Tag Archives: lightweight

0.25 oz Spork Perfect for Outdoor Enthusiasts Seeking Lightweight Gear

Posted on by

It has become trendier these days to pack your meals when you’re going out, whether to eat lunch in the office or to enjoy a brief excursion. It’s not always a positive experience, though, and not just because of the food preparation but also because of the tableware you have to bring. There’s a specific class of utensils designed to be carried around, but many of them are either too heavy or even too flimsy. And then there’s the fact that most of these come as a set that you bring with you all the time, and if you lose one, the rest become almost unusable. The 0.25 oz Aero Spork was designed precisely to address those concerns, combining an innovative design and expert craftsmanship to deliver the one cutlery to rule them all.

Click Here to Buy Now: $17 $20 (15% off at checkout). Hurry, deal ends in 24 hours!

Although most indoor cutlery is made from metal, there is a wider variety of those that are designed to travel with you, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Plastic utensils are lightweight but easy to break, while metal is durable but heavy. Some try to have very thin bodies to offset that weight, but they end up making your hands feel cramped after a while. They also mostly come as a set, at most a pair of a spoon and a fork, but you’ll be left at a disadvantage when you lose one or the other. Of course, sporks exist to combine those two into one, but the vast majority of them are more cumbersome to use than they’re worth.

This lightweight metal spork, in contrast, was meticulously designed to give your hands a break while you’re taking your lunch break. At only 0.25oz (7g), you can hardly feel its weight so your hand won’t feel strained the more you enjoy your meal. Being lightweight, however, doesn’t mean it’s fragile. With a special anodized aluminum exoskeleton, it remains tough as nails and ready to scoop up or pierce through food.

The spork’s design might strike one as odd, but it wasn’t made on a whim nor is it purely aesthetic. Inspired by the curved plate structure used in architecture like the Sydney Opera House, the spork gains a body that is both lightweight and surprisingly strong. The wide and curved handle is also designed for ergonomics, allowing your finger to rest more comfortably inside the curve. Even the shape of the head itself is different from the norm. Instead of trying to copy the rounded shape of spoons, it tapers a bit towards the tip to make it easier to twirl noodles like pasta around it.

Sporks were invented to have both a spoon and a fork in one for practical convenience, but their designs haven’t exactly been comfortable to use, long-lasting, and visually appealing. In other words, they’re not considered the best cutlery to use. Made by expert metalworkers from Tsubame City, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, this innovative metal spork shatters those misconceptions with a lightweight yet durable body, a unique yet practical design, and a beautiful minimalist aesthetic that makes each bite a joy.

Click Here to Buy Now: $17 $20 (15% off at checkout). Hurry, deal ends in 24 hours!

The post 0.25 oz Spork Perfect for Outdoor Enthusiasts Seeking Lightweight Gear first appeared on Yanko Design.

“World’s Lightest Mechanical Watch” clocks in at a Stunning 8.8 Grams in Weight

Posted on by

Billed as the world’s lightest mechanical watch, the MING LW.01 boasts an impressive weight of just 8.8 grams (0.31 ounces) for the manual variant and 10 grams (0.35 ounces) for the automatic variant. For reference, that’s lighter than one AirTag… or about as much as two AirPods WITHOUT the case.

The LW.01 takes the idea of minimalism a little bit further by going beyond just the visual sense of the word. “We wanted to push the envelope further than we – or any other brand – has ever done,” the folks at MING said. This includes some brilliant design hacks, the use of novel materials, and basically removing everything non-essential. In short, the folks at MING Marie Kondo-ed the hell out of this watch… and the result definitely sparks joy.

Designer: MING

The watch itself is a work of art, featuring a dial that’s as minimal to look at as its bill of materials. In fact, there isn’t a dial at all. The LW.01’s minute hand sits on a disc that obscures the movement, while the central portion comes with a gradient print that hides the skeletal view of the watch, while also having the watch’s minimal markings on its periphery. Every part of the watch is art and engineering combined to its nth degree, creating something that really stands at the intersection of great design and immaculate engineering.

“We set ourselves some ‘conventional’ constraints, though: the watch had to be a wearable size, and retain certain tactile qualities such as the texture and thermal transfer of metal,” MING’s team mentioned. “More importantly, it would have to be practically wearable and not technically compromised purely for the sake of lightness. As it turns out, it would take us a couple of years longer than expected and an exhaustive amount of metallurgy and testing.”

Those constraints, however, don’t in any way diminish the end product. The watch has a spectacular body that’s crafted from a special metal alloy that’s lighter than carbon but has the premium feel of metal. The lugs are turned into bars that allow the strap to through without any additional elements (which would add to its weight), and the face isn’t layered with sapphire crystal. Instead, it opts for equally resistant Corning Gorilla Glass – similar to the slim glass sheet found in smartphones, but with a separate hardening treatment done by UK-based Knight Optical.

“We explored a wide range of ultralight materials including carbon fiber derivatives and hollow-core 3D printing, but ultimately found that AZ31 Magnesium-Aluminium-Zinc-Manganese alloy from Smiths High Performance was both lighter than carbon (1.77g/cc, vs ~2g/cc density), more consistent to produce than hollow 3D printing, and more importantly retained the feel of metal,” MING mentioned. “It is further surface treated by plasmaelectrolytic oxidation by Keronite for corrosion resistance and biocompatibility, with a further composite protective layer.”

Every element of the watch, including the screws made of PEEK composite, the hollowed bezel, and the angled case buttressing, was meticulously optimized to achieve the perfect balance between durability and weight. The crown, crafted from anodized aluminum, ensures durability and smooth threading. To ensure overall torsional rigidity, finite element simulation was employed to assess the watch case. The fixed integral bars, machined from the same billet as the case, not only enhance rigidity but also weigh less than traditional steel spring bars.

