The Juno beverage chiller from Matrix Industries uses thermoelectric cooling to chill a bottle of ... [+]
If you're into wine, chances are someone's probably gifted you a wine chiller at some point. Typically, it resembles a small electric bucket that chills a bottle at the touch of a button. Or so it's supposed to: Almost all chillers are noisy, useless junk, typically taking at least half an hour to cool off a single bottle.
You're better off just using a freezer. But then of course you'll need to remember to take out the bottle in time before the wine inside freezes, which would be a disaster (for the wine and your freezer).
Chilling beverages quickly — without freezing them — is such a widespread, universal need that you'd think technology would have found a solution by now. Well, it has: Matrix Industries, a Menlo Park-based startup founded by two chemists from Caltech, just unveiled at CES 2020 what might be the Holy Grail of consumer refrigeration: a tabletop device that can cool a drink to just above freezing in less than two minutes, and a bottle of wine in less than five.
"We asked ourselves, 'What are the pain points we're solving for the average consumer?'" says Meng He, VP of product for Matrix Industries. "We thought about cooling on demand. Not just fast, but also give users the option to decide how cold do I want my berage to be?"
The Juno beverage chiller has room for a bottle of wine or two regular soda cans.
The device is called the Juno, I got a chance to check it out at a demo in New York City before the show. The prototype (not shown here) was a bulky device, reminding me of an old tabletop stereo system without the speakers. A circular hatch up top was just big enough to hold a room-temperature can of Diet Coke. After slipping one in and programming the target temp, a Matrix executive pulled out a very chilly can two minutes later. My taste test found nothing amiss — it was cold soda, in record time.
Luckily, the bulky design is just a symptom of the prototype; the planned consumer product, which Matrix plans to launch in Q3 of 2020, has a much smaller footprint. I saw a nonworking version of that at the demo: The black beverage holder is just tall and wide enough to hold an entire bottle of wine, and the silver perforated cooling unit hangs onto the back, making it look like the chiller is being devoured by a Mac Pro.
The back of the Juno chiller houses the thermoelectric cooling unit.
The most striking part about the design is the vertical LED on the front, which functions as on/off light, status indicator, and progress bar. Not only does it look cool, but it underscores the sheer simplicity of the Juno: It's not meant to be traditionally "smart" — there's no accompanying app. That LED and a trio of buttons beside it are everything, and once you've calibrated it to the right temperature for the right drinks (still TBD on exactly how that will work), it chills with just a touch.
"It's like a toaster, right?" says Douglas Tham, co-founder and CTO of Matrix Industries. "We purposely did this without an app, without the smarts of an IoT device because we wanted it to be accessible and easily usable for any user to step up and start experiencing the product."
Although Matrix is unveiling the Juno at CES, it's kicking off the product's life on Indiegogo. The final product's planned retail price is $299, but you can get it for $199 as an early bird if you donate to the campaign. Of course, that goes hand-in-hand with the risks of supporting an unreleased product so far out: The product might not ship on time, and even if it does, it could be significantly different.
While the Juno seems destined for kitchen islands everywhere, Matrix has its sights set on all kinds of industries, including vending machines and hospitality. A whole lot of hotel mini fridges could theoretically be replaced by room-temperature cans and a Juno, and vending machines could ditch their expensive refrigeration units. Even some refrigerator trucks may no longer be necessary if there’s a Juno (or the commercial equivalent) waiting at the destination.
Which leads to Matrix's green side benefit: Its cooling tech is thermoelectric and doesn't use traditional refrigerants like Freon, which means there's no rise of dangerous chemicals leaking into the environment. But more importantly, since it works so quickly, the Juno means beverages don't have to be continuously cooled, freeing up room in fridges and potentially getting rid of some altogether.
That's nice to think about, but personally I'm more thrilled by the idea of not having to wait an hour for cooled Chardonnay on the hottest day of the year.
