What You Need Is A Smartphone-Controlled Air Conditioner

We’ve already introduced you to the smartphone-enabled piggy bank and smartphone-enabled egg tray. What new wonders will the wizards of gadgetry bring us next? How would you like to control your air conditioner from your smartphone? Wait a minute…that one might actually be useful.

Wink is the app that makes complete nonsense smarthome products like the aforementioned egg tray work. GE, the company behind the air conditioner itself, claims that the appliance will work with other smarthome systems, and not just small novelty items.

This first product, the Aros, is more expensive than your average room-sized air conditioner, costing about $300. That’s because its smart features will supposedly help you save electricity, analyzing your schedule and power usage to draw up an ideal temperature pattern for itself, and to predict its own future usage and how much owning it will cost you. This could be useful or fill you with dread depending on where you live and what the long-term weather patterns are.

It’s like a single-room smart thermostat that stalks you, cooling down rooms before you get home and wrapping you in its cool digital embrace.

Anyway, the Quirky/GE Aros is a real thing, and you can pre-order it from Amazon if that kind of thing interests you.

Aros Window Air Conditioner Can Be Controlled by Your Smartphone [Wall Street Journal]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist