The Apple ecosystem runs deep, but the devices themselves only go so far. The iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad are remarkable pieces of hardware on their own, and yet a small category of accessories has figured out exactly what each one is missing. Not cases that just protect or cables that just charge, but objects that change the way a device feels, sounds, looks, or works from the moment you pick it up.

These five accessories do exactly that. They come from different corners of the Apple world, covering the watch, the phone, the iPad, and the kind of audio experience Apple never built its own hardware around. Each one earns its place not because it carries a name worth recognizing, but because it solves a specific frustration that was always there waiting to be noticed. Here are the ones worth knowing about right now.

1. NightWatch

Most Apple Watch docks are functional and forgettable, a plastic puck with a magnetic charger and no ambition beyond getting your watch off your wrist for the night. The NightWatch is not that. It is a clear glass orb, roughly the size of a generous paperweight, that you set your Apple Watch inside at night. The result transforms the watch’s nightstand charging face into a magnified, glowing clock that is genuinely easier to read from across a dark room than the device alone would ever allow.

The dock works by treating the Apple Watch display as a light source and the glass sphere as a lens, drawing the time out of a small wrist-bound rectangle and spreading it into a real visual presence on the nightstand. It also includes a built-in audio amplifier that boosts the sound of your alarm, so quiet mornings stay that way until you actually need them not to be. At $69.99, it is priced more like a considered object than a cable management solution, which is exactly the spirit it deserves to be received in.

What we like

• The magnification effect turns the Apple Watch display into a legitimate bedside clock without additional screens, apps, or setup
• The built-in audio amplifier addresses the one genuine weakness of relying on Apple Watch nightstand mode as a morning alarm

What we dislike

• The orb form factor is visually dominant enough that it will not suit minimalist nightstands where a small footprint matters
• At $69.99, it costs more than several competing dock designs that handle charging equally well without the visual statement

2. Rock Paper Pencil 4.0

The Apple Pencil is a precision instrument that has never quite figured out how to feel like one. The glass surface beneath it is smooth and frictionless, and while that works fine for certain tasks, illustrators and note-takers spending hours drawing have always wanted something closer to real paper. Astropad’s Rock Paper Pencil addresses that gap directly: a removable, reusable nano-texture screen protector paired with custom Apple Pencil tips, and version 4.0 makes the system meaningfully better than it has ever been.

The upgrade introduces a new graphite POM tip alongside the existing steel ballpoint option, and the difference is immediately legible. The graphite tip mimics the toothy drag of a 2B pencil, a sensation that makes expressive sketching and shading feel deliberate and controlled rather than slippery and approximate. Each kit now ships with four tips in total, two graphite and two ballpoint, alongside a screen cleaning kit that should have been included from the beginning. The protector attaches via NanoCling static cling rather than adhesive, meaning it lifts off without residue and goes back on without a bubble.

What we like

• The NanoCling system is genuinely removable and reusable, giving iPad owners a paper-feel surface on demand without permanently altering the display
• Having both graphite and ballpoint tips in a single kit covers two distinct working styles without requiring a separate accessory purchase

What we dislike

• The graphite tip wears down noticeably faster than the ballpoint option, which will matter to anyone putting in long, intensive drawing sessions regularly
• The friction that makes sketching feel natural also makes smooth, fast swiping across the screen feel slightly resistant during ordinary everyday use

3. Battery-Free Amplifying iSpeakers

Every speaker you own asks something of you before it makes a sound. The Bluetooth speaker needs charging, and the charging case needs its own cable. The smart speaker needs a wall outlet, a WiFi password, and a company’s servers to stay online on a random Tuesday. The Battery-Free Amplifying iSpeakers, designed by Ooi Masato of Pit-A-Pat for Shimawa and made in Japan, need none of it. They need your iPhone and the physics of a sound wave moving through precision-machined metal, and that is the complete brief.

The design is straightforward: a Duralumin metal body with a slot for the phone and golden-ratio speaker apertures that channel and amplify sound through acoustic resonance, the same principle that powered phonographs before electricity reached most homes. There is no pairing, no app, no battery level to check. You set your phone in the slot, and your music gets louder and fuller, immediately.

Click Here to Buy Now: $179.00

What we like

• Zero setup and zero charging requirements make it the simplest speaker in any room, with no ritual standing between you and better sound
• The precision-machined Duralumin construction means there is nothing to break, replace, update, or charge, ever

What we dislike

• At $179, it competes on price with capable Bluetooth speakers that offer far more volume, range, and flexibility for larger spaces or outdoor use
• The phone slot is sized for specific handsets, so case thickness and phone dimensions will determine how well it actually cradles your device

4. Nomad Leather Folio

Phone cases tend to fall into two camps: those that protect the device and those that try to say something. Nomad’s Leather Folio attempts something harder: a single object that does both without looking like it is trying to do either. Crafted from Horween leather inside and out, with MagSafe compatibility and RFID blocking built in, it folds over the front of the iPhone Duo and turns what is already an expensive device into a combination that reads less like a phone and more like something a person who still carries a leather notebook would reach for without thinking twice.

Priced at $129, it is not a cheap case, but it is not pretending to be. The leather cover closes over the screen, which is either a feature or a nuisance depending entirely on how you use your phone, though for anyone who already drops it face-down out of habit, the protection is real and the payoff is legitimate. MagSafe integration means the phone charges normally through the case, and the RFID blocking handles the handful of situations where that actually matters. The overall effect is a device that feels deliberately considered in a way most cases never manage to pull off.

What we like

• Horween leather develops a patina with use rather than aging badly, which gives the case a genuinely long useful life most materials cannot match
• MagSafe compatibility and RFID blocking are both included without any visible hardware bulk or added thickness to the profile

What we dislike

• The full front flap adds a step to every screen interaction that will feel like friction until the habit settles, and that adjustment can take longer than expected
• At $129, it sits in an awkward price band between affordable everyday cases and truly premium leather goods, which makes the value case harder to land cleanly

5. RePod C1

The click wheel was never just an interface. It was a tactile experience that gave early iPods a sense of ceremony that touchscreens have never quite replaced, a physical scroll mechanism that made navigating a playlist feel like it was worth doing slowly. Techpod’s RePod C1 is a $60 Apple Watch case that wraps the watch in an iPod-style shell and brings that wheel back, and what keeps it from being a novelty is one mechanical detail: the click wheel connects directly to the Apple Watch’s Digital Crown, so turning it actually does something real.

The case uses an open-back design that leaves all of the watch’s sensors fully accessible, meaning heart rate monitoring, ECG, and Apple Pay all continue to work normally. Antenna cutouts preserve Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular connectivity without compromise. The more interesting side effect is what it does to the device’s identity: sliding the watch into a pocket during a run or a commute and navigating with the Crown from inside the shell turns the Apple Watch into something that feels far more like a small, deliberate music player than a wrist-worn notification machine.

What we like

• The mechanical connection between the click wheel and the Digital Crown makes the nostalgia functional rather than cosmetic, which is a meaningful distinction
• The open-back design keeps every sensor and connectivity feature fully intact, so nothing about the watch’s capabilities changes when the case goes on

What we dislike

• Adding any case to the Apple Watch introduces bulk to a device whose appeal partly depends on being thin and unobtrusive on the wrist
• The iPod aesthetic lands clearly for one generation and reads as entirely opaque to anyone who came to Apple after the click wheel era ended

The Best Accessories Are the Ones Apple Didn’t Think to Make

Apple’s hardware is precise enough that the accessories worth paying attention to are the ones that noticed a gap the company chose not to fill. The NightWatch saw a dim nightstand clock. Astropad saw a frictionless drawing surface. Ooi Masato saw a speaker that required too much setup before it made a sound. Nomad saw a phone that could carry itself differently. Techpod saw a scroll mechanism nobody had brought back with anything real underneath it.

None of these are essential in the way a charging cable is essential. They are optional in the best sense, the kind of thing that makes a device feel more considered in the hands of whoever chose it. Whether your Apple device is a watch, a phone, or an iPad, something on this list has already figured out what was missing before you had the words for it.

The post The 5 Best Apple Accessories Of September 2026 That Actually Improve How You Use Your Devices first appeared on Yanko Design.

Samsung has had the folding phone conversation to itself for six years now, tweaking hinges, shrinking creases, and figuring out what a cover screen is even for. Apple waited, watched, and let its rival make every mistake first. That patience shows in the iPhone Duo, a first-generation foldable that skipped straight past problems Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8 still hasn’t fully solved.

None of that comes cheap, though. The Duo starts at $1,999 and costs more than the Fold8’s $1,899.99, weighs in at roughly nine ounces against the Fold8’s seven, and folds up thicker in your pocket, besides. Samsung still wins those arguments outright, and we’ll get back to that later. But set weight and price aside, because here are five places where Apple’s first foldable actually beat Samsung’s eighth attempt.

Designer: Apple

The Camera That Disappears

A foldable phone’s whole pitch is the screen, one continuous surface that opens up into something closer to a small tablet. Every notch or punch-hole cut into that surface breaks the illusion a little, reminding you that the software is still working around a sensor buried in the glass. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8 has never quite escaped that compromise, even eight generations in.

The Galaxy Z Fold8 carries a 10-megapixel camera punched into both the inner and cover displays, a hole you notice every time the screen lights up. The Duo takes a different route entirely, tucking its inner selfie camera under the panel itself so nothing interrupts the display when you’re watching a movie or scrolling through photos with both halves open. The outer screen keeps a single, smaller cutout.

A Stylus Samsung Gave Up On

Samsung built its whole Note legacy around the S Pen, then carried that stylus into the first few generations of the Galaxy Z Fold before quietly dropping it this cycle. Neither the Galaxy Z Fold8 nor the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra bring it back, leaving a gap for anyone who used to sketch, sign, or jot notes onto that big inner display. It’s a strange retreat for a company built on that exact feature.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6

Apple Pencil support changes that, working on both the 5.4-inch cover screen and the 7.6-inch inner display, once it arrives. Dual-screen support lands through a software update later this year rather than at launch, so early buyers will have to wait a bit for the full experience. Still, it means signing a document or sketching an idea won’t require unfolding the phone first, something Samsung’s lineup can no longer offer.

Built to Survive the Mess

Dust is the part of durability testing everyone forgets about until it’s too late, and a folding hinge is the worst possible place for grit to sneak into. Water resistance ratings get all the marketing attention, but the dust half of an IP rating tells you whether sand at the beach or fine construction dust will actually make it past the seals and start scratching at the mechanism underneath.

The iPhone Duo carries an IP68 rating, meaning the seal is dust-tight; nothing gets through, full stop. The Galaxy Z Fold8 only manages IP48, which covers water fine but leaves that dust digit low enough that fine particles, sand, and powder aren’t actually kept out. For anyone who takes their foldable to a beach, a workshop, or just a dusty backpack, that gap matters more than it looks.

Room for Everything You Shoot

A foldable’s bigger inner screen practically begs you to shoot more video and drag around heavier files, whether that’s 4K footage, a stack of RAW photos, or a library of apps you’d never bother installing on a regular phone. Storage stops being an afterthought pretty quickly once you’re using the extra screen real estate the way it’s meant to be used, for actual creative work instead of just bigger icons.

Apple tops out the iPhone Duo at 2TB of storage, double what the Galaxy Z Fold8 offers at its 1TB ceiling. That’s the difference between planning around your camera roll on a long trip and simply forgetting storage exists as a problem. For anyone who treats their foldable as a mobile production tool rather than a bigger email client, that extra headroom ends up mattering more than the megapixel count.

Fighting the Fold’s Oldest Flaw

The crease down the middle of a folding screen has been the one problem no manufacturer has fully cracked, Samsung included, no matter how many generations they’ve shipped. Apple’s approach to the Duo’s hinge stacks a nano-texture matte layer over glide-adhesive glass and backs the whole assembly with a titanium plate, an engineering answer to a problem that’s mostly been treated as unavoidable elsewhere in the industry.

Early impressions from outlets with briefing access suggest the crease is still visible. Nobody’s claiming otherwise, but it doesn’t catch your finger or your attention the way it does on most rivals, the Galaxy Z Fold8 included. That’s worth flagging as an early read rather than a verified result, since neither phone has landed in reviewers’ hands yet. Outdoor glare handling gets similar praise, though the real test comes once these ship.

What Samsung Still Gets Right

None of this makes the Galaxy Z Fold8 a bad phone, and Samsung still wins the arguments that matter most to plenty of buyers. It’s $99.01 cheaper, noticeably lighter at roughly seven ounces against the Duo’s nine, and thinner whether it’s folded shut in your pocket or opened flat on a desk. Those are real, measurable advantages, not consolation prizes.

Apple iPhone Duo

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8

What you’re really choosing between is a phone that’s been refined for eight generations and one making its very first attempt, price and weight included. A first try that already beats its rival on a camera, a stylus, a durability rating, storage, and a hinge design is a strong opening argument, whatever it costs to get there. Samsung’s turn to respond comes next year.

The post 5 Things the iPhone Duo Got Right That Samsung Still Hasn’t first appeared on Yanko Design.

Smartphones turned music into just another notification competing for attention, a song interrupted by a text, an album broken up by a calendar alert. RHYTHM exists to undo that arrangement entirely, building a dedicated listening device from real audio components instead of borrowing a phone’s guts and bolting on a headphone jack. It’s a from-scratch digital audio player designed around one job: playing music properly, without a screen demanding anything else from you.

That commitment starts with what’s actually driving the sound. Rather than leaning on an all-in-one audio codec chip the way most budget players do, RHYTHM routes music through a genuine ESS SABRE DAC, the same category of chip found in dedicated hi-fi gear, paired with a discrete amplifier stage rather than a shortcut solution. An ESP32-S3 handles the file parsing and processing, but the actual sound reproduction runs through hardware built specifically for that job alone.

Designer: Mithilesh Gupta Konda

The headphone output makes the clearest case for why any of this matters. Instead of splitting one internal signal across a single jack, RHYTHM runs two completely independent, actively buffered 3.5mm outputs, each driven by its own dedicated amplifier chip. Two people can plug in two entirely different pairs of headphones, and each gets a full, uncompromised signal, no shared circuit quietly degrading whichever connection came second.

Keeping that signal clean required rethinking the power supply as much as the audio path. RHYTHM physically separates its digital logic and high-frequency switching lines from the analog circuitry that actually shapes the sound, regulating each side through its own dedicated, ultra-low-noise power regulator. It’s an unglamorous decision that never shows up in a spec sheet screenshot, but it’s exactly the kind of choice that determines whether quiet passages in a recording stay quiet.

Physical control gets the same attention. A precision mechanical rotary encoder handles navigation alongside a set of tactile buttons, giving the whole interface a hands-on quality that a touchscreen simply can’t replicate. Paired with a compact 2-inch color display, the device reads less like a shrunken phone and more like a purpose-built instrument, something meant to be operated by feel in a pocket or a bag without needing to look at it.

A microSD slot rounds out the practical side, storing lossless files locally rather than depending on a streaming connection or app ecosystem. That local-first approach extends the project’s entire philosophy: RHYTHM isn’t trying to replace a phone’s convenience. Instead, it’s opting out of that convenience on purpose, trading constant connectivity for a listening experience built around a single, uninterrupted task.

The post RHYTHM Is the Walkman the Smartphone Era Forgot to Build first appeared on Yanko Design.

Vinyl has returned to the cultural spotlight, but its comeback is about much more than nostalgia. A new generation is discovering records as objects of design, ritual, and personal expression. For Gen Z, vinyl offers something increasingly rare in a digital-first world: a physical relationship with music. Choosing an album, holding the sleeve, placing the record on a turntable, and listening from beginning to end creates a slower, more intentional experience.

The renewed interest in vinyl is also influencing interiors and product design. Record players are becoming sculptural objects, album covers are being displayed like artwork, and dedicated listening corners are finding their place inside contemporary homes. Here is how Gen Z is giving an old format a new visual language, transforming the record experience into a lifestyle statement.

1. Vinyl Becomes A Lifestyle

Vinyl has moved beyond the traditional collector’s shelf to become part of a broader lifestyle centered around music, design, and self-expression. Gen Z is attracted to records because they provide something that streaming cannot: a tangible connection to an artist and an album. The large-format sleeve, physical record, and carefully designed packaging create an experience that feels more substantial than tapping a song on a phone.

This shift has also made vinyl increasingly relevant to interiors. Records can sit on open shelving, lean against walls, or become part of carefully arranged listening corners. Collections communicate personality through color, artwork, typography, and genre. Instead of simply storing music, younger listeners are using their collections to shape the atmosphere and identity of their spaces.

The Ripple Turntable transforms sound into a visual language, drawing inspiration from the way audio waves radiate outward from a single source. Its pristine white surface features sculpted ripples that appear to emanate from the center of the platter and the base of the tonearm, intersecting across the surface to create a striking sense of movement. The effect turns an otherwise functional audio device into an expressive sculptural object, giving the act of playing music a distinctly visual dimension.

A sleek gold tonearm introduces a subtle accent against the all-white body, while the black vinyl record provides a strong visual contrast. Its minimalist yet playful character makes it particularly suited to Scandinavian and Japanese-inspired interiors, where sculptural simplicity and thoughtful detailing take center stage.

2. The Ritual Of Listening

Streaming has made listening almost effortless, allowing users to access millions of songs instantly. Vinyl introduces a different rhythm. The listener has to select an album, remove the record from its sleeve, place it carefully on the turntable, and lower the needle. These small actions create a physical ritual that encourages greater attention.

That ritual is particularly relevant to a generation accustomed to constant notifications and rapidly changing digital content. Listening to a record can create a moment of pause, where the album becomes the focus rather than background noise. Turning the record over halfway through also introduces a natural break, making music feel like an activity rather than an endless stream of content.

Oscar Olsson’s TT-90 System reimagines the traditional turntable by combining analog listening with contemporary digital functionality. Flipping the record player 90 degrees, the concept mounts the vinyl vertically on the wall, creating the illusion of a record floating in space as it spins beneath the needle. The unconventional format also addresses a common limitation of traditional turntables: their bulky footprint. Instead of occupying valuable furniture space, the TT-90 becomes part of the wall, transforming an everyday audio device into a striking piece of interior design. Available in black, orange, and white, its streamlined silhouette gives the familiar record player a distinctly futuristic character.

Beyond its space-saving approach, the TT-90 System introduces smartphone connectivity, allowing listeners to control playback digitally alongside onboard controls. Rubber components help reduce vibration against the wall, while a threaded knob secures the record during vertical playback. The result is a playful fusion of physical music culture, modern technology, and sculptural design.

3. Record Players Become Design

The turntable is experiencing its own design revival. Contemporary models are increasingly being designed to look at home alongside modern furniture rather than being treated purely as technical equipment. Minimal controls, warm materials, compact forms, transparent components, and sculptural bases are giving turntables a more furniture-like presence.

For Gen Z, this visual quality matters because technology is increasingly expected to contribute to a home’s aesthetic. A record player can become the centerpiece of a listening corner, positioned alongside books, plants, speakers, and carefully selected objects. The result is a more integrated approach to audio design, where performance and appearance work together instead of technology disappearing into a cabinet.

The Symphony headphones by Przemysław Wolnicki explore an intriguing meeting point between vinyl culture and contemporary personal audio. Instead of simply recreating the look of a record player, the concept translates its tactile interaction into a headphone interface. Each earcup features a miniature vinyl-inspired control surface that functions like a tiny turntable. Rotating the record allows listeners to seek forward or rewind, while the stylus controls track selection and playback. The interaction gives digital listening a physical dimension, creating a playful connection between nostalgic analog rituals and modern wireless audio.

