Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy.

Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy.

The Cooler Air Conditioner

We know it might sound crazy, but one day, not too long from now, it will be warm. After the warmth, it will be hot. And though there are many ways of mitigating heat without air conditioning, in the dead of summer, swelter can make even the most stoic among us turn to artificial coolers. Given that they suck up a ton of electricity and are filled with nasty coolants, it would make sense to have the smartest air conditioner you can buy. That’s idea behind Aros, a new window air conditioner designed by crowd-funding/sourcing/design company Quirky and GE.

Beyond its good looks, what make the Aros unique is that it’s hooked up to the internet and can be controlled on your phone via an iOS or Android app. The app gives your phone full remote control of the AC and you can easily set timers for various times of the day for set schedules. It also hooks up with your GPS to switch off when it detects you’re away from your AC (we’re not sure how this would work should someone stay at home who is not hooked up to the AC’s app).

aros-phone

Aros allows you to monitor energy use and expense based on your local rates. You can even set a budget for energy use and shows a chart with your daily and monthly energy use and expenditures.

The Aros is only available in 8,000 BTU version, which is suitable for rooms up to 350 sq ft. You can preorder on Amazon for $300, which is about $100 more than a comparable conventional AC. Delivery is set for May.

A good deal of “smart home” technology strikes us as needlessly complicated, adding moving parts and a superfluous degree of connectivity to otherwise straightforward household functions. Having connection to an energy-thirsty, high-variability-usage appliance like an AC, on the other hand, makes a ton of sense. It sorta makes sense that smart tech is best applied to things that are used most often used dumbly.