Infinix’s $145 Android tablet is a reminder that cheap tablets were never impossible

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Walk into any Best Buy this holiday season and try to buy a decent tablet without spending a car payment. I’ll wait. The base iPad now starts at $449, the iPad mini sits at $599, and an 11-inch iPad Air will run you $749 before you’ve even glanced at a stylus. Meanwhile, over in the Philippines, Infinix just launched the XPAD 30 for PHP 9,149, which works out to about $145. For that you get an 11-inch 90Hz display, 4G LTE, a 7,200mAh battery, and room for a 1TB microSD card.

The XPAD 30 makes a pretty strong case that pricey tech is a business decision dressed up as destiny. Yes, memory chips got expensive this year. Yes, Apple says it has never seen component prices climb this fast. But a brand selling mostly to price-conscious buyers across Africa and Southeast Asia still figured out how to ship a big-screen Android tablet with LTE for less than a nice pair of earbuds. That tells me the $150 tablet is very much possible, and most brands have simply lost interest in making one. Sadly it’s a Philippines launch for now, so US readers will have to admire it from the comfort of their $449 iPads.

Designer: Infinix

Where Your $145 Actually Goes

The screen gets the biggest slice of the budget, and it shows. It’s an 11-inch 1,920 x 1,200 panel running at 90Hz, a faster refresh rate than the 60Hz screen on Apple’s $449 iPad. That difference shows up every time you scroll through a recipe or a 40-tab research spiral, because motion simply looks smoother. Infinix rates it at 450 nits of typical brightness, with TÜV Rheinland Dual Eye Protection certification for easier late-night YouTube sessions. Add a 7,200mAh battery, stereo speakers, and a SIM slot for 4G LTE, and you’ve got a tablet that works on a bus, in a classroom, or on a couch with spotty Wi-Fi.

The savings come out of the silicon. Infinix uses a MediaTek Helio G88, an older octa-core chip with Mali-G52 graphics, paired with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. That handles streaming, reading, video calls, and Google Docs just fine, though heavy 3D games will make it sweat. Infinix’s Extended RAM feature borrows storage as backup memory to reach 8GB, which keeps more apps open at once, just more slowly than real RAM would. The 1TB microSD slot means a whole season of downloaded shows, or a semester of lecture recordings, without touching internal storage.

Built for Homework, Priced for Students

Students are the obvious target, and the XPAD 30 ships with Android 16, Infinix’s XOS 16 skin, and AI tools like Snap for Answers, One-Tap Ask Screen, and AI Writing. A built-in Personalized Learning Center serves up more than 360,000 free educational videos and resources. Google Classroom, Play Books, and YouTube Kids come preinstalled, so the setup on day one is basically signing in. Parents get remote controls for screen time, apps, and content, which is the stuff families actually shop for. It comes in Lunar Lilac, Stellar Grey, and Cloudline Blue, three colors that look friendly without screaming “toy.”

Amazon’s Fire HD 10 is the closest thing US shoppers have at around $139, but it runs Fire OS, skips the Google Play Store, and nudges you toward Amazon’s storefront at every turn. Samsung’s Wi-Fi Galaxy Tab A11+ lists at $249.99, the 2026 Moto Pad matches it, and stepping up to cellular on the Samsung costs $279.99. The XPAD 30 gives you full Google Android, LTE, and a 90Hz screen for over $100 less. Want more? Infinix also sells the XPAD 30 Pro, with a sharper 2.5K display, a Helio G200 chip, and an 8,200mAh battery, for PHP 13,999, or roughly $220.

Cheap Tablets Are a Choice, and Most Brands Stopped Making It

Memory makers are having a record year, and consumers are footing the bill. As AI data centers hoover up high-bandwidth memory, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have shifted production toward it, squeezing supply of the regular RAM that phones and tablets use. SK Hynix just posted an 80% operating margin, and Micron earned $37.7 billion in a single quarter. Device makers passed those costs along, with Apple raising prices on everything from iPads to the Apple TV. Infinix’s parent company Transsion felt the same squeeze, with memory eating nearly half its cost of goods early this year, and it still shipped a $145 tablet.