Visually, the Symphony headphones take a distinctly premium approach. Brushed stainless steel gives the concept an audiophile-inspired character, while elongated structural elements add a futuristic, almost automotive quality to the earcups. Transparent sections introduce another layer of visual intrigue, allowing parts of the mechanism to remain visible.

4. Album Art Enters Interiors

Vinyl’s physical scale gives album artwork a presence that digital platforms cannot easily reproduce. A record sleeve can be picked up, examined, framed, displayed, or arranged as part of a larger collection. Its typography, photography, illustration, and color palette can influence the character of an entire room.

Gen Z’s interest in personalized interiors has made this particularly relevant. Rather than following perfectly coordinated design schemes, younger homeowners and renters often use meaningful objects to create spaces that feel individual. A stack of favorite records or a carefully arranged shelf can reveal musical taste while adding visual interest. Music therefore becomes part of interior storytelling, with album artwork functioning almost like a rotating gallery.

Building a vinyl collection comes with an important challenge: keeping records in excellent condition. Unlike digital music, physical records require careful storage and handling, with warping being one of the most common problems. Exposure to heat, pressure, or improper storage can distort a record’s shape, potentially causing skips, pops, and uneven playback. Pro-Ject’s Flatten it offers a dedicated solution for collectors who want to preserve their records or restore warped discs. Designed specifically for vinyl maintenance, the machine gently flattens damaged records while aiming to protect the delicate grooves responsible for their sound.

The Flatten it resembles a sophisticated record player, but instead of playing music, it uses heated aluminum plates to distribute warmth evenly across the record. Temperature controls allow users to adjust the process, while low temperature hysteresis helps maintain consistent conditions. Its solid aluminum construction gives the machine a premium, durable feel, while its straightforward operation makes it approachable even for first-time vinyl collectors.

5. A New Generation Collects

Gen Z is approaching collecting differently from previous generations. Owning vinyl does not necessarily mean building an exhaustive collection of an artist’s entire discography. Instead, younger collectors may choose albums because of their emotional significance, artwork, rarity, cultural relevance, or connection to a particular period of their lives.

Social media has further strengthened vinyl’s visual appeal. Record hauls, listening setups, shelves, packaging details, and limited-edition pressings naturally become content for visually driven platforms. Yet the appeal goes deeper than aesthetics. In an economy built around subscriptions and temporary digital access, owning a physical album offers a sense of permanence. Vinyl gives listeners something they can hold, display, revisit, and pass on.

Album artwork has long played an important role in shaping how music is experienced, turning records into visual as well as auditory objects. As streaming has reduced album covers to small digital thumbnails, vinyl has restored the opportunity to create tangible, immersive packaging. OK Go embraces that potential with its album And the Adjacent Possible, featuring an inventive vinyl jacket designed by Yuri Suzuki and Claudio Ripol. The gatefold cover transforms the familiar act of opening a record into an interactive visual experience, extending the album’s creative identity beyond the music itself.

Opening the jacket reveals a three-dimensional pop-up structure featuring geometric red and green domes that rise from the surface. A reflective element beneath them creates an optical illusion, making the partial forms appear like complete spheres. The playful construction recalls the wonder of a pop-up book while maintaining a sophisticated aesthetic. Its precise folds, geometric forms, and restrained palette turn the record sleeve into a sculptural object that connects music, packaging, and interactive design.

Vinyl’s revival reflects a growing desire for tactile, intentional experiences in a digital world. Gen Z is not simply bringing records back; it is redesigning the entire experience around listening, collecting, interiors, and personal expression.

The post 5 Designs That Prove Vinyl’s Comeback Was Never Just About the Music first appeared on Yanko Design.

Anyone who has priced out a decent pair of noise-cancelling headphones this year has felt the sticker shock. Sony’s own flagship, the WH-1000XM6, launches at $449.99, and its wilder sibling, the 1000X The ColleXion, sits even higher. Bose isn’t cheaper. Sennheiser isn’t cheaper. The whole category has quietly drifted toward the idea that “premium” now means “$400 and up,” and a lot of people who just want good ANC for their commute or their next flight have been priced out of the conversation entirely.

That gap is exactly what the Sony WH-1000XM4C is built to fill. Rather than chase another spec bump nobody asked for, Sony reached backward and pulled the WH-1000XM4, arguably the most decorated headphones the company has ever made, back onto shelves. It’s a strange move on paper. It’s a smart one in practice.

Designer: Sony

The original XM4 launched in 2020 at $349.99 and spent the next few years collecting best-of lists like trophies. Then Sony did what companies do: it moved on. The XM5 arrived in 2022 with a slicker profile and a bigger price tag, and the XM4 quietly slid off the roster, even as secondhand units kept trading hands and forum threads kept insisting it was still the smarter buy. That’s a telling signal. Products don’t usually get nostalgic followings this fast unless they actually solved a problem well the first time.

So here comes the WH-1000XM4C, essentially that same beloved design, tuned up and priced down to $299.99, a full fifty dollars less than what the XM4 cost at launch six years ago. Sony isn’t calling it a sequel or a flagship. It’s calling it what it is: the old favorite, finally made available again, minus the frustration of paying more for less.

The changes are modest, and that’s sort of the point. The equalizer jumps from five bands to ten, plus a new gaming EQ, so listeners actually get more control over their sound instead of trusting Sony’s factory tuning blindly. There’s a new Lavender colorway alongside the familiar Black and Platinum Silver, a small but welcome nod to people who don’t want their headphones to look like they were designed for a boardroom. The foldable hinge and rotating ear cups are back too, which matters more than it sounds. The XM5 abandoned that folding design entirely, and the XM6 only brought it back last year. The XM4C proves that some engineering decisions age just fine.

There is one real trade-off. To meet updated battery regulations, the XM4C uses a different cell, and that shaves ANC battery life from 30 hours down to 27. Sony compensates with faster charging, three minutes on the cord for a full hour of playback, which is a fair swap for most people who top up during a commute anyway.

What I appreciate here isn’t the spec sheet. It’s the confidence behind the decision. Bringing back a six-year-old product without dressing it up as something revolutionary takes a certain honesty that most tech companies avoid. Sony isn’t pretending this is groundbreaking. It’s admitting that the formula already worked, and that not every product needs constant reinvention to stay relevant.

There’s a mild irony worth naming. Sony still sells discounted stock of the original XM4 at the same $300 price point, and by most accounts, that older pair edges out the XM4C slightly on raw sound and noise cancellation. So the company is technically competing with itself. But for shoppers, that’s not really a problem. It just means there are now two well-regarded paths into the same trusted design, instead of one shrinking window before flagship prices take over completely.

Headphones don’t usually get second chances like this. Most get replaced, discounted into clearance, and forgotten. The XM4C suggests a different approach is possible, one where a genuinely good product doesn’t have to disappear just because something newer showed up. That’s a quieter kind of innovation, but it might be the one more of the industry could stand to learn from.

The post The $300 Sony Headphones Everyone Wanted Are Actually Back first appeared on Yanko Design.

For forgetful people like me, trackers have basically become a must-have. Whether you’re clipping one onto your wallet, your car keys, your backpack, or whatever it is you absolutely cannot afford to lose, these little devices help you do exactly what they promise: keep track. The only catch is that a lot of trackers tend to look alike, and if you’re relying on appearance alone instead of the connected app, it’s easy to accidentally grab the wrong one.

If you’re after a tracker that actually stands out, and one that can even glow in the dark, Pebblebee’s latest Evercolor drop might be exactly what you need. Evercolor is the brand’s limited-edition color program built exclusively for its Clip 5 tracker, and the newest release, called Neon Pulse, comes in two eye-catching shades: Techno Lime and Hotline Pink. Pebblebee describes the collection as perfect for “bold self-expression and a fresh-season reset,” and honestly, it’s hard to disagree.

Designer: Pebblebee

Evercolor has rolled out plenty of standout colors before, but Neon Pulse marks the first time the program has added glow-in-the-dark accents. That means your tracker stays visible even after its LED switches off, so you’re not just relying on the app to tell you where your item is. You can actually spot it in the dark, as long as it’s somewhere within eyesight.

Keep in mind that this is a limited-edition release, so if hot pink and neon green happen to be your colors, you’ll want to grab them soon. Pebblebee rolls out new Evercolor shades every twelve weeks, and once a drop sells out, it’s gone for good, no restocks. Previous collections like Freeze Frame and Heatwave Hijinks have already sold out, so if Neon Pulse catches your eye, don’t wait too long to add it to your cart.

Underneath all that color, though, it’s still the same reliable Clip 5 that Pebblebee originally released. It works with both Apple and Android devices, so you don’t have to worry about switching phones down the line. The rechargeable battery lasts up to a year on a single USB-C charge, which means no more digging through drawers for spare coin batteries. It also boasts a direct Bluetooth range of about 500 feet, roughly double what a lot of competitors offer, plus access to a global crowd-network for finding your stuff even farther away. On top of that, you get a 130dB siren, a bright LED strobe, and IP66 water resistance, so it can handle a little rain or an accidental splash without missing a beat.

It’s also worth noting that Neon Pulse still costs the same $34.99 as the standard Clip 5, so you’re not paying extra just for the fresh colorway. There’s also a free built-in safety feature called Alert, which can notify you if an unfamiliar tracker seems to be following you, a nice bit of peace of mind on top of everything else. Design-wise, the compact clip-on shape makes it look less like a tech gadget and more like an accessory for your bag, wallet, or keychain. Add in the bright, playful colorway, and it becomes even more fashionable, dare we say, kind of cool. So if your main complaint about trackers has always been that they all look the same, Neon Pulse is built to solve exactly that problem.

