Author Archives: JC Torres

You Can Feel Van Gogh’s Starry Night on This $2,399 MSI Laptop

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Laptop aesthetics have grown considerably more ambitious over the past few years. Brands that once shipped identical black or silver slabs have started exploring textures, colorways, and material finishes with more intention. Most of these efforts stop at surface level: a matte coating here, an embossed pattern there. Every so often, though, something arrives that treats the hardware itself as a meaningful design object rather than just a functional appliance with a prettier lid.

The MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Van Gogh Edition is part of MSI’s Artisan Collection, a line that takes the collaboration between technology and fine art more seriously than most. This particular edition draws from two of Van Gogh’s most recognizable nightscapes: Starry Night Over the Rhône and The Starry Night. The two paintings carry different emotional temperatures, one calm and reflective, the other intense and restless, and that contrast is embedded into the laptop’s design language through varying blue tones, textures, and finishes across the chassis.

Designer: MSI

The lid carries a textured rendering of Starry Night Over the Rhône that you can feel with your fingertips, a tactile detail that distinguishes it from the flat printed graphics that typically pass for special editions in the category. The keyboard deck continues the theme with a deep blue surface and golden key legends that, in low light, appear illuminated like a reflection on the Rhône itself. It’s a more cohesive design treatment than most art collaborations of this type manage to deliver.

Beneath that, the hardware doesn’t ask you to compromise for the art. The machine runs on Intel’s Core Ultra X9 378H processor, paired with an Intel Arc B390 GPU,32 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 1TB SSD. The 14-inch OLED touchscreen covers 100% DCI-P3 at 1920×1200 resolution and is certified for Low Blue Light and flicker-free output. At 11.9mm at its thinnest point and 1.37 kg, the aluminum chassis keeps the whole thing genuinely light.

The 2-in-1 hinge lets the screen fold flat, which makes the MSI Nano Pen feel considerably more relevant than on a conventional convertible. The stylus lives in a dedicated groove along the chassis bottom and pairs via Bluetooth. For quick sketching, note-taking during meetings, or marking up documents in presentation mode, it’s a more integrated solution than the sticky-magnet approach most competitors use.

The laptop qualifies as a Copilot+ PC, with a 50 TOPS NPU handling AI tasks locally, alongside Live Captions, AI Noise Cancellation, and Windows Copilot. Battery life is rated at over 30 hours from the 81 Whr cell, with 100W Power Delivery fast charging support. Connectivity covers dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, HDMI 2.1, and Wi-Fi 7. Audio comes from a four-speaker setup combining two 2W tweeters and two 2W woofers with DTS processing.

The Van Gogh Edition ships with an exclusive themed accessories bundle and is priced at $2,399. That’s a meaningful premium over the base Prestige 14 Flip AI+, which starts around $1,699 without the art treatment. The gap isn’t just cosmetic; the Van Gogh Edition represents the top configuration of the line, and the design treatment alone makes it a genuinely different object to own and carry.

For a category that doesn’t often justify that kind of price separation, the Artisan Collection at least makes the argument clearly. The spec sheet is strong enough to hold up in any direct comparison, and the hardware behind the painting doesn’t need the art to justify itself.

The post You Can Feel Van Gogh’s Starry Night on This $2,399 MSI Laptop first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Clock Looks Like It’s Sinking Into a Desk and It’s Not a Trick

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Clock design hasn’t changed much in its fundamentals for generations. The round face, the numbered ring, the hands that sweep from hour to hour, these conventions are so deeply embedded that most people don’t question them. The clock is a functional object, and like most functional objects, its form tends to follow a well-established script. Most designers accept that arrangement. The rare few who don’t tend to produce something genuinely worth paying attention to.

The Sinking Clock started as a self-imposed creative exercise: how much could you distort or take away from a clock without costing it the ability to tell time? That question became a limited-edition timepiece that looks exactly as its name suggests, as if a conventional tabletop clock were being absorbed into the flat surface it’s sitting on, caught mid-sink somewhere between this world and whatever lies below it.

Designer: Ross McBride

That effect isn’t achieved through software or projection. The clock’s own form is sculpted to create the impression that it’s disappearing into the surface it rests on. The lower portion dissolves into the plane of the desk while the readable face stays above. It’s deliberately disorienting, giving you the time while making you question what you’re actually looking at. The object reads as a clock and as something else entirely at once.