Fifteen years ago this week, Amazon shipped the original Kindle Fire for $199, and Google matched that price with the Nexus 7 the following summer. A cheap, capable tablet was the default back then, a gadget you could gift without a second thought. The XPAD 30 proves that default can still exist in 2026, as long as a company decides it wants to make one. It’s available now in the Philippines through Infinix’s official stores on Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop, with a free protective case while stocks last. The rest of the industry could take notes, though I suspect they’d rather take your $449.

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This 3D-Printed Chair Turns Its Base Into a Bookshelf

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The Kino Chair has a useful surprise below its seat: a shelf built into the structure. Designed by Barcelona-based Pablo Castillo and produced by Decibel in New Jersey, the chair pairs a cantilevered seat with a lower surface for books and everyday objects. It’s a made-to-order piece of furniture, manufactured using large-format robotic 3D printing, rather than a concept waiting for a production partner.

Seen from the side, Kino’s construction becomes particularly readable. Broad, blade-like supports replace the familiar arrangement of four separate legs. The seat projects forward, while the lower shelf bridges the structure beneath it, framing an opening between the two horizontal surfaces. A gently curved back rises above this compact arrangement. The silhouette remains recognizable as a chair, even as the space underneath becomes a defining part of its appearance.

Designer: Pablo Castillo for Decibel

Decibel describes the lower shelf as part of the chair’s structure, giving it a job beyond storage. That integration is what makes Kino interesting. There’s no basket suspended under the seat or separate compartment attached afterward. Seat, shelf, and back emerge as one continuous form, with the extra surface following the same visual language as the rest of the chair.

For a reader, that shelf suggests somewhere to leave a paperback without surrendering the seat itself. It could also accommodate a small collection of objects when the chair isn’t occupied. Its position makes it more of a secondary perch than a substitute for accessible side-table storage. Reaching beneath a seat is a different interaction from placing something beside you, and Kino’s appeal depends partly on whether that tradeoff suits your habits.

Decibel’s manufacturing process uses a robot to deposit melted polymer or composite pellets along a programmed path, building the object layer by layer. On Kino, fine parallel ridges remain visible across the broad surfaces. Those lines give the otherwise restrained form a close-range texture, letting the manufacturing method register without requiring an elaborate shape to advertise it. The workshop photographs show that texture on a physical chair beside the production equipment.

Material choice needs attention when ordering. Decibel’s Editions page specifies Cellulose PLA for indoor use and lists recycled PETG as an outdoor option. Moss and Sand are the listed colors, with pricing at $950. Buyers should confirm the formulation for their intended setting rather than assume every version has the same exposure requirements.

Decibel also asks customers to request seat height, dimensioned drawings, and load ratings before specifying Kino. Those details matter more than its sculptural outline when fitting it to a dining table. The strongest design move remains straightforward: making the chair’s supporting structure useful even when nobody is sitting on it.

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URWERK UR-101 Green Mamba gives its wandering-hour watch an emerald makeover

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Most watches ask you to read time at a glance, but URWERK prefers to make you follow the process. Its wandering-hours display replaces familiar hands with moving hour satellites that travel across a curved minute track, turning an everyday function into a mechanical performance. First introduced with the brand’s early creations, the concept returns in a striking new guise with the URWERK UR-101 Green Mamba.

Nearly three decades after the original UR-101 made its debut in 1997, the Geneva-based independent watchmaker gives the foundational model a contemporary identity through a dark exterior and vivid emerald-green accents. The result is a limited-edition mechanical timepiece that preserves the original’s unconventional character while introducing a sharper visual identity.

Designer: URWERK

Green Mamba retains the distinctive asymmetrical architecture of the original, featuring a 41mm stainless steel case finished in matte black PVD. Measuring 10.3mm thick, the case has an angular profile that gives the watch a technical, almost industrial appearance. The black treatment extends to the caseback, allowing the contrasting green time display to become the visual focus. A glare-proofed, metallised sapphire crystal protects the unconventional dial, while the case offers water resistance of 30 metres (3 ATM).

Rather than relying on conventional hands, URWERK uses its signature wandering-hours mechanism to indicate the time. The display consists of two-hour satellites mounted on a rotating carousel. Each satellite carries an hour numeral and moves across a semicircular, 180-degree minute track. As the active satellite travels from left to right, its position indicates the minutes, while the numeral identifies the current hour. Once it completes its journey across the scale, the second satellite takes over, continuing the sequence.

