Mirror, mirror, on the wall — who is the fairest one of all? According to MirroCool, it’s you.
If you’re looking for your own sycophantic magic mirror sidekick, then this new gadget currently funding itself on Kickstarter won’t quite tick all the boxes, but it will compliment you, show you the weather and let you take HD selfies when you wink.
The MirroCool uses its own facial and gesture recognition technology to achieve these tasks, running on “extremely thin hardware” hidden within 2cm of the frame. When turned on, a 5-inch HD display screen is visible in a portion of the mirror, when off it looks just like a normal mirror.
Through a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection, mirror-gazers can connect their smartphone to MirroCool using its app, enabling access to things like their calendar, social media updates, news, messages, stocks, weather or traffic — all of which can be controlled using winks, blinks and smiles.
You can also set a personal welcome — the modern day version of putting a ‘You’re a star!’ sticker on your mirror.
On top of these features, MirroCool notes that it will let you know if an intruder is looking in your mirror and send you an instant notification on the app –in case that sounds like a recipe for disaster with visitors, they can also be entered into the system as guests.
Using its camera capabilities, the smart mirror can also take pics and upload them to the MirroCool’s cloud — MirroCloud — or directly to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even Google+.
The device comes in either a beveled cut 60 x 80cm version with 5GB of cloud storage space or a framed 60 x 80cm version with 5GB of cloud storage space. The beveled version comes in at an early bird price of $179 CAD (regular $339), while the framed version has an early bird price of $269 CAD (regular $429).
Verdict: Not Sticky.
For those that spend a lot of time in front of the mirror and have the opportunity (and funds) to install it in their home, I think the MirroCool is a neat gadget.
But it’s just that, neat. There’s nothing very necessary about a smart mirror — at least not in our current technological state. Unless it connected with a web of other smart devices in my home, with the same AI following me room-to-room and engaging in an ongoing dialogue, then it just isn’t worth the price tag.
You’d have to hang out in your bathroom all day just to get proper use out of it, and on top of that, you’d be winking and smiling at yourself the whole time. I’d rather keep my expression to a resigned gloom, thank you very much.
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