sweat evaporates off your skin. However, once the air is saturated with moisture you can’t do that trick anymore when the air eventually heats up again from heat inside and outside the room. You have to draw in new hot, dry air from outside and pump the ■■■■■ air out. That means a little desktop cooler like this can’t really do that much because it doesn’t draw air from the outside and it couldn’t keep up with the heat if it did. Also it won’t work very well, if at all, if the hot air is already humid from the weather.
Edit:
Really BoingBoing? Really? I had no idea that BoingBoing auto-censors the name of the sidekick from Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along…
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An evaporative cooler cools air by evaporating water, which becomes humidity in the room. If you use an evaporative cooler for your personal chair and use regular air conditioning at the same time, you’re paying for the regular air conditioner to condense that humidity back out of the air. If you don’t use other air conditioning at the same time, and if you only need /a tiny amount/ of cooling right where you are, and you’re not already going, “It’s so sticky in here,” then fine.
In a hot dry climate, where evaporative cooling works best, it’s often done by a powerful unit --at least a 250-watt blower-- sucking in air from outside, forcing resulting cold air into the house (or the room, or the shop), and by leaving a window or door open on the farthest side of the interior space to let air out. And the place doesn’t become a damp swamp of mold.
In places like Fresno (very hot and very dry for months on end) you can run a big evaporative cooler on the roof or in a window all the time, for less than a dollar a day of electricity. At night the water pump is shut off but the blower is left on, curtains and more windows are opened and naturally cool dry night air blows through the house. In the daytime the water pump is turned back on, all the windows but one are closed and the curtains are closed, and the house stays deliciously cool with a nice breeze blowing through on even the hottest days. It’s a bit noisier but incredibly cheaper both to buy and use than compressor-type central air conditioning.The unit itself is simple and trouble-free (it’s just an air blower, a float valve and a tiny water pump). Many people prefer the way it feels living in a house where the air isn’t dry enough to crack your skin. And the air is fresh, from outside, all the time, not recycled.
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Sorry. The 3 looked like a 5 with my computer glasses. 
(I’m too lazy to click on the image.)
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Doesn’t really matter. 300 or 500 are both big numbers. I really shouldn’t have even brought the difference up.
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These products do not cool a room. At least not in New England anyway. Maybe in a desert region somewhere but not on the East Coast of the US.
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Speaking as a native Norwegian, there is no relation whatsoever between “hygge” and cooling. Quite the opposite, hygge is typically associated with being warm and cozy, and while we do get warm summers here too, that word is rarely if ever associated with cooling off.
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Yeah, evaporative coolers require a low-humidity environment to work effectively. On the east coast, where it’s typically muggy AF whenever you’d want to get cool, these will just be expensive little fans.
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Also, something that size is useless for anything but a broom closet. You’d want a unit that is window mounted to be effective, or if you are trying to cool, say, a garage or house, something larger like one of these.
I lived in a house with an evap cooler, and under the right circumstances, it worked quite well for the two or three months that those circumstances existed each year. The rest of the summer time I had to reply on the A/C unit. (which was really just a heat pump)