The philosophy behind it is that a clock doesn’t need to announce itself. Most homes and offices already have enough of them, ticking as quiet reminders of every passing hour. The intent was to make something that gives you the time when you need it but otherwise recedes, functioning more as a kinetic object than a conventional instrument. It’s there when you need it and something quieter when you don’t.

The body is constructed from gold PVD steel, giving it a warm finish that sits somewhere between industrial and refined. The movement is quartz and battery-operated, with nothing to wind and nothing to plug in. At 19.14cm x 15.39cm x 13.37cm, it fits comfortably on a desk or nightstand without dominating the space around it. Each piece is handmade to order, numbered, and can be personalized, meaning no two feel entirely alike.

On a bedside table, it does something most clocks don’t: it draws attention not for how loudly it announces the time, but for how strangely it sits there. On a desk, the same thing happens. You notice it, look closer, and the question of how it works starts to matter more than whatever hour it’s currently showing. That quality is either an annoyance or a distinction, depending on how much you appreciate being puzzled by an object.

The Sinking Clock is a handmade piece in an era when handmade things are genuinely rare in the product world, shaped by mid-century American design sensibility and Japanese minimalism in equal measure. The result doesn’t feel like either tradition directly, which is part of what makes it difficult to place in any familiar category. For a clock, that might be the most interesting thing it can be: useful and genuinely puzzling at the same time.

The post This Clock Looks Like It’s Sinking Into a Desk and It’s Not a Trick first appeared on Yanko Design.

You Don’t Have a Desk Anymore and This Leitz Hanging Organizer Gets It

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Hot-desking has quietly redefined what it means to have a workspace. Workers no longer have a corner to call their own; they arrive, claim a free surface, settle in, and pack everything back into a locker at the end of the day. It can feel like camping at your own job, and the accessories being designed around it reflect just how thoroughly the modern office has shifted.

Leitz’s Hanging Desk Organizer addresses one of the most specific problems of that routine: the transition from locker to desk. The idea is fairly simple. The organizer sits in a locker overnight, gets carried to whichever surface is free in the morning, and clips onto the desk’s edge so everything stays within reach without claiming more surface area than necessary. It’s designed for a habit that isn’t going away.

Designer: Leitz

The hanging mechanism is the core of the design. A metal bracket with a patent-pending adjustment system grips the desk’s edge and can be sized to accommodate different tabletop thicknesses, from 1.8cm to 5cm. That range covers most modern slab desks, so the fit tends to be secure regardless of the office furniture. No tools, no adhesive, nothing to set up at the start of each day.

Inside, there are two main compartments roomy enough to fit a laptop, a compact keyboard, a notebook, a water bottle, and a phone. Three elastic holders along the interior manage pens and cables, and a small removable tray corrals the smaller items that tend to get lost at the bottom of any bag. The tray lifts out and can sit flat on the desk surface independently while you work.

The beech-wood handle makes the carry feel intentional rather than makeshift. Between the locker and the desk, or between floors if your building has multiple shared spaces, you’re carrying something that behaves more like a proper tote than a repurposed storage box. At 1.2kg empty, it’s light enough to carry fully loaded, and the 7.5kg capacity means it comfortably handles a full day’s worth of gear.

The body is made from Thermofelt, which looks and feels like conventional felt but is actually a heat-formed polyester material made from 100% recycled post-consumer plastic. It gives the organizer a softer, more considered presence than the hard plastic or nylon you’d normally find in office accessories, and it holds its shape well enough to stay structured even when fully loaded. Packaging is plastic-free, in keeping with the material choice.

At the end of the workday, the organizer comes off the desk, goes back in the locker, and takes up a footprint of 38cm x 19cm x 30cm, compact enough for most standard office lockers. The design keeps its usefulness outside the office too; arts and crafts supplies, hobby gear, or anything else that needs to stay organized and mobile fits the same brief just as well.

There isn’t much ceremony to it. You hang it on the desk, get to work, take it down, and put it back in the locker when the day’s over. That’s the whole point. The hot-desking workplace turned the act of setting up for the day into a ritual of its own, and the objects being designed around it are starting to feel like they belong there.

The post You Don’t Have a Desk Anymore and This Leitz Hanging Organizer Gets It first appeared on Yanko Design.

