kenleewrites in 日本

Winter is cold. Kairo keeps you warm. Eneloop powers kairo. Let’s kairo~u~!

This is the personal warmer put out by Sanyo (they were taken over by Panasonic recently). Although you are supposed to use it with their eneloop rechargeable batteries, I’m pretty sure any other rechargeable batteries in it will work just fine. Rechargeable batteries have been around for ages. I reckon Sanyo did a great job repackaging/rebranding it.

I bought it because I was curious about how it works and if it was any good. It could be cheaper. ¥5000 was expensive. ¥5000 gets you the model with replaceable batteries. There is another ¥3000 version that comes with a built-in battery. I read the cheaper version is only good for 300-500 charges. Decided against it since I had some eneloop batteries at home.

Well, it works. A near instant hot pocket for just about any cold occasion. A full charge gets you about 5 hours of heat on low and 4 hours on high. There’s also a turbo mode, which should result in a shorter lifespan.

There’s also the cheaper, traditional “analog” version. Just tear open the packet, shake it a little and it magically warms up. You can’t control the heat though. No 2 levels of heat, no turbo mode and no turning it off. What can expect for a few hundred yen.