UFO Sighting

That’s an “Unidentified Fan-cooled Object,” only it’s not unidentified anymore.

If Alien Gear’s intent with leaking word of their prototype fan-cooled holster before SHOT Show was to increase interest and foot traffic at their booth with people hoping to get a glimpse of the thing, they certainly succeeded. We made a point of venturing by with a camera just to see what was up for ourselves.

Based on their ShapeShifter holster architecture, the Cool Tuck has a backing piece that, at first glance looks like the one from their conventional hybrid tuckable in the ShapeShifter ecosystem, except this one is stretched slightly rearward between the tuckable belt hooks.

On that rearward extension is a small, irregularly-shaped black plastic housing a little smaller than an Altoids tin. The outward-facing side of the housing has the familiar alien noggin logo of the company and the edge features intakes that allow the tiny muffin fan inside to do its job.

The blocky shape to the left is the fan unit.

Said fan, of the sort more normally encountered cooling CPU chips rather than the sweaty backsides of CCW’ers, is powered by a USB-rechargeable battery.

The air pulled in through the side intakes on the housing is routed through toward the side facing the wearer, where it’s then forced into tiny ducts in the padded backer and out through the hundreds of perforations on the side of the backer facing the wearer.

USB jack and fan switch on top, intake ducts on the right.

We didn’t ask if we could…er, try out the display unit, but we confirmed that the air was being forced out the back by putting a hand up to look for air currents. There was, in fact, a quite noticeable breeze emitted from the back of the holster. The fan was quiet, at least on the show floor.

The top side of the fan housing has both a micro USB jack for recharging the unit as well as the speed control to toggle through the fan’s three speeds as well as “off.”

Judging from the nature of the switchology, it doesn’t seem likely that day to day jostling would cause unintended fan speed oscillation.

The holster as it stands is just a prototype, and no word is out yet whether it will become a production item.

But, as of now, we can confirm that the USB-rechargeable fan-cooled holster is actually a real thing.

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