Tag Archives: Audio

This 2,680-piece LEGO AKAI tape deck is my kind of analog nostalgia

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Owning a reel-to-reel deck in the 1970s meant owning a piece of furniture you could not move alone. The Akai PRO-1000 came in two boxes, with published specs putting the drive unit at about 62 pounds and the amplifier at about 22. That is roughly 85 pounds of hi-fi, which explains why one UK dealer listing recommends collecting in person or booking a pallet. People bought these anyway, because a machine with two huge spinning reels announced to every guest that you took music seriously. Nobody ever put a reel-to-reel in a closet. Now there is a version you could carry to the couch without calling a friend, made of 2,680 LEGO parts.

That version is the AKAI PRO 1000 Open Reel-to-Reel Tape Deck, a LEGO Ideas project from Zo Lee that has already picked up a Staff Pick badge. The original was a semi-professional machine from the late 1970s that sold mainly in the US, Canada, and Japan, with a 1977 US price of $1,995. Its two boxes were joined by three cables, so owners could park them side by side or stack them, and the LEGO version takes the stacked route. At about 17 inches tall, 11 wide, and 6.3 deep (43 x 29 x 16 cm), it is a compact take on an original roughly 19 inches across. Finally, a hi-fi flex that does not need a pallet.

Designer: Zo Lee

Here is the party trick: the thing moves. A motor turns the reels, the VU meters swing along with them, and the big knobs rotate under your fingers. A removable grid on top lifts off to hold a LEGO battery, so the deck can sit anywhere on the shelf without hunting for a wall outlet. The reels were the first thing every guest stared at on the real machine, so making them the star of the show is exactly right. Powering it up is its own small concert, minus the music.

Zo Lee describes the build as extremely difficult, and the list of headaches reads like a boss fight. The odd quarter-distance spacing between tiles, the big reels with all those cutout windows, and an internal frame that has to hold the outer casing each took plenty of brainstorming. Getting that same frame to drive the reels and meters took lots more attempts, per the creator. The payoff shows in the renders: gray reels with dark red cutouts, black knobs with colored pointers, tiny transport labels like CUE, PAUSE, and REC, and a tape counter parked on 977. From a few feet away, the front panel reads like actual hardware, which is the whole point of a shrunken replica.

My favorite detail, though, is the pair of VU meters, which Zo Lee says swing in sync with the reels, but asymmetrically. I am guessing the same motor drives both, which would mean the needles twitch like they are reacting to a song instead of marching in lockstep. That one choice fakes live audio, hides a mechanism behind two amber faces, and probably saves the builder a second motor. It also slots the deck into a neat lineage of LEGO Ideas audio gear, next to Tomasso Builds’ Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntable and Headlight Bricks’ Sony Walkman. Reel-to-reel is the format that came before the Walkman’s cassette, and it has the most dramatic moving parts of the lot.

The deck currently sits at 527 supporters on LEGO Ideas, with the next milestone at 1K and 396 days left to get there. Ideas works like this: fans submit builds, supporters pile up, and LEGO reviews the ones that reach the threshold. The Staff Pick badge is a nice head start, but the votes have to come from people like you, so head to the LEGO Ideas page and give it your vote. Every supporter helps push this toward an actual box. Get it there and you can finally own a reel-to-reel deck without recruiting three friends and a hand truck.

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Fyne Audio’s Speaker Uses Hidden Glass to Tame Ringing

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A glass diaphragm is an unlikely detail to get excited about in a speaker that looks like expensive furniture. Yet it’s the detail that makes Fyne Audio’s F1-10 Anniversary interesting to me. Beneath the walnut finish is an attempt to solve a familiar audio problem: keeping the speaker’s own unwanted vibrations from coloring the music it’s supposed to reproduce.

Offered as a limited-edition passive stereo pair, the floorstanding speakers also address how serious hi-fi fits into an actual room. Their acoustic geometry aims for more coherent sound and less fussy placement. Fyne is making just 30 pairs, so the practical thinking comes wrapped in a decidedly exclusive package.

Designer: Fyne Audio

Hand-built in Scotland, the Anniversary revisits the original F1-10, launched in 2017. Its curved birch-plywood enclosure wears glossy burr walnut and walnut veneers, with solid-wood trim and champagne-gold details. I like that it looks unapologetically like furniture. The grain gets as much visual attention as the driver, although this isn’t a solid-walnut sculpture. Internal bracing is part of the cabinet’s engineering, too.

The most unusual component is a 75mm aluminosilicate glass dome inside the high-frequency driver. Fyne chemically strengthens the thin glass and says its damping suppresses unwanted resonances. The idea is to hear less of the diaphragm’s ringing and more of the recording. Its size also lets it operate down to the 750 Hz crossover, extending its contribution into the vocal range rather than restricting it to the highest notes. That’s a material choice I can appreciate without pretending I’ve heard the result. Its real advantage over alternatives still needs independent listening and measurement.