The emerald-green minute track provides a strong contrast against the black surroundings, giving the watch its Green Mamba identity. Both the hour and minute markers are treated with Super-LumiNova, ensuring visibility in low-light conditions. The display is intentionally minimal, leaving the moving satellites and coloured track to define the watch’s character without unnecessary visual elements.

Powering the timepiece is the automatic UR-1.01V calibre, based on a Vaucher Manufacture movement. Operating at 28,800 vibrations per hour (4Hz), the mechanism incorporates 28 jewels and delivers a power reserve of 48 hours. Its construction combines copper, brass and ARCAP P40 components, with finishing details that include snailing, sandblasting and satin-brushing. Chamfered screw heads add another layer of attention to the movement’s mechanical presentation.

The watch is paired with a black rubber strap featuring a black calfskin lining and secured by a black DLC-coated steel pin buckle. This understated combination maintains the monochromatic appearance of the case while keeping the emerald display prominent. Limited to just 50 pieces worldwide, the URWERK UR-101 Green Mamba is priced at CHF 33,000 ($39,370) excluding taxes.

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The CAIM1 3D Printed Camera puts a security chip behind your photos as proof against AI deepfakes

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Every viral video now comes with a free side of doubt. You see a cat dancing to that Nicole Kidman song, or a deepfake meme of Jensen Huang with his Asian baddie girlfriend, and before you even laugh, your brain wonders whether the rest of the world can genuinely tell the difference between the real world and AI. Josh Cowell got tired of wondering. His startup, Caimera, built CAIM1, a prototype camera that cryptographically signs every photo and 4K clip the moment you hit record. The name stands for Counter Artificial Intelligence Machine 1, and its whole job is proving you were actually there.

It also looks like a chocolate bar that took up photography. The beige and brown shell is 3D printed in Prusament PETG using Noctua’s signature colors, a nod to the Austrian fan maker whose tiny 40mm NF-A4x10 keeps the internals from overheating. A Micro Four Thirds sensor sits behind a native Sony E-mount, and an auditable TROPIC01 security chip from Prague’s Tropic Square handles the signing. Want proof you can hold? CAIM1 can print a paper receipt for your verified footage, and the first batch is targeted for early 2027, with pricing still under wraps.

Designer: Josh Cowell (Caimera)

One Tiny Noctua Fan Keeps CAIM1 From Cooking Itself

Recording 4K at a targeted 60fps while generating cryptographic proofs on the fly pushes CAIM1’s processors hard, and passive heatsinks alone couldn’t keep up. Without active airflow, the chips would throttle and start dropping frames. The fix is a single Noctua NF-A4x10 5V PWM, roughly 1.6 x 1.6 x 0.4 inches (40 x 40 x 10mm), sitting directly behind the sensor on anti-vibration mounts. Air enters through front vents, crosses the sensor’s alloy backplate, passes through the fan, then sweeps over the CPU heatsinks before exiting the side. One fan handling both heat sources saves space, saves battery, and removes a second part that could rattle.

Picking the 5V version spared the team a step-up converter, which would have eaten board space, drained the battery, and injected electrical noise right next to the image sensor. Cowell went further and redesigned the entire main circuit board around the Noctua, relocating major components to make it fit. The fan also had to stay quiet enough to keep its hum off the onboard audio, and smooth enough that micro-vibrations wouldn’t smear footage with motion blur or rolling-shutter wobble. The setup got a brutal exam at the Nürburgring in June, where a heatwave pushed temperatures to 100°F (38°C). CAIM1 held up better than the team’s phones, which kept quitting video recording from the heat.

Bring Your Own Lens, Print Your Own Body

A Sony E-mount bolted in front of a Micro Four Thirds sensor sounds like a mismatch until you check the flange distance, the gap between a lens mount and the sensor. E-mount uses 18mm and Micro Four Thirds uses 19.25mm, so the two systems are practically neighbors. Every E-mount lens throws an image circle sized for a larger sensor, so it covers Micro Four Thirds easily at a 2x crop. The Zeiss Batis 25mm seen on the prototype frames like a 50mm on full frame, the classic walk-around field of view. Caimera has also shot through Kowa machine vision lenses and an adapted Cosmicar 25mm f/1.4, a vintage TV camera lens.

