Sony's heatwave-busting personal aircon surprised me, but that doesn't mean you should buy it
The Reon Pocket Pro Plus remains bizarro
Sony's lineup of Reon personal cooling devices is one of the most curious tech initiatives that I can remember seeing from any company of a decent size in recent years. After all, I'd just about get it if the Reon had had one or two versions, but it seems to get an annual update to bring new features and design touches, suggesting that someone at Sony really does value it.
Whether that's an executive with a personal mission, or whether it's because the cooling devices are selling way more than I might assume in a given year, I won't likely know anytime soon. Either way, though, when Sony offered to send me the latest version to try, the Reon Pocket Pro Plus, I jumped at the chance.
With London enduring a major heatwave recently, then a week in Taipei's sweltering heat for Computex, I've had plenty of chances to put it through its paces, and it's left me surprised by what I found. While the Reon Pocket Pro Plus definitely works, I didn't expect it to work in quite the way it does.
While everyone has called this "personal aircon" for years now, that's not the best label, in all truth. Rather than a simple fan system, Reon units use a cooling plate that you arrange (using a neck grip) so that it lies along the back of your neck and upper spine. Those vents that are there expel slightly hotter air after it's been run over that cooling plate to chill it.
So, you basically get a metallic plate that's nice and cold to cool your torso down through the patch of it that touches you, and that ends up feeling just about as weird as it sounds. You get a very cold patch on your upper back, and while the rest of you clearly isn't much colder, you nonetheless feel more comfortable overall. This system also means that the effects are comparitively gentle, even with a few years of progress behind them from Sony's side.
This isn't a device that'll instantly bring your body temperature down steeply in a minute, but it is one that can help you feel less hot when worn over a longer period of time. In fact, I found that it had one clear use case where it excelled – home working. I don't have many cooling options at home, in a top-floor flat with little ventilation, and it helped me feel more comfortable at my desk over some unbelievably hot days (up to 34C at times).
By contrast, when I wore it on a very sweaty walking excursion exploring some of Taipei in very similar temperatures but with far higher humidity, it felt far less useful, simply because of the bulk it added to my upper back, and the increased likelihood of it moving around and losing its contact with me for brief moments.
Sony might well know this already, frankly, because much of its marketing for the Reon lineup focuses on people in work attire and collared shirts. After all, keeping a consistent temperature that's lower than it otherwise would be is great for office work, but it's a lot more challenging when outside in varied conditions.
Aside from performance that I found fairly variable, though, there's still one big issue – the price. The Reon Pocket Pro Plus comes in at £200 here in the UK, and on the same trip to Taipei, I bought a handheld electric fan with USB-C charging for around £11. The latter was the device I ended up using far more, at about a twentieth of the price, and that's hard to argue against from Sony's corner.
Sure, if you're a home worker who lacks air conditioning and doesn't mind wearing something a little odd, a Reon could be in your budget if it's lofty, but I'm still pretty sure that a really fancy desktop fan, plus a portable one for when you're on the go, would be both more sensible and still more wallet-friendly than a Reon.
Perhaps with another few years of R&D developments, more progress will follow. With a climate that's only trending hotter, after all, demand for personal cooling solutions is surely going to boom in the next decade and more. Sony might have been a little early with the Reon, though, and even this flagship new version feels like it's a little too gimmicky to really be a mainstream success.