This $99 Trackball Has Gesture Controls That Work Without Any Software

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The computer peripheral market has always been more experimental at its edges than in the mainstream. Ergonomic trackballs, in particular, have attracted a devoted following among power users, but the options tend to cluster at two extremes: consumer-facing products with locked-down firmware, and niche open-source hardware that trades polished finish for deep customizability. Finding something that genuinely does both has rarely been straightforward.

Ploopy’s Adept trackball made a compelling case for the latter category, earning a loyal following with its open-source, 3D-printed design and QMK compatibility. But it always felt like it had more to say. Its circuit board had always reserved space for two more switches that never made it to production, and the base had slots for a wrist rest that never materialized. The A+ is that unfinished story, now finished.

Designer: Ploopy

The most visible addition is the button count. The Adept had six; the A+ has eight, two of which also function as knobs. Out of the box, the knobs handle high-resolution vertical and horizontal scrolling, but both are fully reprogrammable for other functions. That dual-purpose approach keeps navigation and control within a single hand without needing a separate scroll wheel or accessory sitting alongside it.

The gesture system is arguably the more interesting addition. Hold a button and flick the ball in any of eight directions, and the device fires a command. By default, the left knob activates cut, copy, paste, desktop switching, and media controls. For someone who lives inside a browser and a text editor all day, that’s a significant amount of functionality without ever lifting a hand off the device.

Layers add another dimension. The A+ has two: a navigation layer for everyday use and a control layer accessed via the right knob. The control layer handles on-device configuration, covering left-hand mode switching, toggling between high-resolution and stepped scrolling, and other adjustments. It’s the first trackball to bring this kind of layered behavior, working entirely without any software running on the host computer. There are also two bright LEDs that can be used to visually tell you what layer you’re on without having to rely on some embedded screen.

The detachable wrist rest is another long-promised feature that finally arrives with the A+. It slots in or out during use and can be screwed on permanently if preferred. The device stays ambidextrous throughout, and its 3D-printed shell means the community can print modified bodies, alter the layout, or swap in custom colors. That kind of adaptability isn’t an afterthought; it’s part of how the whole thing is designed.

The Pixart PMW-3360 sensor carries over from the Adept, running at a 1,000Hz polling rate with the tracking accuracy that has made it a standard for performance-oriented pointing devices. Omron D2LS-21 switches handle the physical buttons. The firmware remains QMK, configurable through VIA, with all design files, firmware, and assembly instructions freely available on GitHub. Kits start at $99 CAD.

The post This $99 Trackball Has Gesture Controls That Work Without Any Software first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Desk Lamp Puts a Spotlight in a Ring Light With One Knob

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Desk lighting has long been a compromise between task and atmosphere. Professional lamps tend to lean one way or the other: too directional and harsh for extended use, or too diffuse to support fine detail work. A lamp that’s good for examining physical samples often isn’t comfortable over long stretches, and one that’s gentle on the eyes doesn’t always deliver when you need a hard, directed beam.

The Focus Light is a desktop lamp concept built around a different premise. Rather than committing to one kind of output, it combines two independent light sources into a single lamp head, giving the user the ability to shift between a precise, concentrated beam and a broad ambient glow, or run both at once. All of it’s controlled by a single rotary knob, and there aren’t any menus, apps, or extra switches involved.

Designers: Zhen Yang, Siting Lin

The lamp head is organized concentrically: an outer ring delivers ambient light while a central optical lens handles the focused beam. That layout has both functional and visual logic to it. Both sources sit in deliberate, concentric relation to each other, and the overall form looks as precise as it performs. The whole thing is finished in space gray metal, which lends it a professional, precision-tool character.

Control comes from a rotary knob on top, marked with a red indicator line. Rotating it 15 degrees activates focusing mode, sending a tight, concentrated beam straight down. At 30 degrees, the lamp shifts into diffusing mode, spreading the output into something closer to fill light. Push it to 60 degrees, and both sources run simultaneously, combining the central spot with the ambient ring for a layered workspace light.

For detailed hands-on tasks, being able to shift between modes without touching an app or dimmer panel makes a real difference. An illustrator tracing fine lines benefits from the precision of the focused beam, but that same beam creates harsh contrast against a dark surrounding surface. Bringing in the ambient ring softens that contrast, and having both running at once makes moving between close-up precision work and wider desk visibility much more seamless.

