Author Archives: JC Torres

The Lightest ThinkPad Ever Also Scored 9/10 for Repairability

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Business laptops have gotten remarkably thin over the years, but the tradeoffs are hard to ignore. Repairability has taken a back seat to aesthetics, battery life has been sacrificed for slim profiles, and enterprise users often end up with devices that look great on paper but wear out faster than they should. Balancing portability with long-term practicality remains one of the harder problems in professional laptop design.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Gen 7 takes on that challenge with an ultra-mobile form factor that doesn’t cut corners on durability or serviceability. Starting at under 1kg, it’s currently the lightest device in the ThinkPad lineup, designed for professionals who move between offices, client sites, and travel without wanting to think too hard about whether their laptop can keep up.

Designer: Lenovo

At a Z-height of less than 18 mm, the ThinkPad X13 Gen 7 manages an 87.8% screen-to-body ratio on its 13-inch FHD+ IPS display. The panel hits 400 nits of brightness and covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut, useful in well-lit conference rooms and outdoors. The single-bar hinge lets the lid open with one hand, a small convenience that adds up considerably over a long workday.

Processor options include Intel Core Ultra Series 3 and AMD Ryzen AI PRO 400 Series chips, both supporting Copilot+ PC features through an NPU capable of up to 50 TOPS. Up to 64GB of LPDDR5x memory at 8,533 MT/s keeps multitasking fluid, and AI-assisted workflows run on-device rather than relying on the cloud for every query. The performance sits well above what the chassis suggests.

Collaboration gets a dedicated push through a 5MP IR camera with a physical shutter and Lenovo Clear Voice audio, which uses AI-driven noise suppression to clean up background interference on calls. The camera handles Windows Hello facial recognition for quick, password-free logins. For a device that lives in hybrid meetings, having the camera and microphone hardware match the processor’s capabilities makes a noticeable difference.

The port selection covers daily needs without a dongle, with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB-A, HDMI 2.1, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 7 and optional 5G LTE with eSIM support. The battery comes in 41Wh and 54.7Wh options, both rated for all-day productivity away from an outlet, and the optional NFC keeps field teams connected when cellular service falls short.

One of the X13 Gen 7’s more distinctive qualities is its repairability, earning an iFixit score of 9 out of 10 through five customer-replaceable units, including the battery, SSD, WWAN module, RTC battery, and D cover. The battery itself uses 100% recycled cobalt, and most structural components incorporate post-consumer recycled materials. Packaging is plastic-free, and the device carries ENERGY STAR 9.0, EPEAT Gold, and TCO 10.0 certifications.

Security runs through ThinkShield, Lenovo’s layered protection platform covering supply chain assurance, firmware defense, and AI-powered threat prevention. Hardware-side security includes a fingerprint reader built into the power button, an IR camera for facial authentication, and an optional Privacy Guard display. The ThinkPad X13 Gen 7 starts at $1,499 and is available starting May 2026, putting it squarely in the premium ultraportable business laptop segment.

The post The Lightest ThinkPad Ever Also Scored 9/10 for Repairability first appeared on Yanko Design.

Wacom Art Pen 2 Adds the One Input Every Digital Pen Has Ignored

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Digital art tools have gotten remarkably good at reading pressure and tilt, two of the three physical inputs that define how traditional artists handle a pen or brush. What’s remained elusive is the third one. The way a calligrapher twists a brush mid-stroke, or how a flat marker rotates to shift from wide edge to fine tip, hasn’t had a reliable digital equivalent for most current drawing hardware until now.

Wacom’s new Art Pen 2 addresses that directly. It’s the successor to the original Art Pen (KP701E) from 2010, a pen that already had a devoted following specifically for its 360° barrel rotation. The Art Pen 2 brings that same capability into Wacom’s current pen technology, combining rotation sensing with modern pressure and tilt detection in a tool built for serious digital drawing.

Designer: Wacom

Rotating the pen in your hand, a motion letterers and calligraphers rely on instinctively, now translates into the software canvas when used with compatible applications. The Art Pen 2 reads that rotational angle and adjusts brush behavior accordingly, so thickening a stroke or softening an edge becomes a matter of how the pen sits in your grip, not which menu you reached for last.