The driver layout matters just as much. Fyne’s IsoFlare system places the high-frequency unit at the center of the bass/midrange cone, rather than separating them across the cabinet. The goal is to make those frequencies behave more like one source, helping voices and instruments hold their positions in the stereo image. For listeners, the intended benefit is a presentation that stays coherent beyond one precisely chosen seat.

Up top, the integrated SuperTrax super tweeter fires upward into a shaped diffuser that redirects high-frequency output around the room. That upper driver uses a thin carbon diaphragm, giving the Anniversary two very different material approaches to reproducing the upper end of a recording. Fyne claims this adds spaciousness and atmosphere. The sculptural assembly gives the speaker an unusual silhouette, but it has an acoustic job beyond looking expensive. Importantly, its 360-degree dispersion applies to that high-frequency system, not the entire speaker. It isn’t a promise of identical sound in every seat.

At the bottom, a downward-firing port meets the BassTrax diffuser, which spreads its output around the base. Fyne says this makes room positioning less critical. I’m more interested in that practical intention than another enormous frequency-range number. A design that acknowledges furniture and walls makes sense, though I wouldn’t read the claim as permission to ignore placement altogether.

The tonal controls are an especially sensible touch. Separate adjustments let owners change high-frequency energy, presence, and super-tweeter output by up to 3 dB either way. That gives people some say in how the speakers suit their room and preferences. These aren’t automatic room correction, but I’d rather have useful adjustment than be told there’s one universally correct balance.

Reality arrives with the dimensions and price. Each cabinet stands about 49 inches tall and weighs nearly 130 pounds, so this is a deliberate installation, not something you casually shuffle around. Gear Patrol reports a $50,000 price for the pair, and you’ll still need external amplification. The woodwork may help the speakers belong in a living room, but it won’t make them disappear.

I like the willingness to make the engineering visible, from the prominent central driver to the odd little structure on top. At this price, though, a fascinating materials list is only the beginning of the conversation. I’d want an audition in a room resembling my own before treating any promised improvement as a reason to buy. Beautiful cabinetry earns a place on the shortlist, not an exemption from listening.

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Sony’s Gold-Plated Walkman: Cassette Nostalgia Without Tapes

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One of the things I wish I had been able to keep from “the olden days” is my cassette player, specifically my Sony Walkman. It probably wouldn’t get much use now, of course, but there are still cassette tapes around, and it’s a nostalgic bit that kids these days would get a kick out of seeing and experiencing. Most of the time, too, our music is played through our smartphones or laptops rather than dedicated music players. Well, Sony wants to say its golden piece about that.

Sony announced its latest premium Walkman lineup on October 15, 2026, and the flagship device is actually gold-plated, including some of its smallest parts. The catch, though, is that it doesn’t actually play cassette tapes. Instead, the NW-WM1ZM3 is built for playing digital music through your wireless or wired headphones of choice. It’s a device for those who prefer a separate audio player and want something that looks classy and elegant. Oh, and you need almost $6,000 to spare as well. Sony’s U.S. store lists it for preorder at $5,899.99.

Designer: Sony

The gold finish is only part of the story. Sony precision-mills the main chassis from 99.99% pure oxygen-free copper, while the rear chassis uses 99.96% pure copper. Both receive gold plating. According to Sony, this construction contributes to audio performance, making the enclosure part of its sound-engineering approach rather than simply a decorative shell. Whether those choices produce an audible improvement worth the asking price would require independent testing.

Even the gold-plated screws have an intended purpose beyond matching the exterior. Sony says their low resistance helps maintain a stable electrical ground connection between the chassis sections. Inside, dedicated capacitors for the digital and audio sections and a machined copper shielding block continue the effort to manage electrical noise. Much of this design work remains hidden once everything is assembled.

The exterior gives you more immediately noticeable details. Circular machined metal surrounds emphasize the headphone sockets, while a dark, leather-textured rear pad contrasts with the gold frame. That pad also keeps your hand from directly contacting the copper rear chassis. Visually, the dark surface gives the gold some breathing room, so the player doesn’t look like one uninterrupted block of precious metal.

Physical side buttons sit alongside the 5.5-inch touchscreen, providing dedicated playback and volume controls rather than making every interaction depend on a menu. In Sony’s images, the circular buttons have clearly marked symbols and sit within a recessed strip. That arrangement gives the side a recognizable control area, although how easily you can operate it by touch needs hands-on testing.

