Our Verdict
The Torras Coolify Cyber is a one-person wearable, wireless cooler that can blow cooled or warmed air around your neck, upper shoulders and lower head. It’s comfortable and does a good job when used inside, although we were less impressed with it during tests on a hot day outside.
Best Prices Today: Torras Coolify Cyber Neck Air Conditioner
$279
Not everyone has air conditioning at home or in the office, and nobody has it when outside. Unless you carry an old-fashioned paper fan or miniature motorized power fan, you’ll need to sit in front of a rooted-to-the-spot desk or room fan.
Even the best fans can’t rival a proper air-con system, but they are more affordable and flexible. But that flexibility usually depends very much on the flex—the power cable between the fan and the power socket.
The Torras Coolify Cyber Neck Air Conditioner is something different. It’s a wearable, wireless, portable neck fan that can blow cold or hot air through its three outlets at the back and sides.
As it simply loops round the back of your neck, your hands remain free and it shouldn’t encumber your movement in any way.
Cooling your neck is a fast way to reduce your body temperature, or at the very least start feeling less hot and bothered. The large blood vessels and nerves at the back of the neck have the closest connection to the brain.
Medics recommend applying cold water or ice to strategic points on the body where the veins are close to the surface—such as the wrists, neck, chest, and temples—to quickly lower the temperature of the blood running through these veins. The Coolify Cyber does this by blasting cooled and fanned air.
It’s a personal rather than environmental cooler. Slip it on at home when the room gets too hot, or as soon as you reach the office after a hot journey in the hope of drying that sweating back before anyone notices.
Design
If it looks heavy, it isn’t. The Coolify Cyber weighs just 17.5oz (495g). You soon forget its bulk, and it’s comfortable to wear during the day. It’s certainly not a device to keep you cool while sleeping as it would be too cumbersome, uncomfortable and noisy to wear lying down in bed.
Unlike most basic fans there are no blades, so long-haired users needn’t worry about getting their hair caught in the cooling collar.
It has the appearance of something from the movie Dune, and someone maybe unkindly described it to me as looking like a restraining collar from Planet Of The Apes. But it doesn’t make the wearer look stupid. The Dyson Zone it is not.
To risk a pun, you might even look quite cool packing this gadget. It’s like having a sci-fi pair of headphones slung around your neck, or a sci-fi travel neck cushion.
It has an adjustable fit to accommodate different neck sizes, and is available in two basic black and silver colors, although Torras calls them Cascade Black and Natural Titanium. Via Amazon there’s a special edition Stainless Steel version.
In fact, except for its giveaway noise, onlookers might not even notice you are wearing it—but when they do, everyone is excited to try it out.
It is certainly more socially acceptable than the Torras Waist Fan, which might not look so great on someone with a wider waistline.
How Coolify works and performs
The Coolify Cyber has dual exhaust vents—six blowing up and and two downwards. These airways form a convection system that Torras claims creates a “3D full-body cold air surround”. While wearing it I didn’t find my hands, legs or feet cooled by its gushing air, but it certainly produced a pleasant cooling effect to my neck and shoulders. After a while the device itself gets quite cold on the back of your neck, which furthers the cooling experience.
The neck cooler is powered by four aerodynamic motors spinning at 7,200 rotations per minute to create the flow around your upper shoulders. It does more than simply fan air around your neck like other wearable fans. It features a graphene cooling plate—an upgrade on the previous model’s ceramic cooling plate—at the back that quickly chills, and, according to Torras, can provide a temperature drop of 10 degrees Celsius with 366 cooling particles.
Coolify blows either cold or hot air at your neck, upper back, and, to an extent, around the back and sides of your head. The cooling zone is around 65 degrees F, which is around 18 degrees C.
There are three modes—Fan, Cool, and Heat Therapy—and multiple fan speeds, with adjustments from 0 to 100 via the app. An Auto mode adjusts based on ambient and body temperature, and there’s also a timer feature.
The airflow and temperature can be controlled from the device itself or via an uncomplicated, straightforward app.