The same flexibility serves anyone who switches between different types of work at the same desk. Reading calls for something even and non-glare; marking up documents or working with small physical components benefits from a harder, more directed light. The Focus Light doesn’t ask the user to swap lamps or reposition the arm for each shift. The knob handles it, and the change is immediate.

The physical form reflects the precision the lamp is meant to support. The lamp head is a clean disc with radiating heat fins arranged around the inner lens assembly, and the arm connects at a ball joint that allows repositioning without loosening a series of screws. A threaded desk clamp handles the mounting, so it doesn’t demand a grommet hole or take up surface area with a weighted base.

What stands out about the concept isn’t just the dual-source setup, but that a single physical control manages both. There’s no menu to scroll, no app to open. The red indicator on the knob tells you exactly where you are, and the three positions are distinct enough that you’d find your way back to any of them by feel after just a few days.

The post This Desk Lamp Puts a Spotlight in a Ring Light With One Knob first appeared on Yanko Design.

Droplet Finally Built the Audio Amplifier for Your Home Fragrance

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Home fragrance, for the most part, has been a market of compromises. Scented candles are warm and atmospheric but burn through a fragrance’s more delicate top notes in the process, gone with the smoke. Reed diffusers take a gentler approach but dilute the oil with water, delivering something noticeably thinner than what was originally intended. Neither gives much meaningful control over how much scent actually fills a space.

Droplet’s Scent Amplifier takes a fundamentally different approach, one that borrows more from audio than from aromatherapy. The idea is to treat scent the way a good amplifier treats sound: amplify it faithfully without altering what’s already there. Instead of heat or water, the device uses pressurized air to atomize neat fragrance oil into micro-particles, so what reaches you is the fragrance exactly as it was composed.

Designer: Droplet

That analogy isn’t just conceptual; the physical form carries it well, too. The Scent Amplifier is built around a walnut-toned wooden base, with a hand-blown crystal glass vessel sitting on top that’s shaped much like a vintage light bulb. A single oxidized silver dial handles all the control. When switched on, the base emits a warm, tungsten-like glow that rounds out the valve-amp look completely.

Unlike most home-fragrance gadgets that quietly get shuffled out of sight, this one’s meant to be displayed. Droplet designed it to sit in a living space as a sculptural object rather than pass as a functional appliance. And it holds up to that treatment. It has the quiet confidence of something that belongs in a room rather than something that just happens to be sitting in one.

Using it is simple enough. Fill the glass vessel with oil, turn the dial to the preferred level, and the device handles the rest. It diffuses fragrance for three minutes, rests for two, and repeats, keeping the scent consistent rather than releasing it all at once. Only four to six drops are needed for an average-sized room, and a 10ml bottle lasts roughly a month.

On a full USB-C charge, it runs for up to 15 hours of cordless diffusion, which means it isn’t tied to a wall socket or any fixed spot. That’s a more practical detail than it might seem. You can move it to the bedroom before winding down for the night, or take it out of the study when you’re done working, without losing anything.

The six fragrance oils that pair with it were developed in Grasse, France, essentially the historical heartland of perfumery. The range covers floral, fruity, citrus, earthy, and woody profiles, each tied to a specific place in the world. You can go from fig leaf and cedarwood to orange blossom and tuberose, or something brighter like wild berry and bergamot, without much fuss. All six are vegan and cruelty-free.

The glass vessel is refillable, and switching between scents takes under a minute with no residue left behind. The Scent Amplifier costs £80 on its own, with the full six-oil set running £125. That’s not bad for something that does away with all the usual trade-offs, keeps the fragrance pure, and looks good enough on a sideboard that you’d actually want to leave it out.

The post Droplet Finally Built the Audio Amplifier for Your Home Fragrance first appeared on Yanko Design.

ESR Atelier Magnetic iPhone 17 Pro Max Case Review: Vegan Leather Done Right

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PROS:


  • Refined and elegant aesthetic with no visible magnetic ring

  • Animal-free silicone-based vegan leather with soft, warm feel

  • Built-in FlexStand doubles as camera guard when closed

  • Military-grade protection that stays out of sight

CONS:


  • Kickstand doesn't support full vertical placement

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The ESR Atelier Magnetic Case is protection that's actually worth touching.