For those of us still attached to the cassette era, the interface offers a particularly nice nod. A cassette-style playback display and screensaver bring the old format onto the screen, with the cassette graphic changing according to the music’s codec. The volume interface also references analog equipment. You won’t be flipping a tape, but the visual connection is there.

There are practical reasons to keep a separate player, too. Its 256GB of storage, approximately 207GB of which is available, can house music without taking up space on your phone, and microSD expansion leaves room for more. Android and Wi-Fi support streaming alongside local files. Sony claims approximately 33 hours of 24-bit/96kHz FLAC playback in its music app under specified conditions, rather than promising the same endurance for every listening setup.

The material choices do come with a physical compromise. At approximately 670 grams, or almost 1.5 pounds, this Walkman is a substantial extra object to carry. For me, that makes its appeal easier to understand beside an armchair than tucked into a pocket on a daily commute.

I can appreciate the idea of giving music its own device again. I’m less convinced that nostalgia needs quite this much copper and gold. The physical controls and cassette interface are inviting, but the price and weight make this a very different proposition from replacing my old tape player.

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You now pair your old iPod with AirPods thanks to this Motherboard swap

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When Jobs pitched the iTunes Music Store to studio execs, he pointed at Napster as the model. Napster won because it was easy, so Jobs set out to build something just as easy that was also legal. The result was a marketplace for individual tracks, or ‘singles,’ which pretty much rewired the audio business, and the iPod (already on shelves since 2001) became the pocket for it. More than two decades later, the iPod is making a comeback. Sure, the retro wave is real, and a new generation wants music without TikTok notifications, but that same crowd also wants to live through an era when music could be owned, stored, and played offline.

The catch is that an iPod plays audio just fine (if you can find a working one), but it can’t talk to Apple’s own AirPods. Sprout, a new replacement motherboard from London studio Certain Things, fixes that for the iPod 3rd generation, 4th generation, and iPod mini, and AirPods bring their noise cancellation with them. The case, screen, and wheel stay exactly as Apple made them, while USB-C charging, Wi-Fi, and a microSD slot for up to 2TB join the party. That 2TB works out to roughly 500,000 songs, which is a lot of owning. A Crowd Supply campaign is coming, with pricing still TBA.

Designer: Certain Things

Same Body, New Brain, Zero Soldering

Sprout’s board is cut to the shape of Apple’s original, a flex that tells you how much homework went into this. It measures 2.19 x 3.86 x 0.06 inches (55.5 x 98.0 x 1.6mm) on the 3rd and 4th generation, and the mini board is even slimmer. You open the iPod with a screwdriver and a plastic pry tool, lift out the old board, and reconnect the original ribbon cables to the new one. The monochrome LCD is driven natively, so the screen looks like it always did, chunky pixels included. Installed, the whole thing weighs less than the original iPod, which is a sentence nobody expects to write about a mod.

Zac Builds soldered a generic Bluetooth transmitter into an iPod Video’s headphone circuit, which works but asks for steady hands and a tolerance for tiny wires. Boxy Pixel’s kit needs hardly any soldering and keeps Apple’s motherboard in play, but its machined aluminum shell with glass panels costs $155 plus $13 for buttons and switches. The finished iPod also comes out chunkier than the original, which is a fair trade for haptic feedback and wireless charging but a hard sell for purists. Sprout takes the invisible route, where the iPod looks untouched and only the internals know what happened. For anyone who loved how these things looked in the early 2000s, that keeps the nostalgia fully intact.

Bluetooth, a Proper DAC, and Two Flavors of Sprout

Bluetooth is the headline, and it lets AirPods and any other wireless headphones or speakers pair with an iPod 3G, 4G, or mini. Wired listeners get a CS43131-class DAC from Cirrus Logic, the chip that turns digital audio into the analog signal your headphones play, feeding the original 3.5mm jack. Files drag and drop over USB-C in MP3, AAC, ALAC, FLAC, or Opus, so iTunes never gets invited to the party. The 3rd and 4th generation boards target 40 hours of continuous Bluetooth playback on a 2,500mAh cell, a full workweek of desk listening between charges. The mini aims for 20 hours on a 1,200mAh cell, and a microSD slot up to 2TB retires the aging hard drive.

Sprout Pico runs on a Raspberry Pi RP2350, a small microcontroller that wakes instantly, and plays your own library and Wi-Fi podcast downloads on all three iPods. Sprout Pi, offered for the 3rd and 4th generation, adds a Compute Module Zero, a tiny Raspberry Pi computer, for Spotify, Apple Music, AirPlay, and custom apps. The studio calls the streaming features working proofs of concept as of September 2026, so launch features may differ. The firmware is written from scratch and adds Cover Flow, a 2007 Apple trick, to a monochrome iPod, alongside Podcasts and Search. On Sprout Pi, a Linux computer hides underneath, and demo clips labeled apps show a classic Mac and a PlayStation.