The technical foundation behind all that expressiveness is solid. The Art Pen 2 runs on Wacom’s battery-free EMR technology, so there’s no charge to manage mid-session. Three pen buttons handle workflow shortcuts, and up to 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity cover everything from whisper-light gesture lines to heavy, decisive marks. A nib holder built into the barrel stores three spare tips for quick swaps.

Nib choice is also part of the picture. The pen ships with a Carbon Shaft POM (Polyoxymethylene) nib installed, a denser option suited to detailed, controlled work. Two additional types, standard POM Nibs and Felt Nibs, are available separately, each offering a different surface response that can shift the drawing experience considerably. All three nib types are exclusive to the Art Pen 2 and aren’t interchangeable with Pro Pen 3 nibs.

The Art Pen 2 sits alongside the Wacom Pro Pen 3 rather than replacing it. Where the Pro Pen 3 caters to artists who want physical customization, with interchangeable button plates, grips, and balance weights to fine-tune grip feel and center of gravity, the Art Pen 2 is built around expressive, rotation-sensitive drawing first. It’s a deliberately focused tool for a different kind of creative priority.

Compatibility covers a healthy range of current Wacom hardware. The Art Pen 2 works with the Wacom MovinkPad Pro 14, Wacom Intuos Pro (PTK470, PTK670, and PTK870), Wacom Cintiq 16 (DTK168), Wacom Cintiq 24 (DTK246), and Wacom Cintiq 24 touch (DTH246), with support for the Wacom Cintiq Pro lineup (DTH172, DTH227, and DTH271) arriving later this year.

Artists who’ve been using the original Art Pen for its rotation capability and waiting for it to work with current-generation Wacom devices finally have that option. The jump from the older KP701E to the Art Pen 2 also brings the full pressure sensitivity and EMR advances of today’s lineup, giving longtime fans of that rotation-based workflow a genuinely modern upgrade without giving up the expressiveness they’ve relied on.

The post Wacom Art Pen 2 Adds the One Input Every Digital Pen Has Ignored first appeared on Yanko Design.

10 Modular Sofas That Rearrange Like Furniture-Grade Lego

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The sofa has always been the most consequential decision in a living room. It’s the largest piece, the one that dictates traffic flow, color direction, and whether guests feel welcome or squeezed. For a long time, it also came with a kind of finality: once it was in the room, that was that. One shape, one configuration, and very little room for second thoughts.

That’s changed considerably. The best modular sofas today don’t ask you to commit to a single layout. They expand, split apart, hide extra surfaces, wrap around awkward corners, or grow alongside a family over the years. Curved modular sectionals are tracking as one of the clearest furniture directions of 2026, and this list pulls together ten designs that show just how far the category has come.

Aura Sofa

Most modular sofas make their flexibility obvious, which isn’t always a compliment. The Aura Matrix Sofa by King Living is the exception, a curved modular sectional that looks less like a configurable system and more like a single, sculpted object. The pieces flow into each other so naturally that the seating arrangement feels designed rather than assembled, which is a harder thing to pull off than it sounds.

Designer: King Living

What makes it genuinely useful is that the same fluidity works in your favor when the room changes. The modules can follow a bay window, open up for a larger gathering, or pull inward for something more intimate, without ever looking like you just rearranged the furniture. For a room where aesthetics and flexibility both matter, this is the kind of modular sofa that doesn’t force a compromise.

Modular Sofa for Small Spaces, and Small Pets

Apartment living comes with constraints that most furniture brands still treat as the buyer’s problem. This modular sofa takes the opposite approach, designed specifically with compact floor plans and the reality of pet ownership in mind. The sections are scaled to fit tighter rooms without making the space feel overrun, and the layout includes thoughtful allowances for small animals that usually end up on the furniture anyway.