As a result, the watch boasts an impressively lightweight head, weighing just 8.8 grams with manual winding, 10.8 grams with automatic winding, along with an additional 0.6 grams for the matching AZ31 buckle and 1.2 grams for the ‘record’ spec Alcantara strap. This translates to a total weight of 10.6 grams or 12.6 grams for a fully assembled, ready-to-wear timepiece… but don’t expect all that innovation to come cheap. The “World’s Lightest Watch” may be lighter than an AirTag, but it’s half the cost of a Tesla Model Y. With a brain-imploding asking price of 19500 Swiss Francs ($21,623 USD), you’re kind of better off buying a Patek Philippe instead.

The post “World’s Lightest Mechanical Watch” clocks in at a Stunning 8.8 Grams in Weight first appeared on Yanko Design.

The World’s Lightest Chair Weighs Only 3.66 Pounds

Posted on by

Chairs: they make a terrible noise when you pull them out from under the dining room table because they’re heavy and you’re too lazy or not strong enough to pick them up (both in my case). Enter the ULTRALEGGERA chair designed by Oskar Zięta, a chair that weighs only 1660 grams (~3.66 pounds), and is made entirely from lightweight aluminum. But will it be able to support me after Thanksgiving dinner?

THe ULTRALEGGERA features a laser-cut backrest and seat to further shave off weight and comes in four colors: natural aluminum, white, painted silver, and black. Unfortunately, for those interested that weren’t born with silver spoons in their mouths, what the chair lacks in weight more than makes up for in price, with a single chair costing over $900. For reference, I was able to buy about forty folding chairs for that, and still, nobody came to see my band play.

[via Dude I Want That]

World’s first carbon-fiber smartphone is ‘lighter than a bag of Doritos’

Posted on by




The term ‘Carbon Fiber Monocoque’ was, up until now, reserved mainly for automobiles and aeronautics. With the Carbon 1 Mk Ⅱ, that term now sees itself being used in the world of smartphones too. The material isn’t entirely new to smartphones. Makers and manufacturers have often used small amounts and trims of carbon-fiber in smartphones (mainly as a marketing feature), not just because it’s much more expensive than aluminum, but also because of its ability to block radio waves. Germany-based startup Carbon Mobile, however, has figured out a way to make a phone with the entire body crafted out of a single piece of carbon fiber.

The Carbon 1 Mk Ⅱ uses a monocoque design – which means the phone’s external body also comes with integrated supports on the inside, increasing its overall strength while reducing the number of parts needed to make the phone robust. This helps bring the Carbon 1 Mk Ⅱ’s weight down to a ridiculous 125 grams (a bag of Doritos weighs 150 grams), proving that most of a smartphone’s weight lies in its use of dense materials like metal and glass. While the carbon-fiber does drastically bring the weight of the phone down, it does raise the question regarding carbon fiber’s ability to block radio waves. To avoid this problem, the startup spent 4 years developing a new kind of carbon composite called HyRECM (Hybrid Radio Enabled Composite Material). Woven right into the carbon fibers is a special composite material that allows radio waves to pass through, giving the Carbon 1 Mk Ⅱ 4G LTE capabilities, along with WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, and NFC capabilities.

Its lightweight construction is reinforced by the fact that the Carbon 1 Mk Ⅱ is just 6.3mm in thickness. On the front, the phone comes with a sprawling 6-inch display (it does have bezels, however) and a 20MP camera, and on the back, a dual-camera setup gives your images clarity and depth, although don’t expect it to match up to a flagship phone like the iPhone 12 Pro. The phone runs Android 11 (as of Q2), and comes powered by a MEDIATEK P90​​ Octa-Core chip, with 8GB of RAM, 256GB internal storage, and a neat 3000mAh battery. Given how slim the phone is, it obviously doesn’t come with a headphone jack, although there is a fingerprint scanner built right into the edge of the phone, right below the volume button. The Carbon 1 Mk Ⅱ is up for pre-order with a relatively steep price of €799 ($952), although at that price, you’re pretty much paying for the world’s first carbon-fiber smartphone that’ll never ever succumb to #bendgate !!

Designer: Carbon Mobile

Astrobotic’s tiny Moon rover is on its way to NASA for testing

Posted on by
Astrobotic’s CubeRover is on its way to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the robotics company announced today. The CubeRover is designed to provide a mobile platform for scientific instruments on the surface of the Moon.CubeRover was co-developed with Ca...

Lenovo’s Legion Slim 7i gaming laptop weighs less than four pounds

Posted on by
As part of its holiday lineup, Lenovo is releasing a new Legion Slim 7i gaming laptop. According to the company, this is the slimmest chassis of any Legion laptop. The Slim 7i weighs in just under four pounds (1.86 kilograms). Like the Legion 5i and...

Google Gallery Go is a lightweight, offline Android photo manager

Posted on by
Google Photos is a great way to organize and store your photos, but it's a bit on the beefy side, taking up space and needing constant access to the cloud. So it's not ideal for people with mid-tier phones, or those who don't have a reliable data or...

The SIGMA fp is the ‘world’s smallest’ full-frame mirrorless camera

Posted on by
Sigma is known for being extra. It's pulled off stunts like a super wide-angle version of its super wide-angle camera, experimented with peculiar shapes and introduced lenses that let you shoot macro from a distance. Now, the company has unveiled the...

Razer launches its first lightweight Kraken headset

Posted on by
Razer's new ultra-light headset could be your well-priced answer to a heavy head and sweaty ears. The wired Kraken X weighs in at just 250 grams, comes with 7.1 surround sound and costs $50. Other features include memory foam ear cushions, glasses-fr...