At the end of the day, a tracker is only useful if you can actually tell it apart from the pile of identical black and white gadgets everyone else seems to own, and if you enjoy using it enough to keep it clipped on in the first place. Pebblebee’s Neon Pulse drop checks both boxes, combining genuine utility with a design that feels personal rather than generic. Whether you’re the type who loses your keys weekly or you just want your tech to match your personality, this drop is worth a look before it disappears for good. And if pink and green aren’t quite your vibe, it might be worth keeping an eye on Pebblebee’s page anyway. With a new Evercolor drop landing every twelve weeks, there’s a good chance your perfect color combo is just around the corner.

The post Never Lose Your Keys Again With a Tracker That Glows in the Dark first appeared on Yanko Design.

You’ve been waiting for your favorite artist to release their latest album, counting down the hours until it finally drops on your streaming service of choice. You open your phone and press play… and you’re a little disappointed. It’s not that the album isn’t great, it’s that your phone’s speaker doesn’t do it justice. You want something to amplify that sound right now, but your external Bluetooth speaker hasn’t been charged in weeks.

The Battery-free Amplifying iSpeakers can solve that problem for you, and you won’t need a single cable or Bluetooth connection to make it happen. This “dumb” speaker is actually smart enough to rely purely on acoustic engineering, channeling and amplifying the sound waves coming out of your phone so your music, podcast, or call sounds noticeably fuller than it would through your built-in speaker alone.

Click Here to Buy Now: $179.00

Designed by Ooi Masato and made in Japan, this battery-free device lives up to its name: it uses a precision-machined metal slot that cradles whatever phone you own, instantly amplifying whatever you’re playing. There’s no pairing process, no cord to plug in, and no anxious glance at a battery icon wondering if your speaker will cut out mid-song. You set your phone down, and it just works.

Design-wise, the iSpeakers follow a clean, minimalist aesthetic that looks just as at home on a cluttered work desk as it does on a nightstand or a bookshelf. The body is shaped around the golden ratio, giving it a visual balance that feels intentional rather than accidental (the kind of object you’d leave out on display rather than tuck into a drawer). It’s compact enough to toss in a bag, so you can bring your amplified sound with you to a picnic, a hotel room, or a friend’s backyard without hunting for an outlet. And because there’s no port, connector, or wireless protocol involved, it works with virtually any phone you own, including Apple’s freshly announced iPhone 18 Pro lineup and its first ever foldable, the iPhone Ultra, unveiled at today’s “Surprise and Shine” event. All you have to do is let the speaker slot cradle your phone’s speaker grille; there’s no compatibility chart to check and no software update to wait on.

The speaker itself is milled from Duralumin, the same lightweight, vibration resistant alloy used in aircraft construction. That means you’re getting a premium feel along with genuine durability. This isn’t a flimsy accessory that’ll crack after a few drops in your bag. The Japanese craftsmanship and golden ratio proportions give it a quiet sophistication that fits in seamlessly next to your laptop or coffee mug. If you want to get more out of it, you can also pick up the +Bloom and +Jet attachments, which let you customize how the sound projects, whether that means directing it upward for a fuller room fill or downward for a more intimate listening experience.

So how does this stack up against the Bluetooth speakers already crowding your shelf? Take a brand like JBL, whose Flip series has become a go-to for portable audio. Those speakers sound great and pump out serious volume, but they still ask you to charge them, remember to pair them, and eventually deal with a battery that won’t hold a charge like it used to. The iSpeakers skip all of that by design. You’re trading a bit of raw volume and bass depth for something Bluetooth speakers simply can’t offer: a device that will sound exactly the same in ten years as it does today, with zero maintenance and zero electronic waste. At $179, it’s priced closer to a premium Bluetooth speaker than a budget one, but you’re paying for a very different kind of value: permanence, craftsmanship, and simplicity over specs and app connectivity.

At the end of the day, the Battery-free Amplifying iSpeakers isn’t trying to replace your Bluetooth speaker for a backyard party. It’s solving a much smaller, more common frustration: the moment when you just want your phone to sound better, right now, without any setup. For anyone tired of charging cords, pairing screens, and speakers that die at the worst possible moment, this is a refreshingly simple fix, and a genuinely beautiful object to boot. Sometimes the smartest tech is the kind that doesn’t need power at all.

The post The $179 iPhone Speaker That Never Needs Charging first appeared on Yanko Design.

Home computers used to snap open like toolboxes, cartridges sliding in for a new game or a new skill. That idea mostly disappeared once sealed laptops took over, but the ARTISAN ALTO AT-101 brings it back with a vermilion shell that looks like it walked straight out of 1984 and a system built for how people actually tinker today. It’s a machine designed to grow alongside whatever you’re currently obsessed with.

The trapezoidal red housing wastes no time signaling its intentions. Sculpted, concave ivory keycaps sit beside red cooling louvres, and a keyboard opening cuts diagonally through the sloping side, turning what could’ve been a flat slab into something with genuine presence on a desk. This is a machine built to be looked at, not tucked behind a monitor.

Designer: Leo Botinelly

That vintage-inspired shell hides a distinctly modern expansion idea. Upright cartridges slot into place to add graphics power, sound capability, retrocomputing modes, or an AI companion, while smaller side modules handle specialist interfaces and individual projects. Recording a demo, building out a more ambitious scene, or reviving an old favorite game all become a matter of swapping in the right module rather than replacing the whole machine.

The standout pairing puts VECTOR, a compute cartridge, alongside COMPANION, an AI agent module with its own ivory-crowned housing. Together they form what the concept calls a personal cyberdeck, one where your context and your processing power both live in the same two bays. Everything from your conversation history to your working files stays local, an intentional counterpoint to how most AI tools currently function.

Five multifunction keys handle creative shortcuts without forcing a trip through a menu, while a dedicated PAUSE rocker lets you freeze, rewind, or speed through whatever’s running, treating time itself as something you can grab and adjust mid-task. A touchpad and four flush cursor keys merge into a single continuous surface on the right side, keeping navigation under the same hand that’s already resting there.

Flip the machine over and the same philosophy continues. Memory access sits in the open rather than buried under layers of casing, rear supports adjust to match your desk setup, and a single screw releases the service clamp entirely. Every one of these choices treats a computer’s insides as something worth respecting, not hiding behind warranty stickers and proprietary screws.

Around back, a compact connector panel handles the practical side of daily use. USB-C power sits alongside labeled ports for two cartridges, additional USB-C connections, LAN, HDMI, USB-A, and audio, all routed cleanly to keep cables from tangling across the front of a desk. Even the exhaust vents get a considered shape, flanking the connector panel like a pair of small turbines venting heat from all that cartridge-driven ambition.

The post Laptops Sealed Computers Shut, ARTISAN ALTO Snaps Them Back Open first appeared on Yanko Design.

Every gadget on a desk is built to hide what makes it work. Phones, consoles, controllers, they’re all sealed slabs designed to keep the copper and silicon out of sight. Arduview refuses that logic entirely. Its shell is clear, its circuit board is clear, and its OLED display lets you watch pixels light up while seeing straight through to the components producing them.

Retro handhelds have flirted with transparency before. Clear-shell Game Boys and modded Miyoo units let you glimpse a shadow of the board through tinted plastic, but the display itself stayed opaque, a black rectangle sitting in an otherwise see-through frame. Arduview closes that gap by making the screen itself transparent, so nothing on the device breaks the illusion of looking clean through it.

Designer: Louis Huang

Peer through the front and the internals aren’t just visible; they’re the entire visual identity. The board, the chip, an orange copper flex cable, the button domes, and the USB-C port all sit in plain view, arranged the way a watchmaker might arrange gears behind sapphire crystal. Nothing here was designed to be hidden later. It was designed to be looked at from day one.

That philosophy extends to how the thing works, not just how it looks. Built on Arduboy, an open-source handheld platform, Arduview skips the layers that usually complicate small electronics. There’s no app store hunting, no Wi-Fi pairing, no account setup standing between you and 400 preloaded games. Power it on and it plays, the same instant gratification that made simple handhelds addictive in the first place.

At 50 grams and roughly the footprint of a credit card, the size does real work here. A device this small and this light stops being a dedicated gaming session and starts being something you carry the way you’d carry a keychain or a pocketknife, small enough to disappear until the moment you want it. Pull it out on a train platform or set it on a desk between meetings, and it reads less like a toy and more like a curiosity someone can’t resist picking up.

That reaction seems to be the entire point. A transparent gadget invites touching in a way an opaque one never does, because there’s an implicit dare in showing your internals: come look closer. Arduview leans into that dare completely, treating the space usually reserved for a case as prime real estate for the very thing most companies spend their design budgets concealing.

Retro gaming has always had a strong current of nostalgia running through it: chunky buttons, pixel art, low-resolution charm. Arduview borrows all of that while adding something genuinely new to the mix: a device that looks like it belongs in a display case at a design museum as much as it belongs in a pocket.

The post Clear-Shell Game Boys Never Made the Screen Transparent, Arduview Did first appeared on Yanko Design.

Desks are overrated. So are the cables that come with them. The 4URPC is a 15.6-inch wireless touchscreen monitor built for people who’d rather not be chained to an outlet just to get a bigger screen. It’s slim, self-powered, and ready to mirror whatever’s on your phone, tablet, or laptop the moment you need more room to work, watch, or play.

Cutting the cord doesn’t mean cutting functionality. The monitor mirrors an iPhone or Android device through a peer-to-peer wireless connection, no home Wi-Fi or app required. For streaming platforms like YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu, connecting to Wi-Fi and tapping the built-in TV Cast icon sends video to the screen. Either way, there’s no dongle to lose or cable to untangle before the movie starts.

Designer: 4URPC

Click Here to Buy Now: $219 $399 (45% off). Hurry, only 451/600 left! Raised over $181,000.

The more interesting trick happens after mirroring starts. The 10-point touchscreen can send input back to the connected phone, turning the monitor into a larger, shared control surface. Flip through photos with a friend, walk a colleague through a presentation, or hand someone the reins without handing over your phone. It’s a shift that makes shared screen time less awkward.