Open Source Gives Sprout Legs

Schematics, board layouts, and the bill of materials (the full parts list) will be released under CERN-OHL-S v2, while firmware lands under MPL-2.0 and documentation under CC BY 4.0. That documentation includes reverse-engineering notes on the iPod’s display, click wheel, and headphone connectors, so the next tinkerer starts with a map. All of it is due on GitHub before the campaign ends, so anyone can poke at it. Guy Dupont’s 2021 sPot is the obvious ancestor, a Raspberry Pi Zero W inside a 4th generation iPod that streamed Spotify but kept only the case and click wheel. Sprout keeps the original monochrome screen and a working headphone jack, which turns a clever one-off into a repeatable design.

Moonlit Market’s Classic Connect 2 covers the 5th, 6th, and 7th generation, so the 3rd, 4th, and mini finally get their own project. Sudo, the $249 player betting on a wheel and a library you own, is a new device built to feel old, while Sprout is an old one made to behave new. You supply the iPod (cheaper in these overlooked generations), and no price or ship date has been announced. Launch updates are available through Sprout’s Crowd Supply page, where the project is listed as launching soon. Jobs sold the world on easy, legal music you could own, and the best way to keep that promise now might be an old iPod with a new brain.

 

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Someone Turned the Beats Pill Into a Diglett, and Now the Official Pikachu Version Looks Boring

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Pokémon turned 30 this year, and every brand with a product page seems to want a slice of the cake. Polaroid’s Pokémon cameras and the Fitbit Air Pokémon Sleep edition came first, and now Beats has joined in with a Pill. The speaker launched October 15 at $149.99 with Pikachu and Mimikyu across the grille, a gray body, and a Poké Ball charm on a matching lanyard. It’s a perfectly nice object. I’ll confess, though, that I looked at that gray capsule and thought a better Pokémon was sitting right there.

Courtyard.io shared a concept that makes the case, and it turns the Pill into Diglett. The brown grille wears glossy black eyes and a raised pink nose, and the whole thing rises out of a sculpted pile of gray rocks like it just popped out of a tunnel. A second render stacks three Pills into a Dugtrio on one shared mound. Diglett has been a capsule with a face since 1996, so this is the rare mashup where nobody has to squint. Consider this my case that the Pill’s best Pokémon was Gen 1 all along.

Designer: Courtyard_io

Diglett already has the Pill’s silhouette

Diglett is a head on a mound, which makes it a capsule with a face. Courtyard.io’s render keeps the Pill’s rounded cylinder untouched and wraps it in a clay brown grille, so the perforated mesh reads like packed soil. The Beats “b” sits low on the body in copper, just above the rocks, and the three-quarter shot shows the lighter tan side band running down the edge like a seam in the dirt. Nothing about the form had to bend to fit the character. That almost never happens in a collab, and it is the reason this concept looks so convincing at first glance.

The official Pokémon x Beats Pill takes the opposite route. It keeps a gray body, prints Pikachu and Mimikyu on the grille, and adds a Poké Ball charm, the first charm Beats has ever bundled with a Pill. That is a graphic on a speaker, and a handsome one. Beats has also done character Pills before, a history Apple’s Oliver Schusser cited when the 2024 model launched. A Diglett Pill would simply bring that idea back with a Pokémon attached, which is a much shorter walk than it sounds.

The glossy eyes, the pink nose, and a rock base that doubles as a stand

The grille is matte and finely perforated, while the eyes and nose are glossy, raised pieces that catch the light like a vinyl toy. That sheen difference gives the face a collectible-figure look without a single printed graphic. The rock base adds a third texture, a pebbly gray sculpt that gives the speaker something to stand in and sells the burrow illusion. Courtyard.io embossed its name into one of the boulders, which is a tidy way to sign your work. Every surface has a job, and none of them are shouting.

Picture the real hardware under that mesh. The 2024 Pill claims 24 hours of battery, so a Diglett could play through a full backyard party and still have juice for the next morning’s coffee. Its IP67 rating means dust-tight and able to survive a dunk in about three feet of water for 30 minutes, which suits a Pokémon that lives in dirt. At 680 grams (about 1.5 pounds), it is light enough to carry out to the garden. A speaker that hangs out in the flowerbed makes more sense to me than a gray one with a Poké Ball dangling off it.