Phone cases occupy a strange middle ground in the accessories market. The more protective options tend to look utilitarian, all rugged textures and chunky frames that trade elegance for toughness. The ones that do look refined often use faux leather, which can stain, fade, or scuff with daily handling. Finding something that sits comfortably between both worlds has always been easier said than done.

ESR’s Atelier Magnetic Case for the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max tries to answer that question. It’s the brand’s first vegan leather iPhone case, built from a silicone-based material that carries the soft, warm feel of leather without the upkeep that usually comes with it. Paired with an integrated FlexStand, strong MagSafe magnets, and layered protection, it feels more personal and more resolved than a typical protective shell. But is it all just marketing speak, or does it really pack more than what our eyes, and hands, perceive? We slap this bold new case on our large iPhone to find out.

Designer: ESR

Click Here to Buy Now: $45.99

Aesthetics

The ESR Atelier’s back is its most immediate and telling detail. The silicone-based vegan leather carries a refined grain texture and a warmth to the touch that doesn’t register as plasticky or clinical, the way many textured phone cases can. It’s the kind of surface that encourages contact rather than avoiding it, settling naturally into the hand in a way that plain silicone and polycarbonate cases rarely manage.

The leather finish is only part of what sets the back apart. Equally notable is what’s absent. Many MagSafe-compatible cases leave a visible circular ring pattern on their backs, a telltale sign of the magnets beneath. The Atelier keeps its rear surface completely smooth and unbroken, with no ring to interrupt the leather. That absence alone makes the overall look feel more cohesive and considered.

One of the more practical arguments for the Atelier’s vegan leather material is longevity. Designed for long-lasting everyday use, the material resists scratches, wear, and fading while maintaining its appearance over time. Traditional faux leather cases often start showing their age within months from regular holding and pocket wear, which means the case is likely to look considerably better after a year of daily handling than many alternatives in the same category.

An anti-fouling surface coating and stain-resistant frame treatment add to that picture. Spills and smudges wipe away easily with a soft cloth, without needing specialized cleaning products. This silicone-based vegan leather, similar to the material pioneered in high-contact automotive interior surfaces, is designed to maintain its appearance under the kind of daily conditions that would visibly wear down most conventional leather finishes over time.

The camera surround anchors the Atelier’s visual identity while adding practical function. Rather than hiding the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s large camera island behind a flush cutout, ESR frames it with a distinctive metallic guard that immediately draws the eye and doubles as a camera-protecting stand. In its closed position, the guard sits flat and clean, giving the case a confident, top-weighted silhouette. When opened, it provides a convenient way to prop up the phone. It’s a design detail that does more than make the Atelier stand out; it makes the case stand out with purpose.

Running a thumb along the side reveals what the back suggests: the Atelier is more carefully constructed than it might initially seem. The TPU frame has a subtle micro-texture that feels slightly different from the smoother leather panel, providing grip without calling attention to itself. That material contrast is understated, but it adds some welcome depth to what is otherwise a clean and quiet form.

Two colors were available for this review, Black and Deep Burgundy, and both make a strong case for the Atelier’s design language. Black keeps things understated and versatile, almost disappearing as a deliberate choice. Deep Burgundy, on the other hand, is far more expressive, with a rich, wine-like tone that brings out the warmth and softness of the vegan leather even more.

The Atelier rounds out its lineup with four colors in total, Light Gray and Misty Blue joining the Black and Deep Burgundy reviewed here. The palette is deliberately quiet and wear-anywhere, skipping bold or trend-chasing tones in favor of shades that feel considered rather than seasonal. That restraint runs through the whole design, where nothing on the surface feels accidental or arbitrarily decorative.

Ergonomics

Slipping the Atelier onto the iPhone 17 Pro Max for the first time, the fit is snug and confident. The case doesn’t shift or creak under pressure, and the soft microfiber lining helps the phone slide in cleanly. Button access is well handled, with the case’s profile keeping all controls accessible and tactile, so there’s no need to press hard through a thick wall of material just to adjust volume.

ESR includes a built-in Camera Control cover on the case’s side, a detail that’s easy to overlook but matters for anyone using that feature regularly. The cover preserves access without leaving an awkward gap in the frame. For a phone this size, the Atelier also adds enough grip to make single-handed use feel more manageable, without the bulk that typically comes with heavily protective cases.

