Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/02/this-personal-smart-air-condi.html
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It has a cool blue light.
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They claim that it cools by evaporation, but unless it is hosing you down, the only thing water should be evaporating from is the humidifier itself. Seriously, if you just needed humidity to be cool in the summer, DC would positively refreshing in August.
Seems scammy, like Juicero but a humidifier and with Alexa.
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“It’s fully compatible with virtual assistants like Google Home and Amazon Alexa […]”
Hard pass.
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THese are referred to as “swamp coolers” They work great in DRY climates like the Southwest, but they are absolutely useless in humid areas like the East Coast and Southeast. And if you use it in an already air-conditioned room, you just add humidity back that the HVAC has to take out.
Still, if you can create a ‘cool spot’ and use that to keep the HVAC a few degrees higher in a larger room, there’s some small energy savings. Just don’t leave your desk.
But not worth $200. Just buy a $15 USB fan.
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Even during the humid month in Tucson, the swamp cooler was a great cooling system there. But, as @Steve_Drevik points out, it only works in a generally dry climate.
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This is not an air conditioner and BB should be ashamed for posting false advertisement.
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Seems like a bunch of plastic crap manufactured under exploitative labor conditions that will mostly end up in a landfill, with some floating in the Pacific, and an increasing portion of its ever more micronized plastic apportioned to accumulation in living creatures, including humans.
Good morning!
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Check out evaporative fans on Amazon or AliExpress. $20-$40 will get you one. Though you’ll have to learn to live without the coolness factor of Alexa integration, I guess…
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So…it’s a swamp cooler for Yupies. :-/
Swamp coolers are useless enough, but a mini-version? Even in ideal circumstances you aren’t going to cool an entire room with this mini-evaporative cooler. A full sized indoor version in a dry climate will only cool air a few degrees. But extra marketing points for trying to claim making the air in a hot room humid as a feature rather than a bug.
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God knows that here in the Midwest I spend each summer going “Great, but what if it could be more humid?”
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oh come on, this is utter BS
12 watts, a boxfan uses more than 12 watts, this does nothing
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Are you, by any chance, disappointed ?
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I bet my coworkers will love this in my open office plan workspace if I put one on my desk.
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sounds like a swamp cooler. They’ve been available for quite a while.
As the department of energy says "In low-humidity areas, evaporating water into the air provides a natural and energy-efficient means of cooling. Evaporative coolers, also called swamp coolers, rely on this principle, cooling outdoor air by passing it over water-saturated pads, causing the water to evaporate into it. The 15°- to 40°F-cooler air is then directed into the home, and pushes warmer air out through windows.
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or build your own swamp cooler https://www.theplayalabs.com/swamp-cooler
btw, Figjam is the legendary inventory of the playa swamp cooler. His playa name (nickname) Figjam is an acronym for “F**k I’m good, just ask me”
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That description you quote is for a whole system, not a free-standing, unvented indoor unit.
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PT Barnum must be laughing his ass off.
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AND most importantly it is only transferring the heat, from the air to the water.
if that water stays in the same room as the air, it doesn’t really work, the heat has to leave the area being cooled or the area isn’t being cooled at all.
there is a very good reason legitimate versions of evaporative cooling designs are on roofs or in windows, or on the sides of buildings, so you can create a temperature differential using the different sides of the barrier/wall/roof, aka use energy to cool one side by moving/transferring the heat to the other side. this doesn’t do that so it doesn’t cool, but it does produce some heat, lol. personally, i feel cooler in dry heat than in humid heat, last thing i’d want is to add heat and humidity when i’m trying to cool.
sweating cools you because it can move the heat from inside your body to outside your body as the evaporation happens on the barrier of the skin. they missed the most important part of how these systems work, they cool via heat transfer across a barrier.
also, this is so small and looking how much power it uses, it is guaranteed to be useless even if it were designed, built, and hooked up properly. a small piezo “aromatherapy” diffuser creates the same amount of ambient humidity and likely generates less heat and uses less energy, just don’t add the oil.
you’d get better version of the same style “cooling effect” from a cold damp cloth draped over a fan.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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