Designer: Sunriu

In a small apartment, furniture that serves more than one purpose without looking like it’s trying too hard earns its keep quickly. This modular sectional sofa manages that by being genuinely comfortable for people while still carving out a spot that a small dog or cat can claim. It’s a small distinction, but one that changes the dynamic of sharing a compact space with a pet considerably.

Silky

A modular sofa that brings its own coffee table along sounds like the kind of feature that gets mentioned once and forgotten in production. The Silky sofa takes it seriously, integrating the table directly into the sectional layout so it becomes part of the arrangement rather than an afterthought. The result is a modular sectional that does the work of two pieces without doubling the footprint.

Designer: Teixeira Design Studio

What that means in practice is a room that feels more composed and less cluttered with competing furniture. Drinks, books, remotes, and phones have somewhere to go without requiring a separate surface to be dragged over and moved again. For smaller living rooms, especially, reducing the number of objects you need to manage without sacrificing comfort is a quietly valuable thing.

Twiny

The Twiny sofa carries a similar idea but takes a more playful approach to hidden utility. Instead of making the table a visible part of the sectional layout, it tucks a surface away inside the sofa that can be pulled out when needed, including by kids who tend to find that kind of reveal irresistible. It’s furniture that has a little surprise built into it.

Designer: Nurettin Badur for Ziel Home Furnishing Technology Co., Ltd.

It matters more than it might seem in homes where the living room doubles as a play space, snack zone, and homework corner within the same afternoon. A modular couch that can quietly produce an extra surface without requiring anyone to drag something over from another room changes the flow of those moments in a small but meaningful way. The hidden table isn’t a novelty; it genuinely earns its place.

The Lounge Chair That Becomes a Sofa When Paired

Not everything on this list started out as a modular sofa. This particular design begins as a lounge chair, and it’s only when you put two of them together that they form a convincing two-seater. The premise is clever, not because it’s a novel trick but because it reframes modularity as a compositional question, asking what furniture should look like when you’re not ready to commit to a full sectional.

Designer: Liam de la Bedoyere

The option to split the seating into two independent chairs when you need floor space is genuinely useful in a studio or single-bedroom apartment. You can open the room for a workout, a gathering, or a change of scenery, then push them back together when you want more casual seating. It’s a flexible arrangement that doesn’t even look like a modular system.

The Crocs-Meets-Lego Modular Seating System

If Lego and Crocs had a furniture design meeting and somehow settled on Japanese minimalism as the shared aesthetic, the result might look something like this modular seating concept. The system is built around interlocking units that snap together in a way that makes rearranging the layout feel low-effort, treating configuration as part of the experience rather than a one-time decision you eventually regret.

Designer: Arman Farahmand

Furniture that invites rearrangement has a way of making a space feel more alive, especially for renters still figuring out how they want a room to work. The clean lines keep the system from looking like a children’s toy, but the assembly logic is approachable enough that adjusting the layout on a weekend doesn’t feel like a major undertaking. It changes with your mood.

The Accordion Sofa

Modularity usually describes what a sofa can do once it’s in the room. This design moves the conversation earlier, to the part that most furniture brands still treat as the buyer’s problem: getting it through the door. The accordion-compression mechanism lets the sofa collapse into a much smaller form for delivery, which sounds like a technical footnote until you’ve tried maneuvering a full sectional through a narrow hallway.

Designer: Yuqi Wang

For renters and frequent movers, a large sofa that can compress for transport removes one of the most consistent headaches that comes with furnished apartment living. There’s no need to wait for a professional delivery team or spend an afternoon dismantling something that wasn’t designed to be taken apart. Once it’s in the room, it opens back up and behaves like a normal sofa, which is the whole point.

Modular Couch for Waiting Spaces

Not every modular sofa belongs in a living room. This design was built for waiting areas, the kind of shared spaces that usually default to rigid rows of institutional seating and very little else. The modular system makes it possible to arrange the furniture into natural clusters, creating smaller pockets of space that feel more considered than the typical lineup of chairs bolted to a wall.