Carrying the phone in a pocket with the Atelier on feels different from a plain silicone case. The material has a subtly grippier quality that keeps the phone from sliding around freely, and it doesn’t attract lint or dust the way softer cases sometimes do. Set it down on a desk or table, and it stays put, which is a small but consistently welcome trait.

In practice, the headlining FlexStand’s mechanism feels smooth. Opening the guard takes a deliberate nudge rather than snapping open accidentally, and once propped, the stand supports both landscape and portrait viewing, with angles from 15 to 69 degrees. It works in landscape for video calls just as well as in portrait for reading or scrolling. When closed, the guard does raise the camera’s profile even higher than what it already has without any case, a necessary tradeoff for a creative solution to two problems in one.

Performance

The FlexStand is the Atelier’s most interesting functional detail, because it solves two problems at once. ESR’s FlexStand combines a camera guard to protect the device’s camera lenses when closed and an adjustable stand for hands-free viewing when open. On a phone with a camera island this large, exposed lenses are a genuine vulnerability, and folding that protection into the stand mechanism itself is a smarter solution than treating them as separate concerns.

The stand supports viewing angles from 15 to 69 degrees, which covers enough range for upright reading and low-angle watching from across a desk. Shallower angles work well on uneven surfaces like an airplane tray table or a lap, while steeper ones put the screen more directly in view. Both portrait and landscape orientations are supported, with no additional mechanism or adjustment needed between the two. That said, vertical orientation pretty much means just tilting the back of the phone up, enough for scrolling or reading but definitely not for video calls.

Beyond the stand, the Atelier handles everyday protection through a combination of a shock-absorbing TPU frame, and raised-edge protection. ESR rates the case for 3x military-grade protection, and the overall construction feels solid and deliberate rather than rubbery or flimsy. You can expect some added bulk and heft, but not more than any rugged protective case worth its salt.

MagSafe performance is strong. The Atelier uses built-in magnets rated at 1,400g of force, and compatible chargers and accessories snap on with a reassuring click. Because the back panel carries no visible ring or hardware, the magnetic experience feels clean and uncluttered from the outside.

Sustainability

Most phone cases don’t come with a sustainability story worth telling, and the ones that do tend to lean on recycled packaging rather than anything in the product itself. The Atelier’s more grounded argument is that a case built to resist early aging is more responsible than one that looks worn within months of purchase, and the silicone-based vegan leather is central to that reasoning.

Being animal-free by construction, the vegan leather adds appeal for buyers thoughtful about materials but still wanting a leather-like aesthetic. It isn’t positioned as an environmental product in the way that a recycled-material case might be, but choosing a durable, easy-care surface that resists early replacement adds up meaningfully over time. A case that doesn’t need swapping out every few months is quietly a more sustainable choice.

Value

The Atelier is priced at $42.99 for Black and $45.99 for the remaining three colorways, including Deep Burgundy. Those figures sit toward the upper end of what most buyers expect to spend on a phone case, but the price reflects a package that bundles considerably more than leather. A built-in stand, strong MagSafe compatibility, and multi-layer protection are all part of what that cost covers.

For comparison, many premium leather-style cases fall into a similar price range, but often without integrated stand functionality, and a dedicated kick grip would be an added accessory on top of that. The Atelier handles both without making the back look overcrowded or adding any structural compromise. That combination, at this price, represents a reasonably compelling package for buyers who care about aesthetics and functionality in equal measure.

Where the Atelier’s value becomes most clear is in how long it’s designed to hold up. Buyers who regularly replace cases because of fading, stains, or surface wear will likely get considerably more time out of this one before that becomes a concern. That longevity also means less time hunting for a replacement case that ticks the same boxes, which is rarely as easy as it sounds.

Verdict

The ESR Atelier Magnetic Case finds its innovation in restraint, representing a new design direction for ESR’s protective case lineup and combining a more refined aesthetic with the everyday functionality ESR is known for. It finds a more sensible middle ground through better material choices, a stand that genuinely belongs to the case’s geometry, and a visual language that doesn’t rely on aggressive branding or drama to make an impression.