The Dugtrio render and what Pokémon collabs could learn from it

The Dugtrio render stacks three Pills on a single rock mound, each with its own startled face and copper “b.” Beats currently pairs two Pills at a time, in Amplify Mode for more volume or Stereo Mode for left and right separation, so the third head would need a firmware update and a little optimism. At the official Pill’s $149.99, three speakers come to $449.97, which is one and a half pairs of the PUMA Suede Pikachu at $300 each. Dugtrio’s whole identity is being three Diglett, which makes it the one Pokémon where buying three speakers feels like a feature. I’d happily make that trade for a bookshelf trio that gets guests asking questions.

Most of the recent Pokémon collabs work by decoration. Polaroid wrapped a camera in Poké Ball patterns, Fitbit added a sleeping Pikachu label, PUMA bent a Formstrip into a bolt, and Beats printed two characters on a grille, all of it charming and most of it surface treatment. Courtyard.io’s Diglett goes the other direction by letting the object’s own shape do the talking, and the renders live on Courtyard.io’s X page for anyone who wants a closer look. The franchise has had a capsule-shaped character since 1996, and Beats has had a capsule-shaped speaker since 2012, so this introduction was overdue. Pikachu will always sell, but Diglett would get the laugh.

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Fairbuds 2 Earbuds Let You Swap Worn Batteries Instead of Buying a New Pair

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Wireless earbuds have come a long way, ever since Apple started the trend of removing the 3.5mm headphone jack from smartphones. Most sound fine or even great, but batteries both in the buds themselves as well as charging cases still pose a longevity problem. Taking a cue from its larger Fairbuds XL headphones, Fairphone’s new Fairbuds 2 make both those batteries replaceable, so that declining battery life doesn’t have to send the whole set into retirement.

On the outside, the Fairbuds 2 look fairly conventional, with rounded earpieces and short, flat stems. Forest Green offers an alternative to the familiar black, which is also an available option, and the matching case has softened corners rather than a rugged shell. The useful detail is a removable silicone sleeve around each earbud, hiding the opening that lets you reach its battery when it eventually needs replacing.

Designer: Fairphone

Remove that sleeve and the earbud’s battery compartment becomes accessible without tools. The charging case does require a Torx T5 screwdriver to reach its cell, but nothing you can’t get from a hardware store. Fairphone lists seven replaceable parts, including the case body and individual earbuds. Losing one earbud therefore doesn’t require buying another pair, which is reassuring if your usual storage system involves the bottom of a crowded bag.

Of course, easy repairs won’t make you enjoy a playlist if the sound doesn’t suit you. The Fairbuds 2 use 0.43-inch bio-cellulose drivers, with four presets and a five-band equalizer in the companion app. LDAC support adds a higher-bitrate option on compatible Android devices, but it isn’t a shortcut to guaranteed sound quality, and iPhone owners don’t get that particular audio codec.

Active noise cancellation handles the isolation side, with Fairphone claiming up to 45dB of reduction. Six microphones support noise management and calls, while multipoint connectivity keeps two devices connected simultaneously. You can move between a laptop and phone without pairing from scratch every time. The earbuds remember up to six devices, although that doesn’t mean six audio streams competing for your ears.

Battery life is a separate consideration from battery replacement. Fairphone claims up to eight hours of listening, or 40 hours with the charging case, with noise cancellation switched off. Turn it on, and the earbuds’ estimate drops to six hours. That could cover a commute and some desk time, but charging remains USB-C only, so a wireless charging pad won’t help here.

There’s a practical limit to the repair story, though. Seven replaceable parts don’t mean every internal component can be fixed separately, and continued use still depends on getting the right spares. Fairphone includes replaceable ear tips and silicone sleeves in that count. The IP54 rating provides dust and splash resistance for daily wear, but don’t mistake it for permission to take them swimming.

The US price is $119.99, with a November 2, 2026 release scheduled. Fairphone offers warranty coverage of up to three years, but a battery wearing out isn’t automatically a warranty claim. Fortunately, replacing it yourself doesn’t void coverage when done correctly. That leaves owners with two different ways to keep listening: support for manufacturing faults, and accessible spare parts for things that wear out.

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Pokémon Beats Pill Adds Charms Without Raising the Price

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2026 is the year when Trainers everywhere celebrate Pokémon’s 30th anniversary, so we expected a lot of new merchandise, themed events, and collaborations with other well-known brands. We’ve seen footwear and apparel rollouts with adidas and PUMA, LEGO sets, even a partnership with the European Space Agency, and food collaborations like Pokémon-themed Hershey’s Kisses. If you’re looking for audio equipment featuring your favorite monster, you’re in luck with this newly announced collaboration.

The Pokémon Beats Pill is a Bluetooth speaker announced by audio brand Beats in partnership with The Pokémon Company International. It features two familiar Pokémon characters, the ubiquitous Pikachu and the more mysterious Mimikyu. It brings the bright yellow and minimalist gray associated with these characters to a portable speaker with what Beats calls its signature sound. Both Beats collectors and Pokémon Trainers may want to have this special-edition collaboration to bring their music and other audio content to life.