Designer: Sander Mulder

The emotional dimension matters as much as the spatial one here. Waiting rooms are rarely designed with comfort in mind, and the furniture usually makes that obvious. A modular seating system that allows for softer arrangements, varied orientations, and a more human scale changes the experience without requiring a full overhaul. It’s a quiet reminder that shared spaces don’t have to feel punishing to be in.

The Work-from-Home Modular Lounge System

Working from home still means managing the fact that the sofa tends to be many things in the same room: a desk-adjacent perch in the morning, a lunch spot at noon, and a proper lounge space by evening. This modular lounge system was designed around that reality, with sections that support upright sitting for work-mode postures and reconfigure into something more relaxed when the day winds down.

Designer: Foolscap Studio

The flexibility here doesn’t require the room to look like an office. The modular sections shift without dismantling anything, so moving between a work posture and a full lounge is quick enough to actually happen. For anyone whose living room has to serve double duty on a daily basis, that kind of seating system starts to feel less like an option and more like a given.

The Crib That Eventually Becomes a Couch

The most dramatic transformation on this list doesn’t involve flipping a sectional into a new shape or pulling a hidden surface out of a compartment. This design changes category entirely, starting as a crib and converting into a couch as the child grows out of it. It’s a long-game approach to furniture that most brands aren’t interested in, largely because selling two separate pieces is the easier model.

Designer: Vedran Erceg

Children outgrow nursery furniture fast, and most of it ends up in storage or a garage sale before it’s had much chance to earn its keep. A piece that moves from one stage of family life to another sidesteps that cycle almost entirely, which makes it more sustainable, more economical, and a smarter way to think about what furniture should actually do over the long run.

The post 10 Modular Sofas That Rearrange Like Furniture-Grade Lego first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Ceramic Vase Is Actually a Phone Speaker That Needs No Power

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The home has become increasingly cluttered with gadgets that need charging, pairing, and their own dedicated spaces. Even something as simple as playing music from a smartphone often involves a Bluetooth speaker sitting on a shelf, waiting for its battery to drain. There’s been a quiet counter-movement in product design, where objects do their jobs without power and sit in a room the way a vase or a mug would.

Kenji Abe’s ECHO is exactly that kind of object. It’s an analog speaker that amplifies smartphone audio simply by being set on top of the phone, requiring no power, no pairing, and no setup beyond placing it down. The concept takes its cues from wind instruments and seashells, two forms that have been shaping and projecting sound for centuries without the help of electricity.

Designer: Kenji Abe

The inside of ECHO works like a chamber, built to catch the phone’s audio and carry it outward in soft, diffused waves rather than projecting it directly. The geometry draws from the same logic as a cupped hand, but with more control over how sound travels. The result isn’t a dramatic volume boost so much as a room-filling quality that feels warmer than a powered speaker on a desk.

The choice of material makes as much of a statement as the form. Abe uses glazed ceramic, the same material found in vases, mugs, and tableware, giving ECHO a texture and presence that belongs in a home rather than on a tech shelf. It doesn’t look like an accessory. It looks like something that was always there, something that simply happened to be placed near a phone.

That quality matters when the phone is on the kitchen counter and you want music while cooking, or on a desk where you’d rather not have a speaker taking up permanent residence. ECHO doesn’t need to live next to a charging cable or be put away between uses. It sits on the table and becomes part of the room, as unobtrusive as any other ceramic piece nearby.

A guest walking in wouldn’t necessarily clock it as a tech product. That’s partly the point. The glazed surface catches light the way pottery does, and the form is quiet enough to sit beside books or plants without demanding attention. When a phone is slid underneath it, it starts doing its job. When the phone is gone, it just stays there, still looking like it belongs. The same underlying principle runs through the Battery-free Amplifying iSpeakers, where a Duralumin metal enclosure amplifies a smartphone’s audio without any power.

Abe designed ECHO to exist comfortably in a room even when it isn’t doing anything, a goal most speakers never consider. Most audio accessories announce themselves. This one quietly waits, and when a phone is close enough to fill the cavity with sound, the room gets a little warmer and a little fuller without anyone having to reach for a power button.