It suits buyers who want their iPhone 17 Pro Max to feel considered at every touchpoint, designed for users who appreciate the premium look and feel of leather but want a more durable and easy-to-maintain alternative for daily use. The Deep Burgundy variant, in particular, carries a character and warmth that’s genuinely hard to find in most protective cases, making it a compelling choice for sophisticated buyers who have grown tired of flashy and gimmicky accessories.

Click Here to Buy Now: $45.99

The post ESR Atelier Magnetic iPhone 17 Pro Max Case Review: Vegan Leather Done Right first appeared on Yanko Design.

Samsung Killed the Galaxy Note, but This S27 Concept Brings It Back

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Samsung’s Ultra lineup has been on a gradual softening trajectory. The hard, squared-off corners that made early Galaxy S Ultra and Note phones feel deliberately architectural gave way to progressively rounder edges with each generation, culminating in the S26 Ultra’s fully rounded ergonomic corners. For users who preferred the original boxy confidence of those older devices, that direction has been a slow farewell to something they actually liked.

This concept for a Galaxy S27 Ultra reverses that. The sharp 90° corners are back, along with flat top and bottom edges that give the phone a distinctly geometric presence. The “Galaxy Note” name appears on the packaging, framing this as a full revival of Samsung’s discontinued productivity flagship identity rather than just another Ultra iteration. It’s a design argument about what the phone should have stayed.

Designer: AndroidLeo

The most unexpected element on the back isn’t the camera. Nestled beside the vertical triple-lens array is a dot-matrix LED display that shows customizable pixel art animations, swapping between icons as conditions change. It’s the same logic that Nothing applied with its Glyph Matrix and that ASUS uses on ROG devices: the back of a phone has real estate that can do something, and simply leaving it matte glass feels increasingly like an opportunity missed.

In practice, that small display becomes a second layer of expression without pulling attention away from the main screen. Notification icons, charge indicators, and personalizable graphics all live on a surface that’s visible when the phone rests face down or sits on a desk, the exact moment when the front display is least useful. The concept proposes this as an attention filter as much as a personalization feature.

The S Pen slots into the bottom rail via a spring-ejected silo, appearing chunkier than the slim stylus Galaxy Note and Ultra users are familiar with, which may be more a rendering artifact than an intended design change. The front is a flat, edge-to-edge panel with a dual punch-hole selfie camera configuration at the top center, serving the kind of stylus-optimized interface that the Note series built its identity around. The high-contrast red UI reads as purpose-designed for wide-open canvas navigation.

Camera specifications go ambitious: a 200MP main sensor paired with 48MP Sony sensors and periscope telephoto optics round out the vertical lens configuration. The USB-C port, notably, isn’t centered on the bottom edge, a small but visible deviation from convention. And this is where the whimsical and fantastical nature of the design shows through.

None of this is real, of course. Samsung hasn’t announced any plans to revive the Note name, and the dot-matrix display exists in the realm of render enthusiasm rather than confirmed engineering. What the concept captures is a reasonable frustration: the Ultra line has drifted from the qualities that made it distinct, and features appearing elsewhere, like Nothing’s Glyph Matrix, suggest the broader market hasn’t fully moved past wanting the back of a phone to say something.

The post Samsung Killed the Galaxy Note, but This S27 Concept Brings It Back first appeared on Yanko Design.

The $499 E Ink Tablet That Runs Spotify, WhatsApp and Doesn’t Hurt

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Screens have been the unresolved tension at the center of productivity for years. LCD and OLED displays do everything well except the one thing that matters most during a long reading or writing session: they don’t stop being screens. The brightness, the blue light, and the glare accumulate into eye fatigue that most people simply accept as part of working on a device all day. E Ink tablets have addressed that problem, but historically at the cost of color and app freedom.

The Bigme B1051 Ultra is built on the premise that none of those trade-offs need to be permanent. Its 10.3-inch Kaleido 3 E Ink display is color-capable and glare-free, with an adjustable front light covering 36 levels of brightness in both warm and cool tones. The result is a surface that handles illustrated documents, annotated PDFs, and color-coded spreadsheets without sending the wearer reaching for eye drops an hour in.

Designer: Bigme

Color E Ink of any generation has historically been limited in brightness and saturation compared to traditional displays, and the Kaleido 3 panel doesn’t fully close that gap. What it does deliver is a dramatically more comfortable reading experience for long sessions, particularly in well-lit environments where conventional displays produce the most glare. For documents, annotations, and notes, the color rendering is more than sufficient to make the information readable without eye strain.