On the device, short-press the power button to cycle through Low, Medium and High in Fan (green light) or Cool (blue). Long-press the power button to change to heat Mode (orange).
Using the app, you can control fan speeds with more accuracy than pushing the physical buttons and it’s easier to select the different fan zones.
Inside or out
Torras has lots of pictures of people wearing the Coolify out and about, hiking, gardening and going about their outside business. This may work in not-too-hot environments but in my experience the device worked best indoors.
Coolify could be your sweat-beating friend in a room without air-conditioning, whether that’s working from home, away from the office AC, or when returning from time spent in the outside heat. Gamers on a marathon session surrounded by their heat-producing equipment might find it increases their reaction times to keep cool in the heat of a virtual battle.
I road-tested the Coolify Cyber on a 20-minute walk at 92°F/33°C, and in these conditions I couldn’t feel much benefit even with the device turned to maximum fan cooling.
When I got back from the walk and was thankfully back inside, the Coolify was much better appreciated.
Sat in a warm outside bar watching the football, the neck fan gave some relief and lasted 90 minutes on a medium setting.
You can also set Coolify to blow non-cooled air or heated air when you want to warm up quickly. These work in the same way as the cooling. Turned to Heat, it works like an electronic heated scarf. I’m less comfortable with keeping something hot on my neck for a long time, but the increased temperature is noticeable.
Fan volume
Back to that noise… If you have all the vents turned to maximum, the Coolify sounds like a small hairdryer. It’s not at the level of a washroom hand dryer but it is certainly noticeable to people nearby. Whisper-quiet it is not, unless the whisperer is hard of hearing.
Neighboring passengers on a bus or train carriage might not appreciate the noise or the fact that you are feeling cooler than them. With it at full blast it’s also not too easy to hear people talking to you.
At lower levels the noise is not too bad, and acceptable to people sitting nearby.
Cool power
As you might imagine, all that blowing and heat generation takes its toll on battery life. Torras claims its 6000mAh battery can keep going for up to 15 hours, but that depends a lot on how hard you push it and in which modes. The 15 hour maximum is in Wind Mode at a low setting.
At full cooling mode, expect about two hours of operation. At maximum Heat, it should keep going for three hours. That’s probably as long as we’d want it cooling or heating our neck anyway.
It features 20W fast charging, and can be powered back up to full juice in about two hours.
The included right-angled USB-C charging cable means you can comfortably charge it while still wearing the device round your neck. If out and about, you could connect a power bank battery pack for extra hours of usage.
Price
The Torras Coolify Cyber costs $279 / £225, which is a notable investment in anyone’s book. Amazon also has a special Stainless Steel color version for $329.
You can buy cheaper electronic handheld fans but these, by definition, reduce your ability to do much else while fanning yourself. There are also cheaper—and more expensive—desk and room fans you might consider: check out our recommended best fans for a varied range of less-wearable cooling solutions.
The Coolify Cyber is quite different to those types of standard fan, so it’s maybe unfair to judge it by comparing prices.
Torras has cheaper neck fan options, such as its $150 / £120 Coolify Air. This has a slower motor (5000rpm vs the Cyber’s 7200rpm) and a smaller battery (5000mAh vs 6000mAh), which might be why the Air is 100g lighter than the Cyber. The Cyber’s easy app controls are not available on the Air, so you’ll get less pinpoint gradations of cooling power.
It comes with a luxe-looking protective case that includes a pocket to stash the right-angled USB-C charging cable
Verdict
The Torras Coolify Cyber is a one-person wearable, wireless neck fan that can blow cooled or warmed air around your neck, upper shoulders and lower head. It’s comfortable and does a good job when used inside—we were less impressed with it during tests on a hot day outside.
The cooling collar will quickly cool you down when you need it, and the graphene back plate feels great against a hot neck.
It’s more affordable than turning on the AC in your house if it’s just you that needs cooling down. Of itself, it’s not cheap, but if this device can keep you cool in uncomfortably hot situations you may well thank yourself for the initial outlay every time you slip it on and feel the cool relief blowing up and down your neck.