PETG beat PLA for the shell because PLA softens near hot exhaust, while PETG holds its shape up to roughly 154 to 167°F (68 to 75°C). Injection molding would have locked the design into steel tooling before the thermals were proven, so printing lets the team rework panels and ducting overnight. Cowell says a field shooter’s feedback can become a freshly printed replacement part within a couple of hours. You can spot that philosophy all over the body, from the ribbed grip and slotted cooling gills to the brass threaded insert and faint layer lines. The “004” stamped on the front reads like a serial number from a small prototype fleet, worn proudly.

Open Silicon in a Category That Asks You to Trust It

Leica got here first with the M11-P in 2023, a $9,195 rangefinder that signs photos with C2PA Content Credentials, the industry standard for tamper-evident image metadata. Nikon added the same feature to the Z6III through firmware in August 2025, then revoked every certificate after a researcher got the camera to sign images it never took. Canon announced its own authenticity system in May 2026, and Google’s Pixel 10 ships with Content Credentials built in. Cowell argues that closed security chips, Apple’s secure enclave included, ask you to take one corporation’s word for it. Tropic Square publishes TROPIC01’s design instead, so researchers and the public can audit it themselves.

That chip already guards the keys inside Trezor’s Safe 7 crypto wallet, and Ledger’s Donjon security team has audited it publicly. CAIM1 anchors each proof to decentralized storage, so verification lives on a public record instead of a single company’s servers. Caimera hasn’t announced pricing or US availability, and the first production batch is targeted for Q1 2027, with early access signups open now at caimera.one. The big camera makers bolted authenticity onto existing flagships, while Caimera built an entire beige and brown body around it. For over a century, a photograph served as its own receipt, and CAIM1 simply prints one out for you.

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All I want for Christmas is this unnecessarily delightful Lego snow globe

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LEGO Ideas has a snow globe situation going on, and I’m fully here for it. ItzEthqn’s trio of Christmas globes cleared 10,000 supporters in June and now sits in LEGO’s review queue, waiting to hear whether it becomes a real box. Meanwhile, The Brick Artist has resubmitted the Christmas Snow Globe, a build where a lever on the back spins the entire scene inside the dome. Two fan-made globes in the pipeline at once feels like a trend. It also feels like LEGO’s design team should start stocking up on clear parts.

LEGO’s own take on the format is set 40223, a small promotional Snowglobe with Santa, a tree, a secret gift drawer, and fourteen white round tiles that rattled around as snow when you shook it. The Brick Artist swaps shaking for spinning, which is great news for anyone whose snow globes usually end up on the floor. The original Christmas Snow Globe arrived on LEGO Ideas in late 2025 under a seamless clear sphere, with a crank poking out of its base. This November’s version rebuilds the dome from scratch and adds Santa to the cast. Down on the floor, a nutcracker stands guard over the gifts like a tiny palace guard who drew the holiday shift.

Designer: The Brick Artist

Clear curved panels stacked in two tiers now form the dome, joined at the waist by a transparent ring and finished with a flat cap of clear studs. The first version’s sphere looked gorgeous in renders, but a flawless glass bubble is hard to find in a parts catalog, and LEGO Ideas builds are expected to use real LEGO elements. The new dome shows every seam, and I’ve come around to that, since it reads honestly as something you snapped together yourself. Its taller, bell-jar silhouette also nods to the Victorian glass domes people once placed over clocks and wax flowers. That extra height turns out to be Santa’s new apartment.

The red base carries over from the first version, built as a drum of curved bricks stacked in layered bands that look like a lacquered music box. A gold snowflake element sits front and center as a medallion, while holly wreaths dotted with red round plates for berries flank each side. A thin gold-toned band separates the drum from the dome, framing it like the bezel around a watch crystal. Pull the lever on the back and an internal gear mechanism rotates everything inside, though the builder hasn’t published the gear layout. The same hand-powered idea drove The Brick Artist’s Halloween Snow Globe in October, which spun a creaky graveyard instead of a Christmas tree.

My favorite detail, though, is Santa himself. The builder’s description jokes that even Santa deserves a snow globe of his own, and here he is, sack in hand, leaning into the tree to finish the decorating. Parking him on one side of the tree means the spin can work as a reveal, bringing him around into view as you turn the lever. He also gives the scene scale, since a minifig instantly tells you how tall that tree really is. And he answers the eternal question of who decorates Santa’s tree, which apparently is Santa, on a deadline.