Designers: Beats x Pokémon

The speaker’s design is a contrast between the electric yellow most identified with Pikachu and a grayscale interpretation of Mimikyu, with the latter hiding beneath a cloth that resembles the former. More than just attaching a logo to the Bluetooth speaker, this is a character-driven design. Both Pokémon appear on the grille, while the speaker itself remains compact and elongated like other Beats Pill devices.

According to Beats, this is also the first Pill release that comes with charms. Trainers who like collecting accessories get the iconic Poké Ball, Pikachu-inspired lightning bolts, and the equally recognizable Beats “b.” The color-matched gray carry lanyard is removable, so there’s a practical carrying accessory alongside the collectible details. It also comes with interactive packaging, which Beats says includes a movable piece, plus special-edition stickers. The exact packaging mechanism isn’t explained in detail on the collaboration page.

The familiar shape has a practical side, too. Its 20-degree upward tilt is designed to direct sound toward your ears when it sits on a table, while the soft-grip silicone backing is intended to make it easier to hold. At 8.6 inches long and 24 ounces, it’s portable enough for a bag, although not pocket-sized. Keeping the existing Pill shape also means the Pokémon treatment doesn’t turn it into a bulky character figurine that needs its own dedicated space.

Specs-wise, the speaker has a bespoke acoustic system that Beats says delivers room-filling sound and deep bass for your favorite tunes, podcasts, or audiobooks. It offers up to 24 hours of battery life and has an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance. That battery figure is a manufacturer claim, not a guarantee for every listening session. You can also charge a compatible phone from the speaker via USB-C, using some of its battery in the process.

You can listen over Bluetooth or plug in a compatible device via USB-C for high-resolution lossless audio. The wired connection matters here; lossless playback isn’t being promised over Bluetooth. You can even pair two Beats Pills together in Amplify Mode or Stereo Mode. The former synchronizes playback across both speakers, while the latter separates the left and right channels. You’ll need a second Pill for either option.

The speaker also supports both iOS and Android devices, so you don’t need an iPhone to use it. One-touch pairing and supported device-location features add to its everyday usefulness. It can also serve as a speakerphone, letting you take calls through the paired speaker rather than reaching for your phone every time. The Pokémon Beats Pill is scheduled to become available in the United States for $149.99 on October 15, 2026, at 8 a.m. PDT, through Apple and Target online and at select Target stores.

For Pokémon fans, the appeal is having a collectible that doesn’t have to stay on a shelf. The collaboration’s announced changes focus on appearance, accessories, and packaging, rather than a Pokémon-specific audio upgrade. If you already own a Pill, the reason to choose this one is mainly the character treatment. For someone looking for a portable speaker, though, Pikachu and Mimikyu give a familiar everyday device some personality.

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Meet Apple HomeView: A weirdly genius combination of the iMac, Watch, iPad, and HomePod

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Apple’s design team apparently raided four different family albums and stitched the best bits into one object. HomeView has the iMac G4’s floating-screen silhouette, Apple Watch-style faces, the iPad’s slab of glass, and a speaker base that recalls the HomePod. I have a soft spot for that sunflower-lamp iMac, so seeing a dome and a tilting display make a comeback in 2026 made me unreasonably happy. Somehow the pile of parts works visually. It looks like a lamp, has a tablet’s touchscreen, and doubles as a speaker.

Apple announced HomeView on October 13, 2026. It pairs a 7-inch Liquid Retina screen with a domed aluminum speaker base and a stainless steel hinge that lets you tilt the display. An A18 chip and the rebuilt Siri AI run the show, and Apple says it recognizes up to six enrolled users, each with a personalized experience. A wall-mounted version offers the same screen and core functions, though its speaker hardware differs. Both models cost $299 in the U.S., with preorders open and availability scheduled for November 13, 2026.

Designer: Apple

The iMac G4’s Dome and Personality Make a Comeback

The iMac G4 arrived in January 2002 with a 15-inch flat panel hovering over its base. Its sunflower-inspired form emerged from Steve Jobs and Jony Ive’s design discussions; Walter Isaacson’s account credits Ive with suggesting that the screen be separated from the base like a sunflower. HomeView echoes that silhouette but swaps the long swinging arm for a compact hinge, which suits a counter where nobody wants a lamp neck knocking over the olive oil. The tilt adjustment gives you some latitude on a low nightstand or a tall kitchen island.