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d64 Just Packed an Entire Dice Collection Into a Tiny 1980s Computer

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Tabletop roleplaying games have an accessory problem. The dice alone can take over a corner of any gaming table, each one representing a different die type that the rules will inevitably call for at the least convenient moment. Tracking down the right d10 mid-session, or explaining to a new player why there are two different ten-sided dice in the bag, is just one of those small but reliable annoyances that experienced players have long since stopped questioning.

The Console’88 from d64Computing is a compact digital dice roller that handles the entire set from d4 through d100 in a single device, the size of a pocket calculator. What makes it genuinely interesting, though, isn’t just the function; it’s that the designer chose to dress it up as a miniature 1980s computer, complete with a CGA color display, vector graphics, boot-screen text, and the kind of visual language that looks like it was pulled straight out of a 1984 computer catalog.

Designer: d64Computing

Selecting a die type is done through a rotary dial and a button underneath the faux keyboard, which fits the era aesthetically and keeps the interaction simple. Spin it to the die you want, and get your result. The randomness runs at microsecond precision, so the results are genuinely unpredictable rather than cycling through a predictable sequence. For anyone who’s ever side-eyed an app-based roller and wondered about its actual randomness, that’s a meaningful detail.

The sounds are what push it over from clever gadget into something with real personality. The Console’88 plays 1980s video game audio when you roll, and it apparently has dedicated sound effects for critical successes and critical failures, which is the kind of contextually appropriate design decision that’s easy to appreciate at an actual gaming table. A crit that’s announced by a triumphant eight-bit jingle lands differently than a number quietly appearing on a phone screen.

There’s an argument to be made for physical dice that has nothing to do with practicality. Rolling actual dice is tactile, dramatic, and central to the experience for a lot of players. But for anyone who travels frequently to gaming sessions, runs games for beginners without their own dice, or simply wants something that takes up less space on an already crowded table, a single device covering every die type is a reasonable swap to make.

The design commitment here is what separates the Console’88 from a generic electronic dice app. This thing looks like it belongs on a desk next to a Commodore 64, and reviews consistently call out the visual quality of the vector graphics and the charm of the retro computer case. It’s a product that clearly started from an aesthetic vision rather than pure function, and the function turned out to be genuinely good on top of it.

The post d64 Just Packed an Entire Dice Collection Into a Tiny 1980s Computer first appeared on Yanko Design.

Galaxy S26 Ultra Buried the Note’s Boxy Soul, and Fans Are Split

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The race to make flagship phones thinner, smoother, and more visually unified has become one of the defining stories in premium smartphone design. Hard angles and bold silhouettes that once gave each model its own character have been quietly traded for softer frames and tighter lineup coherence. It’s a direction that makes these phones easier to hold and sell, but not always easier to tell apart.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, which hit shelves on March 11, 2026, fits squarely into that movement. Samsung pushed the chassis below 8mm for the first time on any Ultra, trimming it down to 7.9mm. Add to that a softer corner radius, an Armor Aluminum frame, and an anti-reflective Privacy Display, and it starts to feel like something more deliberate than a routine generational update.

Designer: Samsung

To understand why that matters, it helps to remember where the Ultra came from. When Samsung discontinued the Galaxy Note in 2021, it didn’t retire the design language that defined it. The Note’s boxy corners, flat sides, and upright proportions migrated into the Ultra line, giving those phones a distinctly tool-like character. The Ultra felt like a device built for serious use, and its shape made that clear.

Galaxy S25 Ultra

Galaxy S26 Ultra

The Galaxy S26 Ultra leaves most of that behind. Samsung rounded the corners, softened the edges, and made the phone look far more like the standard Galaxy S26 and S26+ than any Ultra model before it. That visual coherence is good design management, but it’s also the moment the Ultra stops looking distinctly like its own thing. It’s harder to spot in a lineup now.

Galaxy S25 Ultra

Those softer edges do make a real difference in how the phone sits in the hand over a long day. When you’re scrolling through a document or holding the device on a commute, the rounded frame distributes pressure more evenly across the palm. The 7.9mm chassis also disappears into a pocket more gracefully than its predecessor, which sounds minor until you realize how often you actually notice it.