The hardware underneath is capable enough to run Android 14 without compromise. A MediaTek Dimensity 1080 octa-core chip running at 2.6GHz with up to 8GB of RAM handles third-party apps from Google Play without the sluggishness that plagued earlier E Ink Android devices. Spotify works. WhatsApp runs. The Google Play Store is fully accessible. A 6,900mAh battery supports the kind of all-day use the form factor implies.

Writing and sketching feel natural on the included stylus, which offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and a surface friction designed to replicate paper. An annotated legal document, a fashion sketch with labeled callouts, or a watercolor illustration all sit on the display with the same kind of grainless, paper-like quality. Bigme’s auto ghosting elimination technology handles the visual artifacts that have historically made fast stylus input on E Ink screens feel laggy or muddy.

The optional keyboard folio cover turns the B1051 Ultra into something that reads more like an e-paper laptop. A trackpad is built into the keyboard, and the folio supports dual-angle positioning for desk and lap use. Connecting to an external keyboard and looking at a dashboard of charts and figures across the full 10.3-inch surface is a different experience from doing the same work on an LCD that competes with every other light source in the room.

Integrated AI tools extend beyond the display and stylus. Text extraction, text polishing, AI-assisted drawing, and composition features are baked into the software layer. Fingerprint unlocking handles access. The B1051 Ultra is available starting at $499 for the device-and-case bundle, with the keyboard configuration adding to that. E Ink has always been the right technology for certain kinds of work, and the Bigme B1051 Ultra is one of the more complete arguments that it doesn’t need black-and-white e-readers to make that case convincingly.

The post The $499 E Ink Tablet That Runs Spotify, WhatsApp and Doesn’t Hurt first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Modded Android Phone Runs The Witcher 3 at 1080p Ultra Settings

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The boundary between a smartphone and a desktop computer has been narrowing for years. Modern flagship phones carry processor configurations, RAM capacities, and GPU performance that would have qualified as desktop territory not long ago. Most of the time, that hardware sits underutilized inside a slim glass slab, throttled by thermals the moment any sustained workload asks it to perform at its actual ceiling.

One modder decided to find out what a flagship Android phone such as the nubia Z70 Ultra could actually do if thermal throttling was removed from the equation. The answer involved relocating the screen to the front of a custom acrylic case and sandwiching the phone itself between two desktop-grade CPU coolers with direct contact against the Snapdragon chip’s shielding. The result doesn’t fit neatly into any existing product category.

Designer: ntsow

The Nubia Z70 Ultra carries a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor with a maximum clock speed of 4.32 GHz and 24 GB of RAM. Removing the screen was the key step: the CPU coolers need direct access to the chip’s shielding for full thermal contact, so the display had to migrate to the outside of the case. A power bank handles the energy supply, completing the self-contained build.

On the software side, the build runs a full XFCE Linux desktop through Termux with GPU acceleration, layering Windows application support on top via Wine and Box64. The Android system remains fully intact underneath, making the device simultaneously a phone, a Linux workstation, and a Windows gaming machine. The stated end goal is one device that handles everything, including native Linux work and full Windows game support.

The cooling changes what the hardware is capable of sustaining. In 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme Stress Test, the modified phone achieved 99% stability across 20 loops, outperforming the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, Apple A19 Pro, and Dimensity 9500 on the consistency metric. That sustained performance is the point: most mobile chips can briefly hit impressive scores, but they thermal-throttle within minutes under continuous load.

The Witcher 3 runs at 1080p with Ultra graphics settings, hitting 20 to 30 fps and occasionally exceeding 30 fps when the phone operates in its maximum-performance overclocking mode. The Adreno GPU runs at 99% utilization during those sessions, and the build connects to an external monitor with keyboard and mouse support for a genuine desktop gaming setup. For an Android phone, the performance is difficult to dismiss.

What the build demonstrates is less about running The Witcher 3 at any particular resolution and more about how far the gap between a phone and a desktop has actually closed. Adequate cooling was the only thing separating the Snapdragon 8 Elite from sustained desktop-class workloads. The question the project raises isn’t whether phones can replace PCs but how much work remains before the hardware inside them can already handle it.

The post This Modded Android Phone Runs The Witcher 3 at 1080p Ultra Settings first appeared on Yanko Design.