There’s nothing worse than cold hands when you’re trying to type or play a game on the computer. The rest of your body may be feeling snug, but your exposed hands just don’t seem to want to warm up, causing your all-important keyboard performance to suffer.
Keen to devise a solution, Emil Frolund and Mads Sorensen — two students studying innovation and entrepreneurship in Denmark — created the Heatbuff heater that gently warms your hands without melting your keyboard. Which is kind of important.
The Kickstarter project has already received pledges worth more than double that of its $11,000 funding target, meaning early backers could be warming their digits in front of the heater this coming winter, when the first shipments are scheduled to go out.
As you can see from the images above, the Heatbuff, which requires a nearby power outlet, sits at the top of your keyboard and uses harmless infrared no-burn technology to gently heat up your hands. The device also lets you angle each of the two heaters, allowing you to point one of them toward your mouse if you happen to use it a lot during your PC sessions.
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Heatbuff’s creators, both keen gamers, said the idea for the device came to them last year when they realized that cold hands affected their skill level, with reaction times slower than usual.
“We started researching online and were blown away by the massive amounts of people who complained about this … and no one seemed to have a solution that people were fully happy with,” the pair said.
While developing the Heatbuff, Emil and Mads soon realized that the device could also come in useful for office and home-based workers, as well as those with conditions such as arthritis.
With three weeks to go, there’s still plenty of time to support the project. You can get yourself a Heatbuff with a pledge of about $70, offering a decent 28 percent saving on the final retail price. You can check out all the various deals on the project’s Kickstarter page here.