Galaxy S26 Ultra

With the silhouette doing less visual heavy lifting, Samsung shifted the premium story into the surface itself. The Armor Aluminum frame carries the finish more evenly from back to edge, giving the phone a cleaner look that doesn’t need dramatic geometry to feel expensive. The anti-reflective Privacy Display adds a different kind of thoughtfulness, letting you check sensitive messages or browse in public without worrying about prying eyes.

What really puts the 7.9mm figure in perspective is the competition. The iPhone 17 Pro Max measures 8.75mm thick, and while a 0.85mm difference might not sound dramatic on its own, the context here matters quite a bit. Samsung is fitting a built-in S Pen into a phone that still comes in thinner than Apple’s stylus-free flagship, which is an engineering tradeoff worth acknowledging.

iPhone 17 Pro Max

What makes this shift more significant is what it says about Samsung’s intentions for the lineup as a whole. The Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra now share the same curvature and visual language for the first time. That’s Samsung quietly admitting that the Ultra doesn’t need to look like a separate category; it’s a flagship, not a relic from a discontinued line.

Two months after launch, the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s design verdict has had time to settle, and the conversation is genuinely split. There’s something complete about how it all comes together now, smoother, thinner, and more coherent. The S Pen remains, but the body no longer insists on its Galaxy Note roots. Whether that reads as maturity or loss probably depends on how long you’ve been following the Ultra.

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The Table Clock Isn’t Dead, This Folded Steel One Proves It

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The tabletop clock has been one of the quieter casualties of the smartphone era. Most people stopped owning them the moment a phone took over nightstand duty, and those that survived tend to be either nostalgic holdovers or objects that lean so hard into decoration that the time-telling part becomes secondary. The ones that actually last tend to be the ones that got the balance exactly right from the start.

Braun managed that balance better than anyone with the AB 20, a 1975 travel clock by Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs that reduced the concept of a clock to almost nothing unnecessary. Argentina-based industrial designer Agustin Papadopulos had that same spirit in mind when he designed TYME, a conceptual table clock that pushes minimalism further by starting from a literal flat sheet of steel.

Designer: Agustin Papadopulos

The process starts with a single laser-cut steel sheet, pre-scored along fold lines. Fold the sides inward, interlock the tabs, and a rigid three-dimensional case takes shape without a single screw or adhesive. There are no separate structural components. The entire chassis emerges from one piece of material, with nothing added and nothing wasted, just the geometry of the fold doing all the work.

Once the body is formed, the clock mechanism drops in from behind. A standard quartz movement fits inside the folded cavity, with the shaft passing through the circular dial on the face. The hands, two muted gray blades for hours and minutes and a thin red sweep for seconds, slip onto the shaft. A brass hex nut anchors everything with a deliberately exposed, industrial touch.

The face itself is a direct nod to the Braun AB 20’s design language. Four pill-shaped markers at the cardinal positions stand in for numerals, and the circular dial is etched lightly into the face rather than applied as a separate element. It’s been stripped to its most essential logic, which is exactly what Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs were doing with the AB 20 back in 1975.

Using a single sheet for both the structure and the visible surfaces makes good sense from a production standpoint. Laser cutting eliminates the need for molds or complex tooling. The fold lines that hold the body together are the same cuts that shape the overall form, so each incision does double duty. Less material, fewer components, and a simpler process all follow from that one decision.

There’s a quieter idea at work in TYME that goes well beyond material efficiency. Papadopulos frames folding not as a simple assembly step, but as the moment you bring the clock into existence. You’re not receiving a finished object. You’re closing the form, installing the hands, dropping in the battery, and starting the mechanism. The first second it ticks is genuinely yours to claim.

The post The Table Clock Isn’t Dead, This Folded Steel One Proves It first appeared on Yanko Design.