The G4 showed how much personality a computer’s shape could carry. HomeView’s similar stance makes a box packed with a camera and microphones look friendlier, at least to my eye. A dome with a head-on-neck posture reads more like a desk pet than a gadget, which is a handy trick for something that recognizes faces. The thick black bezel is a taste call I’m happy to defend: it gives the Photos face a proper picture-frame border.

Apple Watch-Style Faces and iPad Glass Decide What You See

The screen looks like it comes from the iPad side of the family: a square slab of glass with rounded corners and a front camera for FaceTime. Center Stage adjusts the framing as people move or join the call. Apple lists a brightness range from 500 nits down to 0.3 nits, allowing the display to dim substantially at bedtime. True Tone adjusts the white balance to ambient lighting. Selected interface elements also respond to your distance, showing simpler information across the room and more detail as you approach.

The faces feel distinctly Apple Watch-like. Photos offers Portrait-style depth effects, while Flow reacts to movement in the room. Snoopy’s animations respond to the time of day, weather, and sporting events, a very Watch way of being useful and adorable at once. Home Modular puts favorite accessories on one dashboard, and Home Camera can stream up to nine video feeds at once. Fan designers were exploring this territory years ago. Justin Latham’s HomePod Nano concept, which we covered in 2023, imagined a speaker with a display running a proposed watchOS fork. It was a fan concept, not an Apple product or working software announcement. HomeView’s Live Activities surface the current song, an active timer, or an incoming Intercom message, bringing that glance-and-go logic to a household screen.

The Speaker Base Does the Heavy Lifting

The base recalls the HomePod, although Apple’s images show a perforated, color-matched exterior rather than the HomePod’s fabric mesh. Small grille holes also run along the display’s lower edge. A down-firing woofer and two force-cancelling passive radiators sit in the base, while two full-range drivers occupy the display.Apple says computational audio uses its silicon and onboard sensors to adjust loudness and bass response in real time.  The wall-mounted model has two full-range drivers but no base-mounted woofer or passive radiators, so the two versions shouldn’t be treated as acoustically identical. HomeView supports multiroom audio alongside HomePod, HomePod mini, and AirPlay-compatible speakers. Intercom also reaches HomeView and HomePod speakers elsewhere in the house.

The original HomePod was announced in 2017 at $349, when we dubbed it Apple’s “tune-busting Fabergé Egg.” Against that historical price, $299 for a speaker, screen, camera, and face recognition looks tempting on paper. You can pre-order HomeView on Apple’s site now, with both the tabletop and wall-mounted models arriving November 13. The tabletop unit ships with a color-matched USB-C cable, while the wall version relies on Schneider Home’s power mounts, which start at $59.95 and are sold separately. Siri AI launches in beta and in English, and Apple is not selling HomeView in the EU for now. Every ancestor in this object was Apple’s bet on a different decade, and HomeView is the first time they all share one counter.

 

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Retro-modern Fosi Audio DAP Neo revives the lost glory of listening to music on iPod

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Rewind a couple of decades, and I have the glorious era of the Apple iPod flash right in front of my eyes. A time when music was so personal, and the best way to step into a magical world of tunes and the emotions they carried. Fosi Audio’s DAP Neo instantly took me back to that golden era where less was more. In a way, this audio player takes a leaf from the book of the Shanling Q2 pocket-sized hi-fi player released a couple of months ago.

The compact little audio accessory is targeted towards the minimalist audio lovers who want to keep off of their smartphone – even streaming music services for the much-needed’Me Time’. Even though it doesn’t offer the luxury of relaxing back and listening to curated playlists on services like Apple Music or Spotify, the portable hi-fi player includes respectable internal storage for your favorite tunes.

Designer: Fosi Audio

This retro-modern classic player wants to curb your doomscrolling habits on social media apps for good by going completely offline. Sure, you can listen to music on modern flagships that support lossless audio, but the distracting notifications can hamper the listening experience and prevent you from feeling the emotion of the melodies. DAP Neo, with its classical yet modern appeal in a full-metal body and tactile controls, wants to bring back “timeless character to every musical moment.”

DAP Neo portable music player is not competing with brands like Fiio, Sony, or Astell&Kern, which offer serious audiophiles flagship features. The USP is its compact size to enjoy music anytime, anywhere – at an affordable price, well under $100. The digital audio player is a part of the Fosi Moment range designed specifically for intentional listening. The idea is to put high-quality music back in focus, complemented by the tactile feel of rotating the iPod-inspired dial and buttons.

Coming on to the specifications, the DAP comes with a 12-hour playback time, which should be enough to get through a day’s music. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth connectivity, but fanatics of balanced audio will not be able to connect their 4.4mm-compatible headphones or earbuds to the player. The CS43198 DAC chip does the heavy lifting for lossless playback, and the player supports MP3, FLAC, WAV, APE, M4A, and DSD audio files. Of course, the music files have to be manually uploaded to the player, which is another deliberate attempt to relieve the yesteryears.