None of this would matter much if the monitor were bulky. At half an inch thick and just over 2 pounds, it’s built to disappear into a backpack rather than dominate it. The matte, textured shell keeps fingerprints and glare to a minimum, and a fold-out kickstand on the back means setup takes seconds on a desk, a kitchen counter, or the arm of a couch.

A built-in 4,000 mAh battery backs up that portability by taking the wall outlet out of the equation. Setting up on a train, in a hotel room, or on a patio doesn’t mean scouting for the nearest plug first. That same battery can lend a charge to a connected phone, turning the monitor into a backup power bank when the moment calls for it.

Plug it into a laptop with a USB-C cable, and the 4URPC switches roles, becoming an extended display rather than a wireless mirror. Dragging a browser tab, a chat window, or a reference document onto the second screen takes a second, and the touchscreen works over the wired connection. The laptop stays focused on the main task while the extra display handles everything else.

The screen also rotates between landscape and portrait without any fuss, which sounds minor until it changes how you use it day to day. Landscape suits video calls, games, and spreadsheets, while portrait mode fits scrolling through documents, reading long articles, or checking social feeds. Switching between the two takes a twist of the stand, not a trip through a settings menu.

Compatibility runs wide enough that most people won’t need to think twice before connecting. Wireless mirroring covers iPhones, Android phones running version 10 or later, MacBooks, and most Windows laptops, while the wired USB-C or HDMI input works with game consoles, streaming boxes, and the Nintendo Switch. There’s no software to install and nothing to configure; connecting the device and turning it on is the entire setup process.

Under the glass sits a 1920×1080 matte IPS panel running at 60 Hz, built more for comfortable, glare-free sessions than eye-popping color numbers. Dual USB-C ports split power delivery and video duties, small stereo speakers cover casual audio, and a VESA mount plus a standard camera screw thread add mounting options beyond the built-in stand. It’s a practical set of choices rather than a flashy one.

There’s something telling about a monitor that assumes you won’t always be sitting at the same desk tomorrow. Work has scattered across kitchen tables, coffee shops, and airport gates for a while now, and screens are only starting to catch up. The 4URPC doesn’t try to be the sharpest or brightest display around; it just tries to be wherever you happen to land next.

Click Here to Buy Now: $219 $399 (45% off). Hurry, only 451/600 left! Raised over $181,000.

The post Your Second Screen Can Finally Work With No Cables and No Outlet first appeared on Yanko Design.

Every developer juggling AI agents right now knows the feeling of context switching until the whole workflow blurs together. Copilot suggests something in one window, Claude Code runs a task in another, and a dozen prompts live scattered across notes and muscle memory. The Logitech MX Keypad exists to collapse all of that into nine small screens sitting next to the keyboard, each one a physical shortcut into a specific piece of that chaos.

Every key on the keypad carries its own full-color LCD display, so instead of memorizing which function key does what, you glance down and see an icon that actually represents the command underneath it. Press one, and it can refactor a function, trigger a prompt macro, or hand off a task to an AI agent entirely. That small visual feedback loop turns an abstract keyboard shortcut into something closer to a labeled button on a control panel.

Designer: Logitech

What makes the hardware worth paying attention to is where Logitech chose to draw the compatibility line. Instead of building this around one coding environment, the MX Keypad works across GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, VS Code, and IntelliJ IDEA at once. A developer bouncing between an IDE and a terminal-based AI agent doesn’t need separate tools for each, just a different page of keys pulled up on the same nine buttons.

That pattern of paging matters more than it sounds. The keypad can hold multiple profiles, so switching from a Python project running through Copilot to a JavaScript refactor handled by Claude Code becomes a single tap rather than a mental reset. Anyone who has lost a train of thought hunting through browser tabs for the right prompt will recognize the value in never breaking eye contact with the code itself.

Underneath the surface, the MX Keypad ships with prebuilt plugins that Logitech had developers test directly against real coding platforms, rather than shipping generic templates and hoping they fit. An SDK opens the door further, letting teams build their own tools around internal workflows, while a community marketplace means the plugin library keeps growing without waiting on Logitech’s own release schedule.

None of that ambition comes wrapped in bulky, wasteful materials either. The body is made with recycled plastics, keeping the hardware in line with the sustainability commitments Logitech has built into its broader MX ecosystem. It is a small detail, but for a device meant to live permanently on a desk, it matters that the object itself doesn’t feel disposable.

At $99.99, the MX Keypad occupies a strange but clarifying position in a developer’s setup. It doesn’t replace a keyboard, and it doesn’t try to be an AI tool in its own right. Instead, it works like a translator between fast-moving human intent and the growing swarm of coding agents developers now manage daily, one labeled key at a time.

The post The $100 Keypad That Puts Each AI Coding Tool Behind Its Own Button first appeared on Yanko Design.

Most Android drawing tablets make you choose between a screen that feels like paper and hardware fast enough to keep up with a real workflow. The Kamvas Pad 12 refuses that trade-off. Huion built a 12.2-inch standalone tablet around a textured, paper-like display and paired it with enough processing power to hold 127 layers open without stuttering, treating the screen as a genuine canvas rather than a stylus afterthought.

That screen runs a 3:2 aspect ratio instead of the usual 16:9, and the difference shows up the moment you start sketching. A wider canvas means fewer awkward crops when composing a portrait or a page layout, and it doubles as a better shape for reading documents or comics without letterboxing. Combined with a 90Hz refresh rate, linework tracks the pen smoothly instead of lagging a beat behind your hand.

Designer: Huion

Canvas Glass 3.0 does the quieter work here. The surface is nano-etched for texture, so the pen tip grips the way it would on actual paper, while a soft-light treatment and anti-glare coating keep long sessions from turning into eye strain. Setting up near a window or working outdoors doesn’t wash out the display, which matters more than most spec sheets give it credit for.

The PW600C pen leans into that same philosophy of getting out of the way. It’s battery-free, weighs just 12 grams, and snaps magnetically onto the tablet body instead of needing a separate case or loop. Someone sketching on a train can toss the pen against the tablet’s edge between stops and trust it’ll still be there, without fishing through a bag for a charging cable or a lost cap.

Underneath, an eight-core MediaTek Genio 720 chip and 8GB of RAM handle the kind of multitasking that used to choke budget Android tablets, running multiple layers and apps without the frame drops that make digital painting frustrating. At 16,384 pressure levels and 60-degree tilt support, the stylus itself translates a feather-light highlight or a bold ink stroke with the kind of nuance that used to be reserved for pricier displays.

Storage tops out at 256GB onboard with room to expand to 1TB, so a growing library of finished pieces, reference photos, and half-done sketches doesn’t force anyone into constant cleanup. Android 16 and full Google Play access mean the tablet isn’t locked into a single app either. Clip Studio Paint, ibisPaint X, MediBang Paint, and Huion’s own HiPaint all come preloaded, ready for whichever workflow fits the project at hand.

Battery life rounds out the case for treating this as a genuine mobile setup instead of a tethered accessory. An 8,000mAh cell inside a 7.8mm metal body keeps the Kamvas Pad 12 running for roughly eight hours, long enough for a full day of sketching at a café or a cross-country flight without hunting for an outlet. That kind of stamina turns a drawing tablet into something closer to a sketchbook you never outgrow.

The post An Android Drawing Tablet With 127 Layers That Still Feels Like Paper first appeared on Yanko Design.

Xiaomi has chosen an interesting moment to return to foldables. The company has not released a book-style foldable since the Mix Fold 4, which launched in 2024, and now it is back with the Xiaomi 18 Fold just as compact foldables are starting to get more attention. Samsung has also added a foldable in this compact format to its lineup, and Apple is widely expected to unveil its first foldable iPhone at its September 9 event with a similar form factor in mind.

That puts the Xiaomi 18 Fold in an interesting spot. It is not just Xiaomi coming back to foldables after a break. It is also arriving just as this smaller book-style format looks like it could become the next big thing.

Designer: Xiaomi

Xiaomi is positioning the 18 Fold as its first mid-size flagship foldable. It weighs 7.73 ounces (219g), measures 0.42 inches thick when folded (10.68mm), and opens out to just 0.20 inches thick (5.02mm), with a folded footprint of 4.64 x 3.29 inches (117.8 x 83.6mm). In person, it feels thin, though not unusually thin by the standards of today’s premium foldables. More importantly, it feels expensive in a good way. The matte texture on the back and frame gives it a softer, understated finish, while the rounded corners and flat frame help the phone look clean and modern.

The unit I handled was the deep red version, and it is a bold color in person. It stands out more than the usual black or silver foldable palette without feeling too loud. It also happens to echo the deep red finish rumored for Apple’s first foldable, which makes the comparison hard to miss. The 18 Fold comes in Black, White, Red, and a Ceramic Version.

In practice, though, this is still a two-handed phone whether it is folded or unfolded. Even closed, the body is compact in one sense but still broad enough that I did not think of it as something built for easy one-handed use. That is not really a criticism. It just comes with the territory.

The outer display is a 5.38-inch panel, while the inside opens up to a 7.58-inch main screen. Xiaomi says both displays share the same aspect ratio, which is meant to make the transition from one to the other feel more natural. I could not fully judge how well that works in daily use from a short demo, but one benefit stood out right away. Video felt more immersive than on squarer foldables because there was less black bar space above and below the image.

The software also looked well suited to the shape. Animations felt smooth in my brief demo, and I did see split-screen and floating window support in action. The unfolded UI felt more like a small tablet than a stretched phone, which is what you want on a device like this. Xiaomi has also placed one speaker on the top edge and another on the bottom edge on the opposite side, which should help give the phone a more balanced stereo effect when it is open.

The hinge left a good first impression too. I cannot really say whether it felt especially firm or especially smooth, because my time with the device was limited, but it did feel sturdy. The crease was handled well too. Looking straight at the display, I only really noticed it from certain angles rather than all the time. More importantly, I could barely feel it when running a finger across the center, which was better than I expected.