PC Gamers Have Too Many Windows, ROG’s $199 Screen Fixes That

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Gaming setups have grown considerably more complex, and the demands on screen real estate have grown right along with them. A serious session today might involve a game running on the main display, a chat window competing for space, system performance stats tucked into a corner, and a streaming interface sharing the same screen. Managing all of it in one place means cluttered desktops and tab-switching at exactly the wrong moments.

ROG’s answer to this is the Strix XG129C, a 12.3-inch secondary touchscreen designed to sit beneath a primary monitor and take over all those support duties. Rather than competing for real estate on the main screen, it gives peripheral information its own dedicated space, keeping the game in full focus without losing sight of everything running alongside it. It’s a small display with a very specific job in mind.

Designer: ASUS ROG (Republic of Gamers)

The screen uses a 24:9 aspect ratio with a 1920 x 720 resolution, a less common format that works decidedly in its favor here. Unlike typical 32:9 companion displays, this configuration provides more vertical viewing area, which means less scrolling through chat threads, fewer black bars on 16:9 content, and a layout that reads more naturally at a glance. A slim profile and adjustable kickstand let it slide neatly under most primary monitors.

The XG129C comes bundled with a one-year AIDA64 Extreme subscription, a hardware monitoring tool that turns the screen into a live readout of CPU temperatures, GPU load, fan speeds, memory usage, and more. For anyone running demanding games or keeping an eye on thermals, having that data on a separate screen rather than overlaid onto the game changes the experience considerably. It stays visible without ever getting in the way.

Live streamers and content creators get a different kind of value from the XG129C. Discord conversations, OBS controls, viewer chat, and music playback can all live on this screen while the main display stays dedicated to whatever’s being recorded or played. Tapping the screen to adjust a streaming setting or mute a channel doesn’t require switching windows or minimizing anything, keeping the workflow moving without interruption.

The 10-point multi-touch IPS panel handles that kind of interaction with enough precision for hotkeys, app shortcuts, and quick swipe inputs. Reaching over to pull up a game guide, tap a lighting shortcut, or adjust a fan profile doesn’t require a mouse or keyboard, which matters when both hands are on a controller or tied up on the main display. It responds the way a well-built touchscreen should.

A single hybrid USB-C cable handles power, video, and touch data simultaneously, keeping the desk clean and the cable run minimal. There’s also a second USB-C port with 20W Power Delivery and an HDMI 1.2 port for broader device compatibility. For setups where desk placement isn’t straightforward, a built-in 1/4-inch tripod socket makes it possible to mount the display on an arm or stand instead.

The IPS panel covers 90% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 125% of sRGB, notably strong for a display that isn’t the main event. Colors hold up alongside most primary monitors without the visual mismatch that cheaper companion screens tend to produce. It earned a Red Dot Award in the gaming and streaming design category, and at around $199, it’s a focused solution for setups that have simply outgrown a single screen.

The post PC Gamers Have Too Many Windows, ROG’s $199 Screen Fixes That first appeared on Yanko Design.

Amazon Won’t Build This Kindle Remote, So BOOX Did It for $26

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E Ink readers have steadily become better at mimicking the feel of paper, but getting through a book with one still requires the same thing it always has: tapping the screen to flip a page. It’s a minor interruption that adds up over a long reading session, and while third-party ring-style page-turners have tried to address it, they haven’t exactly been the most reliable solution.

BOOX, the brand behind a well-regarded lineup of E Ink readers and tablets, now has its own take on the problem. The Tappy is a compact two-button Bluetooth remote that lets you control your device without touching the screen. It’s the kind of accessory that BOOX fans have quietly wanted, and one that Kindle users have been asking Amazon to make for years.

Designer: BOOX

The Tappy’s appearance takes some cues from a miniature typewriter, with two large, round keys on a compact body that fits comfortably in one hand. A small indicator light on the left side doesn’t leave you guessing about pairing status, mode changes, or battery level, while a level-style power switch keeps accidental presses from being a nuisance. Two spare keycaps are also included in the box.

Those two buttons do quite a lot, actually. The Tappy operates in three distinct modes, each built for a different type of content. Reading Mode handles page-by-page navigation, Browsing Mode lets the buttons scroll vertically through web content or documents, and Multimedia Mode turns them into playback controls for audio. You won’t need more than a five-second hold of both buttons to switch between them.