Fosi Audio DAP Neo comes in two metal body finishes – Galaxy (silver finish) and Obsidian (dark grey). Given the audio player has no streaming option, the 16GB memory model comes for $80, while the 64GB variant costs $120. There’s an SD Card in the mix, expandable to 256GB for both variants, so you’ll have quite a lot of space to store your sizeable FLAC files and other audio formats. The only question is, will Gen Z be willing to go for this audio player that literally disconnects them from the rest of the world, but ultimately connects them to their music?

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Why CMF’s New Milk Carton Speakers Are So Irresistible To Look At

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Everyone has held a milk carton, which is exactly why CMF’s new speakers are so hard to stop looking at. CMF, the budget sub-brand of Nothing, shaped its first Bluetooth speakers like gable-top cartons, a form that toy manufacturer John Van Wormer of Toledo, Ohio, patented in 1915 as the Pure-Pak. Your brain files that silhouette under breakfast, fridge door, and home before it even registers the grille. Then the colors and a deliberately mismatched knob finish the job. Black cylinders and bricks have run the speaker aisle for a decade, so a carton is practically a plot twist.

The CMF Speaker S ($59) and Speaker M ($109) launched October 12 at nothing.tech and select retailers, in white, dark grey, turquoise, and orange. CMF’s own product pages cite a carton’s sharp geometry as the inspiration, so the resemblance is deliberate. A sloped roof carries the knob where a carton’s screw cap would sit, and the M’s top fin doubles as a carry handle. The front panel and knob pop off, which turns each speaker into a base for swapping or 3D printing. Both are IP68 too, so the carton can sit on a patio table without a worry.

Designer: CMF by Nothing

The carton’s anatomy, rebuilt as a speaker face

A carton has three recognizable parts, and CMF kept all three. The sloped gable roof becomes the top edge of a folded color panel that wraps over from the front face. The sealed top seam becomes the M’s raised fin with a handle cutout, while the S settles for a round cutout in the corner. The screw cap, a carton upgrade Elopak dates to 1991, becomes a knob you press and turn. On the orange and turquoise models, a dark grey body sits behind the panel, so the color reads like printed paperboard around a core.

The grilles do the decorating. On the turquoise model the mesh is a deeper teal, on the orange it turns brick red, and on white and dark grey it goes black, so each face is a flat field with big circles punched in. The M stacks two of them, the S gets one, and a small pixel-style cmf wordmark sits above like a tiny brand stamp. An oval button with a white light bar is the only other mark besides the knob. That is very few elements, all of them deliberate.

Pint-and-quart proportions and a color system with a mismatched knob

The S measures 5.1 by 3.3 by 1.7 inches (130.5 by 85 by 44mm). The M stretches to 8.7 inches (220mm) tall at the same 85mm width, so the pair reads like a pint and a quart of the same product. Helen Sanematsu’s 1999 AIGA Journal essay on milk packaging argued that cartons get their punch from standing in rows, with color separating the varieties. CMF’s launch imagery lines up four colors across two sizes, which plays that exact game. Put them on a shelf together and you get a dairy case designed by someone with great taste.

Each colorway gets its own knob: a black X on orange, a white ring on turquoise, a red paddle on dark grey, and a teal paddle on white. That deliberate mismatch gives every speaker a single accent, like a bright cap on a carton. Pop it off and you can mix freely or 3D print your own, a habit that follows the CMF Phone 1, whose community printed everything from Lego-friendly backs to a foam dart launcher. We once featured a fan concept for a CMF speaker that went retro radio. The carton is the braver call.

Drivers, battery life, and durability behind the carton

The S pairs a 1.8 inch (45mm) driver with two passive radiators, unpowered diaphragms that beef up bass, for 10W. The M adds a 2.8 inch (70mm) woofer and 0.6 inch (16mm) tweeter for 35W RMS, a continuous power rating. Both claim 18 hours at 50 percent volume with Ultra Bass on, enough for a workday and the commute. A 10 minute charge buys an hour while you hunt for your keys. They survive 30 minutes in nearly 5 feet (1.5 meters) of water and passed a 30 inch (0.76 meter) drop test.

The S costs $59 and the M $109, and both are on sale now at nothing.tech and select retailers. That puts a distinctive object within impulse-buy range, which is unusual for a design this committed. It is the rare budget speaker that makes you want to rearrange a shelf. Van Wormer’s carton survived a century by being easy to hold, stack, and carry, and a portable speaker wants the same three traits. Somebody finally noticed a great speaker shape was sitting in your fridge door all along.

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