Left: Xiaomi 18 Fold, Right: Galaxy Z Fold 8

Left: Galaxy Z Fold 8, Right: Xiaomi 18 Fold

Left: Galaxy Z Fold 8, Right: Xiaomi 18 Fold

I also compared the Xiaomi 18 Fold side by side with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8. Samsung’s device measures 4.88 x 3.22 x 0.38 inches when folded (123.9 x 81.9 x 9.7mm), 6.35 x 4.88 x 0.18 inches when unfolded (161.4 x 123.9 x 4.5cm), and weighs 7.09 ounces (201g), so it is a little lighter and a bit thinner than Xiaomi’s foldable in some areas. But the difference was not just about dimensions. Samsung’s inner screen was noticeably brighter to my eyes. At the same time, the Xiaomi 18 Fold had one practical advantage that stood out immediately. When placed on a desk, it did not wobble, while the Samsung did.

Left: Galaxy Z Fold 8, Right: Xiaomi 18 Fold

Left: Galaxy Z Fold 8, Right: Xiaomi 18 Fold

Top: Xiaomi 18 Fold, Bottom: Galaxy Z Fold 8

The biggest surprise for me was the camera. Xiaomi is using a 200MP Leica triple-camera system, led by a 200MP main camera and backed by a 50MP Leica periscope telephoto with an 80mm equivalent focal length. In my short time with the phone, the telephoto camera was the part that stuck with me most. I tried zoom, and the 3.5x telephoto setup immediately felt like one of the most interesting parts of the device. Stability also felt good even at higher magnification, which made the zoom feel more usable, not just more dramatic. The camera bump also did not seem overly large, and its oval-shaped, two-step raised design gives it some presence without taking over the whole back.

My time with the Xiaomi 18 Fold was brief, and this hands-on really only scratched the surface. Even so, the phone already feels like a polished return to book-style foldables. Pricing starts at RMB 10,999, or roughly $1,640, for the 12GB/256GB model, and Xiaomi said it will be available in China only for now.

The post Xiaomi 18 Fold Hands-On: Got Here Before Apple, Can It Beat Samsung? first appeared on Yanko Design.

UGREEN’s MagFlow Pro treats overheating as a design problem worth solving with actual engineering, not just a bigger heat sink. This 10,000mAh magnetic power bank borrows liquid cooling from gaming PCs and squeezes it into a pocket-sized charger, aiming to keep wireless charging fast without turning your phone into a hand warmer along the way.

Qi2 charging has always had a dirty secret hiding under its magnetic convenience. Wireless systems lose up to 30% of their power as heat during transfer, which means a phone sitting at 25W often throttles down within minutes to avoid overheating. UGREEN built the MagFlow Pro around fixing that exact bottleneck rather than just chasing a bigger battery number.

Designer: UGREEN

Inside sits CryoPulse, a cooling system built around a micro-pump that circulates liquid coolant past the charging coil and other heat-generating components. Copper foil spreads that heat further, while a layout that physically separates key parts keeps warmth from concentrating in one spot. It is a scaled-down version of what keeps a gaming rig from throttling under load, just built to survive inside a phone charger.

A transparent panel on the front turns that entire process into something you can actually watch, showing coolant moving through the internal channels while your phone charges. It is an odd, almost theatrical touch for a power bank, but it doubles as reassurance that the system is doing its job. UGREEN calls it the Cyber Window, and it is hard to look away from once it is running.

That cooling translates into real numbers, too. UGREEN claims the system keeps peak surface temperatures on a phone up to 18°F below its own reference benchmark, letting a device hold onto higher wattage for longer instead of stepping down early. In practice, that means someone topping up before a flight or during a commute gets closer to advertised charging speeds instead of a slow crawl once things heat up.

A small display embedded in the shell keeps track of charging wattage, remaining battery percentage, cycle count, and cooling status, turning what used to be a guessing game into actual visible data. Paired with a built-in USB-C cable capable of 30W and a combined output of up to 45W, the MagFlow Pro can charge a phone, tablet, and another accessory simultaneously without demanding a bag full of extra cables.

If the battery degraded quickly, all of those fancy features would be pointless, so UGREEN built the cell around Dymondcell 2.0 protection, retaining more than 80% of its capacity after 800 charge cycles. It also survived seven hours of continuous overcharge testing without failure, a detail aimed squarely at anyone who leaves their charger plugged in overnight out of habit rather than necessity.

At $149.99, the MagFlow Pro costs considerably more than other 10,000mAh power banks on the market, and that price tag puts real weight behind its cooling claims. It is a bet that people charging phones daily care as much about consistent performance and battery longevity as they do about raw capacity, and that a bit of visible engineering can justify paying extra for it.

The post UGREEN’s Power Bank Uses Liquid Cooling, and You Can Actually Watch It first appeared on Yanko Design.

TCL’s P80 Ultra and P80 Pro prove a phone screen doesn’t have to pick one personality and stick with it. Unveiled at IFA 2026 in Berlin, both handsets fold a vivid AMOLED panel and TCL’s paper-like NXTPAPER technology into the same sheet of glass, letting the display shift moods with a flick of a switch instead of forcing a trade-off between color and comfort.

Run a finger along the frame, and you’ll find a thin slider, a small physical detail that carries plenty of weight in daily use. Slide it, and the 6.83-inch panel drops its saturation, taking on a warmer, textured look that mimics a printed page. A commuter buried in a novel or someone proofreading a document late at night gets a screen that behaves like paper, without losing the sharpness underneath.

Designer: TCL

Push that same slider one notch further, and the screen drops color entirely for Max Ink Mode, a stripped layout that silences notifications except for calls and texts. It reads like a design decision as much as a software one, TCL betting people want to quiet their phone rather than mute it completely. The payoff is a battery that can stretch across roughly a week of steady reading.

That reading-first mindset carries into the software too. Both phones can convert e-books into audiobooks or podcast-style narration using on-device AI, giving Max Ink Mode a voice to lean on when eyes need a break instead of ears. It is a small addition, but it treats the slower, paper-like mode as a genuine feature rather than a bolted-on gimmick for a keynote slide.

None of that would matter if the screen looked washed out the rest of the time, so TCL leaned on a 1.5K AMOLED panel that hits 3,200 nits and covers the full DCI-P3 color range. A Nano Crystal Shield coating cuts glare enough to keep the display readable under direct sun, marking TCL’s first pairing of NXTPAPER with OLED rather than the LCD panels it used before.

The frame wrapping that screen is aluminum rather than the plastic often found at this price, giving both phones a sturdier grip without piling on bulk. TCL backs that up with an IP68 rating against dust and water, plus MIL-STD-810H certification for the inevitable drop. Buyers get to pick between Sunlit Gold, Burgundy, and Midnight Blue, three finishes that lean more toward jewelry-box color choices than typical slab-of-glass smartphone palettes.

Where the two models part ways is around the back. The P80 Ultra carries a 50-megapixel main camera next to a 50-megapixel periscope lens for 3x optical zoom, tucked into a housing shaped to avoid throwing off the phone’s balance. The P80 Pro drops the periscope for a simpler dual-camera arrangement, trading reach for a slimmer build that still shares the same main sensor and 8-megapixel ultrawide.

TCL is rolling both phones out across Europe first, with the P80 Ultra priced from €549 (around $635) and the P80 Pro starting at €429 (around $500), before a Latin American launch follows in October. A wider release is expected to reach additional regions afterward. In a category full of identical glass rectangles, these two phones actually behave differently depending on what someone needs from them that day.

The post TCL’s P80 Pro and Ultra Are the Phones That Replaced Your Kindle Too first appeared on Yanko Design.

Slapping a famous badge on a phone’s back panel is the easy version of a brand partnership. TECNO and Tonino Lamborghini clearly wanted the harder version instead. The POVA 8 Pro 5G Tonino Lamborghini Limited Edition builds its entire identity around a black-and-red palette and a hexagon pattern lifted straight from Lamborghini’s mechanical heritage, then carries that language past the glass and into the software running underneath.

The rear panel does the heaviest visual lifting. A dual-layer stacking process gives it a reflective quality built from countless internal mirror structures that refract and redirect light, so red accents seem to surface and sink back into shadow as the phone tilts in your hand. A physical height difference between the two layers adds genuine spatial depth, echoing the layered geometry found in actual mechanical engineering rather than faking it with a printed graphic.

Designer: TECNO x Tonino Lamborghini

That commitment doesn’t stop at the hardware. A bespoke interface theme reworks dozens of icons in matching black-and-red tones with glass-like material effects, while a custom boot animation and ringtone carry the same mechanical energy into everyday use. Opening the phone in the morning feels less like waking up a generic Android device and more like starting an engine built around a specific mood.

Underneath the styling sits a dual-chipset setup pairing a MediaTek Dimensity 7400 Ultimate platform with a TECNO-built P1 Graphic Chip, backed by a vapor chamber cooling system spanning over 22,000mm² of dissipation area. That combination pushes supported titles as high as 144FPS, turning a commute or a lunch break into legitimate gaming time instead of a compromise. A dedicated one-tap button on the side keeps favorite apps and gaming shortcuts one press away.

Photography leans on a Sony-engineered LYTIA 700C sensor with a larger light-sensitive area, giving low-light shots and handheld video noticeably steadier results thanks to built-in optical stabilization. A 50MP high-pixel mode and 2x lossless zoom cover the detail-obsessed shots, while an 8MP ultra-wide lens handles group photos and landscapes without anyone needing to step backward to fit everyone in frame.

The 6.78-inch AMOLED display pushes brightness to 4,500 nits and refreshes at 144Hz, numbers that matter most outdoors under direct sun or during fast-paced gaming sessions where lag ruins the moment. A touch layer rated for wet and oily fingers keeps the screen responsive through rain, sweat, or sunscreen-covered hands, useful for anyone who refuses to put their phone down just because the weather did.