The floor beneath the tree is crowded with toys, and the nutcracker leads the lineup in his red coat and tall black hat. Next to him sit a classic wooden train, a toy rocket ready for takeoff, and a remote-controlled airplane, with wrapped presents tucked into every gap. That mix spans roughly a century of Christmas mornings, from hand-carved wood to radio control. Up top, the tree is layered from green slopes studded with round baubles in red, gold, and teal, plus white star tiles and a translucent yellow snowflake topper. Every turn of the lever lands on a different gift, which is the whole point of a scene that rotates.

BrickAbe’s Lo-Fi Girl snow globe packed a two-story apartment inside its dome, and Nendo’s Invisible Snow Globe hid its scene in plain sight until the snow settled on it. The Brick Artist’s contribution to the genre is motion, which turns a shelf ornament into something you actually reach for. LEGO Ideas has already shown it will green-light Christmas, with 21330 Home Alone in its back catalog and a National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation set on the way. Both of those are big, movie-licensed builds. A compact, spinning globe would give fans a holiday set that fits on a desk instead of eating a whole shelf.

The Christmas Snow Globe went up on LEGO Ideas on November 9, 2026, and at the time of writing it has 678 supporters with 421 days left to reach the 1K milestone. LEGO Ideas runs on community votes: fans submit builds, supporters pile up, and LEGO reviews the ones that reach 10,000. Head to the LEGO Ideas page and give it your vote so this globe can follow ItzEthqn’s into the queue. Two snow globes in review would make for a very merry meeting in Billund. Santa has waited all year for a globe of his own, after all, and he clearly has places to be by the 24th.

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Pebblebee’s Holiday Toast Trackers Bring Cranberry and Champagne to Your Keychain

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Keys spend enough time on display to deserve something better than another anonymous black tag. Pebblebee’s Holiday Toast edition gives its Clip 5 tracker two seasonal finishes, Cranberry and Champagne, without changing the hardware underneath. At $34.99 each, they’re small accessories for keeping track of bags and keys, with colors that could help you distinguish your belongings before you’ve even opened an app.

The rounded body has a flat lower edge and an integrated attachment loop, giving the tracker a teardrop outline rather than a perfect circle. A beveled border frames the broad face, while narrow LED strips curve around the sides. At 1.77 inches long and 1.49 inches wide, it’s a small addition to a keychain, with the included keyring carabiner keeping it attached.

Designer: Pebblebee

Cranberry brings a deep red to the familiar shape, while Champagne takes a quieter, creamy route. That contrast could be useful in a household where everyone’s keys land in the same bowl. Pick one for your everyday set and another for the spare, or coordinate the tracker with a favorite bag rather than immediately buying a separate cover to disguise the little gadget.

The Clip 5 works with Apple’s Find My or Google’s Find Hub, using one network at a time. That lets you match it to your phone without choosing a permanently Apple-only or Android-only accessory. Changing networks requires a reset, though, so the shared compatibility doesn’t mean both systems can follow the same tag simultaneously when different people borrow the same set of keys.

For a search closer to home, sound and flashing LEDs offer clues beyond a dot on a map. You might hear the tag beneath a cushion or notice its light beside a chair. The relationship works in reverse, too: enable Phone Finder in the Pebblebee app, and a double-press of the tracker’s button makes your nearby phone ring instead of the tag.

USB-C charging avoids the ritual of finding replacement coin cells, although there’s no charging cable in the box. Pebblebee claims up to 12 months between charges, depending on use, which should keep that port out of your daily routine. The cable needs to come out, preferably before you discover that the missing keys are attached to a tracker with an empty battery.

The same button also supports Alert, with rapid presses triggering a siren and strobe. Pebblebee’s free tier sends a one-time location message to one trusted contact through its app, rather than continuously sharing your movements. Setup and a connected phone with data are required for that notification. It’s an additional function on your keychain, not a standalone emergency communicator with its own connection.

Pebblebee says these Evercolor finishes won’t return once their limited run is gone. That’s a reason to choose a color carefully, not a reason to retire a perfectly functional tracker. Cranberry and Champagne don’t improve the finding hardware, but they do change something you see every day. The seasonal reference can fade after December, while the tag keeps its place beside your keys.

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