This is the Sony Reon Pocket, a ~$170 smartphone operated personal air conditioner worn in a pocket in the back of a special $20 undershirt so it can make contact with your skin and cool your surrounding body up to 23-degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, and warm it up to 14-degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. Plus it may make some people think you’re a hunchback. Some more info about the thermodynamic Peltier Effect, which is how the device works, while I toss a few ice cubes down the back of my roommate’s shirt because he complained aobut being hot:

When an electric current is passed through a circuit of a thermocouple, heat is evolved at one junction and absorbed at the other junction. This is known as the Peltier Effect. The Peltier effect is the presence of heating or cooling at an electrified junction of two different conductors and is named after French physicist Jean Charles Athanase Peltier, who discovered it in 1834. When a current is made to flow through a junction between two conductors, A and B, heat may be generated or removed at the junction [in this case, resulting in a heating or cooling sensation].

I mean, cool, but is Sony actually selling personal air conditioners here or — OR — trying to break into the undershirt market? Because unless you wear the same shirt every day like I do, making sure you always have a clean personal air conditioning shirt could get expensive. Haha, I’m on to you, Sony — selling you one thing so you have to buy a bunch of OTHER things. That’s a classic, uh, marketing strategy? I don’t know, I slept a lot in class when I was getting my undergrad marketing degree. “Oh wow.” And, okay, my MBA too. “Jesus.” I’M A NIGHT OWL.

Keep going for a brief video.

Thanks to my dad, who agrees you don’t need a personal air conditioner if you’re a naturally cool dude.