Durability rounds out the package rather than acting as an afterthought. Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, IP69-rated water and dust resistance, and SGS 5-Star Drop certification mean the phone can survive a dropped call turning into a literal drop without ending the relationship. A 6,500mAh battery retains over 80% of its health after 2,000 charge cycles, translating to roughly six years of daily use before a real decline sets in.

TECNO and Tonino Lamborghini spent more effort here proving that a licensing deal can produce something with actual mechanical thinking behind it, rather than a badge glued onto commodity hardware. The result reads less like a co-branded accessory and more like a phone that happens to share a bloodline with the cars.

The post TECNO and Tonino Lamborghini Prove You Can’t Fake a Real Collab first appeared on Yanko Design.

Running a serious AI model at home usually means renting someone else’s cloud server and hoping your data stays private along the way. MINISFORUM built its newest pairing to remove that trade-off entirely. The AI Agent NAS N5 MAX-P495 and AI Mini Workstation MS-S1 MAX-P495 combine for up to 131 TOPS of AI compute performance, 192GB of memory at 8533 MT/s, and up to 160GB of graphics memory, enough headroom to keep the heavy lifting on a desk instead of in a data center.

The N5 MAX-P495 takes the shape of a compact black cube, but what it holds inside matters more than how it looks sitting on a shelf. It combines powerful AI computing with up to 200TB of local storage, enabling users to store, manage, and process large volumes of data within a single AI platform. That capacity turns a spare corner of an office into a private archive large enough to hold years of project files, footage, or research without ever touching a third-party server.

Designer: MINISFORUM

Storage alone doesn’t make an AI system useful, so MINISFORUM built the N5 to run the AI itself. From RAG knowledge bases and AI models to embeddings, databases, and AI agents such as OpenClaw and Hermes, N5 MAX-P495 keeps data and AI workloads local, enabling continuous and private AI operations. A small business could lean on that setup to run its own customer-support agent without routing conversations through an outside company’s servers.

That local-first approach extends to how the N5 fits into a larger setup. Designed to work alongside AI computing devices, N5 MAX-P495 serves as a centralized backend for data, models, knowledge, and long-running AI workloads, bringing storage and computing together at the edge. It’s less a standalone gadget and more a quiet engine room, built to keep working in the background while something faster handles the parts people actually interact with.

That faster half of the pairing is the MS-S1 MAX-P495, a compact tower wrapped in a ventilated, diamond-textured front panel that looks more like a piece of desk sculpture than a workstation. It delivers powerful local AI computing for demanding model inference, AI development, and computationally intensive workloads, built for intensive local AI tasks, engineering, and workflows in an ultra-compact footprint. Developers get workstation-class muscle without giving up desk space to a full tower case.

Speed matters just as much as raw power for certain jobs, and MINISFORUM designed the MS-S1 with that in mind. Designed for low-latency AI workloads, MS-S1 MAX-P495 enables responsive local inference for AI agents, computer vision, generative AI, and other real-time applications. A security camera system or a live creative tool built on generative AI benefits directly from that kind of immediate response instead of waiting on a round trip to the cloud.

Connectivity rounds out the workstation’s role in a larger setup. With extensive connectivity and expansion capabilities, MS-S1 MAX-P495 serves as a powerful AI compute frontend, supporting models, applications, and connected devices across flexible edge AI environments. That flexibility means the same box can sit at the center of a home lab or plug into a small studio’s existing hardware without forcing a rebuild.

Paired together, the two devices split the work the way a good team would. The MS-S1 MAX-P495 and N5 MAX-P495 form a complete edge AI computing system, delivering high-performance AI compute at the frontend while integrating compute, massive storage, data, and AI knowledge at the backend, providing a powerful foundation for real-time inference, persistent AI workloads, and scalable local AI applications. It’s a compact answer to a question more households and small teams are starting to ask: whether AI still needs to live somewhere else at all.

The post Cloud AI Means Someone Else Has Your Data, MINISFORUM Fixes That first appeared on Yanko Design.

September always arrives with a different energy. The summer concept season wraps up, the shipping boxes start showing up, and the gadgets worth keeping finally separate from the ones that were only ever interesting in a render. This month’s lineup is unusually strong: a $2,000 iPhone that finally killed the foldable crease, a Dyson toothbrush with a camera inside the brush head, and a telescope that fits in a bag you could carry onto a plane.

What connects all eight is not a price bracket or a category. It is the feeling that the designers started with a known compromise and refused to accept it. Foldable phones have always had a crease. Astrophotography has always needed a trunk full of gear. CD players have always been opaque boxes. Each gadget below found that exact problem and built past it. September’s best gear does not update existing things. It quietly makes them look dated.

1. iPhone Ultra

Apple saved its most aggressive design argument for last. The iPhone Ultra lands September 18 at $2,000, and the headline detail is the one that sounds impossible until you hold it — the visible crease is gone. Foldable phones have carried that horizontal line across the display since the format began, and every manufacturer called it a reasonable engineering compromise. Apple did not agree. The crease is gone, which means either the engineering problem is finally solved or a new one was quietly created in its place.

At $2,000, it is the most expensive iPhone Apple has shipped, and the price will be the loudest objection for most people. That is fair. It is also a phone that, when unfolded, gives you a display large enough to genuinely replace a small tablet, without the crease that made every foldable feel like a prototype. Whether the price is justified depends on how much that line across the screen has bothered you. For a certain buyer, the number will feel completely reasonable.

What We Like

• The visible crease is gone, a problem every other foldable has simply accepted as permanent
• September 18 availability means no waiting on a vague launch window

What We Dislike

• $2,000 is a significant ask even for the most committed Apple buyer
• At that price, the upgrade calculus is genuinely difficult for anyone coming from a recent iPhone

2. Dyson CameraJet Toothbrush

Dyson hid a 1mm camera directly under the brush head, and it reads 28 images a second while you brush. Within 100 milliseconds of detecting a gap in your coverage, the feedback loop kicks in. This is not an app that grades you on timing or buzzes when two minutes are up. It sees exactly where the bristles are not reaching and responds in real time, which is a fundamentally different answer to a problem the toothbrush industry has spent decades pretending does not exist.

The $499 price reads as absurd until you consider what it replaces. Most people spend years brushing the same spots and missing the same gaps, and no timer-based electric toothbrush has fixed that because timers do not know where your brush is. The camera does. Dyson also redesigned the toothpaste to work alongside the system, which suggests they understood that this product was not adding a feature to an existing object but rebuilding the assumptions around one entirely.

What We Like

• A 1mm camera reading 28 frames per second gives real-time coverage feedback no other toothbrush can match
• Dyson redesigned the toothpaste alongside the brush, showing the depth of thinking behind the product

What We Dislike

• $499 is a difficult number for a toothbrush regardless of what it does
• Proprietary toothpaste dependency is a meaningful lock-in that will frustrate buyers over time

3. ZWO Seestar S50 Pro

Astrophotography has always had a reputation problem. Getting a decent image of a nebula or galaxy traditionally meant a telescope, a tracking mount, a camera body, a set of filters, a laptop running capture software, and a location dark enough to make the whole trip worth it. The ZWO Seestar S50 Pro compresses that entire setup into something you could carry in a camera bag. That compression is not a minor convenience. It is the difference between astrophotography being a hobby you have and one you actually practice.

The S50 Pro is not a crowdfunded concept or a prototype. It is a shipping device sold through B&H, Amazon, and ZWO directly, part of a line that has been refining the smart telescope format for several years. For people who have wanted to try astrophotography without committing to a several-thousand-dollar hardware stack, it is the most credible entry point available right now, and the images it produces at this size are the kind that still feel surprising every time you see them.

What We Like

• Compresses a full astrophotography rig into one bag without requiring a tracking mount or separate laptop
• Sold through established US retailers with confirmed availability, not a waitlist product

What We Dislike

• Smart telescopes in this class still need a reasonably dark sky to produce compelling results
• The app-dependent workflow means the imaging experience is only as good as the software behind it

4. Camera With Digital Film

Every digital photo you have ever taken lives in a folder. Most of them stay there. The Camera with Digital Film changes the end of that process by ejecting a physical e-paper cartridge when you fire the shutter. Because e-paper holds its image without power, that small rectangle stays a picture permanently. You can lean it against a monitor, pin it to a wall, or hand it directly to the person you just photographed, and none of that requires a printer, an app, or a subscription to anything.

This is a personal maker build, not a retail product, which means you cannot order one. But the project is documented and open, which is its own kind of contribution. Instant cameras eject paper prints that fade over years. This ejects a display that does not. The object you walk away with is not a printout of a photo. It is the photo, held in a piece of hardware that draws no power to stay that way. The difference is not subtle once you hold one.

What We Like

• E-paper holds the image without power indefinitely, making every shot a permanent physical object
• The format lets you hand a photo to someone in the moment without a printer anywhere nearby

What We Dislike

• This is a maker build with no purchase option — you build it, or you do not have it
• E-paper’s limited color range means images read closer to a graphic print than a full-color photograph

5. ClearFrame Speaker + CD Player

The ClearFrame puts a CD player and a speaker into a frame you can see straight through, and the transparent design earns its place by making the mechanical parts of the player the visual feature rather than something hidden behind matte plastic. Watching a disc spin inside a clear housing is a different experience from staring at a closed box, and the ClearFrame is built around the idea that the hardware itself is worth looking at. The mechanism is the aesthetic. Nothing about that is accidental.

For anyone building a desk around objects that hold their own visually, the ClearFrame gives the CD player a reason to be out in the open rather than tucked away. The disc, the mechanism, the speaker housing: all of it visible, all of it intentional. It is not a nostalgia product. It is a design argument about what audio hardware looks like when it stops hiding its own workings.

