REVIEW – Summer is coming, and it’s going to get hot here in the south. I need a way to keep to our toy poodles from getting too roasty-toasty, and I’m hoping that this cooling pet mat from Rywell will help them out.
What is it?
The Rywell Arc-Chill pet cooling mat is a mat designed to keep dogs cool. The top of the mat is made from Arc-Chill nylon, and the bottom has a non-slip surface. It comes in four different sizes. Rywell’s motto is “only the best one for your pets,” and they sell exclusively on Amazon.
What’s in the box?
- Rywell Arc-Chill pet cooling mat
Specifications
- Sizes: small (24×18), medium (30×20), large (36×27), or extra-large (44×32 inches)
- Material: top is nylon, bottom is a mesh, filling is polyester
- Cooling: Arc-Chill
Design and features
The mat is a simple blanket-like cloth with a stitched blue-and-white pattern on top and a non-slip mesh on the bottom; it has a bright blue trim around the edge. It kind of looks like a small baby blanket.
Installation and setup
There’s really no installation required for the Rywell Arc-Chill pet cooling mat; simply pull it from the plastic bag, unfold it, then lay it down for the dogs to lie on.
Performance
There are two primary technologies in this mat: one makes it cool, and the other makes it change color. The coolness comes from a material that Rywell touts as “Arc-Chill natural cooling fabric from Japan.” The Arc-Chill website doesn’t have much information about this material, and there’s no technical explanation of how it works. It simply says, “New advanced performance Arc-Chill cooling fabric can wick humidity away from the skin, accelerate moisture evaporation, absorb excess body heat, reduces skin temperature by 2 to 4 °C and brings instant and continuous cooling to the fabrics you rely on.” When I put my hand on the mat, it certainly does feel cooler than other nearby materials, such as a carpet or a towel. This effect lasts for about a second, and then it warms up to match the temperature of my body. I assume that it is performing some sort of heat transfer where the heat of my body is pulled into the mat. The effect is very short-lived, so if I want to be cooled again, I have to move my hand to another part of the mat. Rywell warns me to keep the mat out of the sun, as direct UV rays will damage the material.
The mat is thermochromic, which means that the fabric on top changes color as it changes temperature. When it warms up, it turns white; when it cools down, it turns back to blue. Anyone remember mood rings from the 70’s? It’s the same technology. While this is mildly entertaining, it doesn’t actually do anything to help cool the dogs down; certainly, they don’t notice the change. To add injury to insult, the blue pattern faded to an off-white color after three weeks (see the picture above), rendering this feature useless.
For the last few weeks, I conducted two sets of tests, one outside and one inside. For the outside, I placed the mat on our covered back porch, sometimes on the couch and sometimes on the floor. When the dogs came back to the porch after running around in the backyard, I kept tallying where the dogs preferred to recline, whether on the mat, the couch cushions, the rug on the deck, or a cotton bath towel from IKEA. The dogs often choose to lay down on Rywell’s mat, but they just as often chose to lay down somewhere else. For the inside, I placed the mat at various places in our kitchen and living room, which are near the back door, and again kept track of where they lay down. The results were very similar. Our poodles like the cooling mat, and they often choose to relax on it, but they don’t seem to like it more than anywhere else.
Rywell’s pet mat can be washed in the washing machine, which is convenient, but it should be hand-dried.
What I like
- Comes in many sizes
- Is cool to the touch
What I’d change
- Provide a technical explanation of how the mat works
- Drop the thermochromic feature
Final thoughts
The Rywell Cooling Thermochromic Fabric Pet Mat is a mat that’s intended to help dogs keep cool during the summer months. It is cool to the touch and changes color when warmed. Despite the, ahem, coolness of this gadget and the fact that my toy poodles often laid down on it, they did not prefer it over other options, even after running around in our back yard during the summer.
Price: $21.99 and up depending on size
Where to buy: Amazon (5% off coupon code: Z3BXRCTG expires: 2023-12-31)
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Rywell.
