Tired of waiting for your refrigerator to cool down drinks? Now you can pre-order Juno, a countertop appliance the size of a coffee maker that uses heat discharge technology to bring drinks to cold temperatures in minutes.
The instant fridge Juno is the brainchild of Matrix, the company behind the Power Watch, a smartwatch that doesn't need charging.
Edit: of course the company doesn't make happy choices at the naming level. It's a refrigerator from the future but it's named after a movie from the past with a stellar cast, and they made the product with the name of another movie (Reitman and Ellen Page, which I love). End of parenthesis, dear Peltier fridge.
Instead of capturing heat to harvest energy, the new appliance cools drinks using thermoelectric technology to quickly dissipate heat, even from inside the drink. An instant glass cooler? A wine blast chiller? Comme si comme ca.
How the Juno instant fridge works
Users open the Juno's lid and place a bottled or canned drink into the cooler, close the appliance, and press one of the two top buttons for their preferred cooling time. Stop. There is no display. A simple LED light strip switches from red to blue when the drink is cold.
What happens inside the fridge is very different: Juno knows how to cool drinks using the so-called “Peltier effect”. The compartment is sprayed with super-cold water and the drinks are rotated at high speed to bring the hottest molecules to the edge of the container and then out through the back of the device.
You can also simply pour the drink into a closed container and place it in the Juno. There is also a thermos-like container that is sold separately, built to fit the device. The space is large enough for a large bottle of champagne and high enough to fit three cans vertically, one on top of the other.
The thing that cools the most? Prices
Paradoxically, it is the amount needed to purchase Juno that is most frightening. Ok, instant cooler, more or less rapid. But maybe (just maybe) 300 euros is a bit much for a drinks cooler with a mini fridge. It is true that 200 bags are enough for pre-sale (with shipping date expected in the 3rd quarter of 2020). but even that figure is over-reported. For that price you won't convince me even if you call it a "wine blast chiller". If you give me that money, I'll blow directly on the drink for half an hour, even an hour if necessary.
Maybe it may be attractive to wine connoisseurs or caterers, but the truth is that Juno serves above all as a "proof of concept". A technology developed to then find application on a larger scale.
An enhanced version can quickly cool the containers for the transport of meat and perishable products. Or maybe hotels could get rid of the always-on mini-bar and use Juno only when needed, saving on energy costs.
Whatever its application, Juno shows how in the future we will manipulate the temperature of food and drinks at will, both for cold and heat. We did it already for another (and for the climate, unfortunately).