Click Here to Buy Now: $240.00

What We Like

• The transparent frame turns the mechanical components into the centerpiece rather than concealing them
• Combines a CD player and speaker into one object with a coherent visual identity

What We Dislike

• Listed under upcoming drops only, so exact pricing and shipping timeline are not yet confirmed
• A clear housing will need regular cleaning to maintain the effect it is entirely built around

6. Cyberpunk 2077 x Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 launched in 1982. Cyberpunk 2077, the game, is set in 2077. The gap between those two years is roughly the entire history of consumer computing, and this collab leans into that distance rather than papering over it. The result sits at the intersection of two very specific aesthetics: the beige plastic of early home computing and the neon-drenched maximalism of Night City. Somehow they feel like they were always related. The Retro Games Ltd license makes it a real retail product, not a limited drop built on hype.

For people who grew up with a C64 or remember it as the machine that first felt like a home computer, this collab has a logic that is hard to argue with. Cyberpunk’s world is built on the idea that technology accumulates rather than replaces, and a computer from 1982 sitting alongside a game set in 2077 makes that point visually without needing to explain itself. It is the kind of object that earns its shelf space because it means something beyond what it does.

What We Like

• The 95-year gap between the C64’s launch and the game’s setting is the entire premise, and the design commits to it
• A real licensed retail product through Retro Games Ltd, not a concept or an event-exclusive run

What We Dislike

• The appeal is almost entirely to people with an attachment to either the C64 or Cyberpunk 2077 specifically
• As a niche collab object, it will be difficult to track down outside dedicated retro gaming retailers

7. OrigamiSwift Folding Mouse

Standard mice do not pack flat. They sit awkwardly in bags, take up more space than their function warrants, and feel like a compromise every time you travel with a laptop. The OrigamiSwift uses an origami-influenced folding structure that collapses the mouse into something genuinely flat: the kind of object you forget is in your bag until you need it.

Travel mice as a category have existed for a long time, but most of them solve portability by making the mouse physically smaller rather than foldable. Smaller mice are less comfortable to use for any extended session. The OrigamiSwift’s approach is different: it folds to pack and unfolds to a full grip, which means you are not choosing between portability and comfort every time you pull it out. For anyone who works from multiple locations, that trade-off has been the quiet frustration with every travel mouse that came before this one.

Click Here to Buy Now: $85.00

What We Like

• Folds flat for packing without reducing grip size for use, a problem most travel mice simply ignore

What We Dislike

• Folding mechanisms introduce hinge wear over time that rigid designs never have to account for
• Travel-first positioning may mean trade-offs in sensor performance compared to a dedicated desk mouse

8. ROG Ally X Dual-Screen Mod

Dual-screen handhelds usually mean buying an entirely new device built around that feature from the ground up. This ROG Ally X mod skips that purchase. It snaps a 120Hz secondary display onto an existing Ally X using a mount system that removes just as easily, which means you get the dual-screen setup when you want it and a standard handheld when you do not. The engineering problem this solves is not new, but the solution here is additive rather than architectural, which makes it the more interesting answer.

It is a maker project, which means you build it rather than buy it, and the plans are documented and freely available. That limits its audience to people comfortable with a hobbyist build. Within that group, it is one of the more compelling uses of a gaming handheld’s form factor to surface this year. The 120Hz refresh rate on the secondary screen is not a placeholder spec either — it keeps up with the primary display rather than undercutting it, which has been the consistent weakness of every dual-screen attempt before this one.

What We Like

• Snaps on and off without permanently modifying the Ally X itself
• 120Hz on the secondary screen matches the primary display rather than being a visible step down

What We Dislike

• No kit to order — you source and assemble the components yourself, or you do not have it
• A second active display will draw additional power from the Ally X battery, which is already a known constraint on the device

September is not a month that usually swings this hard. Three products you can buy today, two from the YD shop, a maker build you can start this weekend, and an iPhone that lands in 16 days at a price that will generate more conversation than almost anything Apple has shipped in years. The range across eight picks is wider than usual, and that width is the point.

The through line is stubbornness. Every one of these objects exists because someone decided the accepted version of the thing was not good enough and built a different answer. A crease-free fold. A toothbrush that watches you brush in real time. A CD player you can see straight through. A photo that ejects itself from a camera. That kind of thinking does not happen every month. September had a good one.

The post The 8 Best Gadgets of September 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

A laptop that only knows one shape stops being useful the moment the day changes its mind. TECNO built the MEGABOOK T15 360 Pro around that exact problem, wrapping a full 360-degree hinge inside an all-metal body machined with precision CNC tooling. The screen folds all the way back, turning one device into four distinct working postures without asking anyone to carry a second gadget.

Flip it flat into Laptop mode, and it behaves like any focused productivity machine, keyboard ready and screen upright for spreadsheets or long email threads. Push the display back further and Tablet mode takes over, letting fingers or an optional MPP 2.0 active pen sketch, annotate, and jot notes directly onto the 15.6-inch touchscreen. The same hardware just keeps reshaping itself around whatever task shows up next.

Designer: TECNO

Fold it into a triangle and Tent mode appears, propping the screen up on a cramped tray table or a corner of a crowded desk where a full laptop footprint would not fit. Stand it up the other way and Stand mode turns the same hinge into a presentation tool, angling the display toward a room full of people instead of a single set of eyes typing at a keyboard.

None of those positions would matter much without a screen worth looking at, and TECNO gave the Pro model a 2.5K panel running at 120Hz across 2560 by 1440 pixels, covering 100% of the sRGB color space at 350 nits brightness. Colors hold up during video edits, photo review sits closer to accurate, and scrolling through documents in Tablet mode feels noticeably smoother than on a standard 60Hz screen.

Under the hood, configurations climb as high as an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor paired with LPDDR5X memory running at up to 7,467MHz, enough headroom for video exports or a dozen open browser tabs without slowdown. A PCIe M.2 2280 SSD handles storage, and select configurations add a second M.2 slot, giving anyone running out of space room to expand rather than shop for an external drive.

Powering all of that is a 70Wh battery paired with a compact 65W PD GaN charger, a combination built to survive a full workday of meetings, note-taking, and streaming without hunting for an outlet. The included charger sheds the bulk of older power bricks, and the 1.8-meter cable gives enough slack to keep the laptop charging from across a conference table instead of right next to the wall.

Connectivity keeps pace with the rest of the machine. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4 handle wireless duties, while seven physical ports, including two Type-C connections rated for 10Gbps data and display output, cover everything from external monitors to storage drives. TECNO OneLeap ties the laptop into phones, tablets, and other PCs, letting files and clipboard content move between devices without emailing anything to yourself first.

Smaller touches round out daily use. A backlit keyboard with its own numeric keypad handles spreadsheet-heavy work, and a fingerprint reader built into the power button skips the password screen entirely with one press. Dual speakers tuned for DTS:X Ultra and a pair of digital microphones back up video calls and casual media playback, so switching between a meeting and a lunchtime show does not require headphones.

TECNO prices the MEGABOOK T15 360 Pro at €1,099 (around $1,280), with European availability starting in the fourth quarter of 2026. That price sits closer to a well-specced conventional laptop than a premium convertible, positioning the T15 360 Pro as the rare 2-in-1 that does not ask for a luxury markup just because the hinge bends further than everyone else’s.

The post Get a Laptop or Get a Tablet, TECNO MEGABOOK T15 360 Pro Is Already Both first appeared on Yanko Design.

Packard Bell spent a century teaching people that new technology doesn’t have to feel intimidating, and its 100th birthday present to itself leans hard into that idea. Under Acer’s ownership, the brand relaunched at IFA 2026 with a philosophy it calls “Tech it easy,” built around a lineup that trades beige plastic and quiet corporate design for colors loud enough to notice from across a room. Four products anchor that comeback, and each one argues that everyday tech gains something when it stops taking itself so seriously.

The DotBook carries the heaviest expectations as the collection’s flagship, a 14.5-inch laptop finished in a red-orange shell bright enough to spot on a crowded coffee shop table. Weighing under 1.3 kg and measuring just 17.9mm thin, it’s built for browsing, streaming, and everyday work rather than chasing benchmark scores, backed by up to 512GB of storage and 16GB of memory running quietly under Windows 11. It’s a laptop designed to disappear into a bag, not a spec sheet debate.

Designer: Acer

Where the DotBook plays it relatively straight, the DotLoop commits fully to spectacle. Housed inside an actual briefcase shell with a 1970s silhouette, the turntable pops open to reveal a working tonearm flanked by RGB-lit speaker grilles that glow while a record spins. Two built-in 3W speakers handle sound on their own, though Bluetooth and RCA outputs let the DotLoop hand audio off to a proper stereo system whenever the moment calls for something louder.

That willingness to have fun with format extends into the DotLine, a feature phone built for anyone tired of feeding a smartphone’s constant appetite for attention. A 2.8-inch display and physical keypad keep the experience deliberately simple, while an 1800mAh battery stretches across roughly two weeks between charges, a number that sounds almost mythical next to a modern flagship’s overnight anxiety. Four color options keep it from feeling like a consolation prize.

Rounding out the focus lineup, the DotCombo bundles a keyboard and mouse into a single color-matched purchase, eliminating the usual mismatched beige-on-black desk setup that so many peripherals default to. Both pieces run on rechargeable batteries good for hundreds of charge cycles, connecting over Bluetooth or a 2.4GHz receiver without a single AA battery required. Round keycaps borrowed from typewriter design give the whole thing a tactile, almost toy-like presence on a desk.

Beyond these four, Packard Bell rounds out its centennial collection with a portable speaker (DotTune), audio glasses (DotLook), a ring light for creators (DotShine), matching headphones (DotBass), and even a countertop food steamer (Steasy), all sharing the same saturated color palette and straightforward pricing. None of them ask for much attention individually, but together they paint a lineup unwilling to blend into a beige office shelf.

Pricing stays approachable across the board, with the DotBook starting around €499 (around $578), the DotLoop at €149 (around $173), the DotLine at €69 (around $80), and the DotCombo at just €39 (around $45). Packard Bell’s return proves that a century-old brand can still find something new to say, mostly by refusing to whisper it.

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