Picture settling in for a late-night read with your e-reader propped on a stand, flipping through pages without reaching out. Or standing in the kitchen with your hands full, scrolling through a recipe without getting the screen dirty. The Tappy adapts naturally to these situations, and it doesn’t break the immersion of the moment by demanding you reach over and interact with the screen.

Multimedia Mode adds another layer to what the Tappy can do. An audiobook listener lying back can skip chapters or pause playback without sitting up. A commuter with a bag in one hand and coffee in the other can get through content without fumbling. The same two buttons handle all of it, which is part of why the Tappy doesn’t feel like a niche gadget.

A 95mAh rechargeable battery keeps the Tappy running for weeks before it needs a charge, and there’s a USB-C port for fast charging when that time comes. The Bluetooth connection reaches up to 33 feet, well beyond what most reading setups require. That extra range, however, means it can double as a basic media remote for a smartphone, laptop, or even a sound system.

The Tappy pairs with any Bluetooth-enabled device, not just BOOX hardware, which makes the $26 price feel reasonable for what it delivers. It’s a focused little tool that doesn’t try to be more than it needs to be. For anyone who reads regularly on an E Ink device, it quietly removes one of the last remaining physical interruptions that keeps the experience from feeling truly seamless.

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Phone Cases Are Boring, This One Puts a Living Terrarium Inside

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Phone cases have largely settled into two camps: the ones that protect your phone without anyone noticing they exist, and the ones that make a statement with printed graphics, colors, or textures. Neither approach has found a way to make the back of a phone genuinely interesting rather than just decorated. Designer Daniel Idle found a third option that neither camp seems to have considered.

The Terrarium Phone Case is a clear resin case for the iPhone 16 Pro Max with an actual planted environment sealed inside the back cavity. Moss, small-leafed plants, and a stabilized soil substrate are embedded within the transparent shell, creating a thin cross-section of living terrain that you carry around with you wherever the phone goes. It’s a working phone case, a functional terrarium, and an oddly calming thing to have in your pocket all at once.

Designer: Daniel Idle

The construction involved 3D modeling and fabrication in clear resin, producing a case with enough depth in the back wall to house soil, roots, and plant matter. The plants are packed using a stabilized substrate that keeps the arrangement intact when the phone is picked up, rotated, tilted, or slipped into a bag. The camera cutout is fully preserved; the charging port at the bottom remains accessible; the phone continues to work exactly as it always did.

What keeps everything alive inside the sealed cavity is a closed-loop moisture system. The plants and soil generate humidity, which evaporates toward the inner surface of the resin, condenses back into droplets, and cycles down again. Light passing through the clear shell feeds the plants from outside, while the substrate provides gradual nutrient release. The whole thing is, in a fairly literal sense, a miniature ecosystem that sustains itself without any intervention from the person carrying it.

The condensation that forms on the inside of the shell during high-humidity moments is part of the visual appeal rather than a flaw to be engineered away. Seeing that vapor cycle through the case is a reminder that something in there is alive, actively breathing and responding to its environment, in the same pocket or bag as a device specifically engineered to minimize all biological interference.

There’s a running thread through design culture about bringing nature back into objects and spaces that have drifted too far from it. Biophilic design has become a recognizable term for everything from moss walls in offices to plant-filled shelving in apartments. Most of those applications treat plants as decoration layered on top of an existing design. Idle’s approach is different because the plant system isn’t decoration; it’s structural, sealed directly into the object’s body as a core component rather than an afterthought.

Of course, there will be some reservations about putting moisture and soil so close to your phone, which might be resistant to water and dust, but only from brief encounters. Good thing, then, that it’s still a concept project right now. But as a thought experiment about what a phone case could reasonably contain, it lands somewhere between genuinely novel and gently absurd, which is probably the most honest place for a good idea to start.

The post Phone Cases Are Boring, This One Puts a Living Terrarium Inside first appeared on Yanko Design.