Tag Archives: Audio

The $399 MPC Sample Finally Makes Beatmaking Beautifully Portable

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The MPC is one of those rare objects that carries cultural weight beyond its function. Since the MPC60 landed in 1988, that grid of rubber pads has been behind some of the most iconic beats ever made, from hip-hop to electronic music to whatever genre-bending thing your favorite producer is cooking up right now. So when Akai Pro quietly dropped the MPC Sample at $399, it felt like the kind of announcement worth paying attention to, even if you’ve never touched a drum pad in your life.

The MPC Sample is compact in a way that actually surprises you. At 23.6 × 19.4 × 5.0 cm and just under a kilogram, it fits comfortably in a backpack. It runs on a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that lasts up to five hours, has a built-in microphone and a 3-watt speaker, and connects via a single USB-C port for audio, MIDI, charging, and file transfer. That’s a lot of functionality packed into something that looks like it belongs on a desk alongside a cup of coffee and a sketchbook.

Designer: Akai Pro

The design is where things get really interesting. The MPC Sample draws direct visual inspiration from the MPC60, one of the most beloved pieces of music hardware ever made. The color palette is restrained and tasteful. The layout is clean. The 16 RGB velocity-sensitive pads sit front and center with that familiar grid arrangement, and the inclusion of a legacy parameter fader is a genuinely nice nod to the hardware that built the MPC name. The Verge called it a favorite portable beat maker, and you can see why the moment you look at it. It feels considered in a way that a lot of modern gear doesn’t.

Look at it a little longer and you start noticing the smaller decisions. The padded wrist rest. The way the button layout doesn’t fight for your attention. The muted color scheme that feels closer to a vintage synthesizer than a modern gadget. A lot of companies chasing the retro aesthetic tend to overcook it, leaning so hard into nostalgia that the product starts to feel like a costume. The MPC Sample avoids that entirely. It looks like something that was always going to exist, not something designed to remind you of something else. The proportions are right. The materials feel intentional. For a $399 device, the level of design restraint on display is genuinely impressive, and honestly a little rare.

That last point is worth dwelling on. Hardware design in the music world tends to fall into two camps: either overloaded and intimidating, or stripped down to the point of being frustrating. The MPC Sample sits in a much more interesting middle ground. The 2.4-inch full-color display is there when you need to visualize your waveform. The three real-time control knobs handle effects on the fly. The Instant Sample Chop mode, the real-time timestretch and repitch, the 60 effect types spread across four engines: it’s capable without being overwhelming. For someone new to sampling, that balance is almost everything.

It’s worth noting the price context here. The original MPC60 launched in 1988 at $4,999.95, which works out to roughly $13,800 in today’s money. The MPC Sample does things the MPC60 couldn’t dream of, for $399. That’s not just a deal; that’s a philosophical shift in who gets to make music with professional-grade tools. The fact that it ships loaded with over 100 factory kits, 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage, with room to expand via microSD, makes the entry point feel even more generous.

Nothing is without trade-offs, though. Five hours of battery life is solid for a focused session but won’t carry you through a full travel day. The built-in speaker works fine for quick monitoring, but you’ll want headphones for anything serious. And the MPC ecosystem, while powerful, has always carried a learning curve for newcomers. The MPC Sample softens that curve considerably, but it doesn’t disappear entirely.

What makes the MPC Sample feel culturally significant isn’t only its portability or its price point. It’s the way it takes something with nearly 40 years of creative history and makes it genuinely accessible without watering it down. The design respects the legacy. The features serve the workflow. The whole thing is small enough to go anywhere, which might actually be the most radical thing about it. Creativity has always been portable in theory. The MPC Sample is making it portable in practice. At $399, it’s the kind of object that quietly makes you reconsider where, and how, you make things.

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The Projector Concept That’s Almost Too Beautiful to Use

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Most concept designs exist to generate buzz, collect awards, and then quietly disappear. The BeoLens Horizon, a projector concept imagined by French industrial designer Baptiste Baumeister, feels different. It feels like a glimpse into a future that Bang & Olufsen should absolutely be building right now.

If you’re not familiar with B&O, the short version is this: the Danish audio brand has been setting the benchmark for luxury consumer electronics since 1925. Their products don’t just sound good; they’re designed to be desired as objects. The BeoSound Shape, the BeoVision Harmony, the Beosound Theatre, all of them treat your living room like a gallery wall. Baumeister clearly understands that DNA, and with BeoLens Horizon, he runs with it in a direction that feels genuinely exciting.

Designer: Baptiste Baumeister

The design comes in two distinct configurations. The first is a horizontal, low-profile unit that sits flat on a surface like a refined soundbar crossed with a Scandinavian jewelry box. The second is a taller, cylindrical form that reads more like a speaker column or a sculptural object you’d place on the floor. Both share the same material vocabulary: light ash wood, brushed gold-toned aluminum, and tightly woven acoustic fabric in warm grey. It’s the kind of material combination that makes you think of an architect’s weekend house rather than a tech showroom.

The horizontal unit is particularly interesting because of how it conceals the projector itself. A wooden slat panel sits on top, almost like a miniature version of those slatted screens you see in high-end Japanese interiors, and the lens assembly slides out from beneath it. The 4K projection capability is written right into the design, quietly labeled without fanfare. There are no aggressive vents, no branding that screams for attention, no black plastic anywhere. It’s restrained in a way that feels almost provocative in a market where most projectors try hard to look “cinematic” and end up looking aggressive instead.

The controls are worth noting too. Rather than a touchscreen or a button cluster, Baumeister places minimal icon-etched controls directly into the wood panel. A Bluetooth symbol, a pair of directional arrows, a power circle. They’re barely visible until you know to look for them, which feels very much in keeping with how B&O has always approached interaction design, treating it as something that should feel intuitive and slightly magical rather than mechanical.

Looking at the exploded view of the horizontal model, you can see just how much thought went into the layering of components. The speaker array sits sandwiched between the wood base and the metal-framed top, with the projector mechanism occupying the central cavity. It’s genuinely elegant engineering, even if this is still a concept. Baumeister also developed a series of small-scale physical prototypes exploring the form from different angles, which you can see in a lineup of matte black study models. That process matters. It tells you this isn’t just a pretty render; it’s a design that was worked through with real hands.

Here’s my honest opinion: the TV industry has been coasting on size for years. Bigger screens, thinner bezels, more pixels. But the BeoLens Horizon asks a more interesting question. What if the device itself was worth looking at even when it was off? What if the experience of owning the hardware was part of the experience of using it? These aren’t new ideas in the B&O world, but a projector built around this philosophy feels like a genuinely fresh proposition, especially as ultra-short-throw technology continues to improve.

Baumeister is a young designer out of Strate, a design school in Lyon, and BeoLens Horizon joins a portfolio that already shows a real feel for the intersection of material craft and technology. Whether Bang & Olufsen ever picks this up or not, the concept makes a compelling case that the future of home cinema doesn’t have to look like a gadget. It can look like something you actually want to live with.

The post The Projector Concept That’s Almost Too Beautiful to Use first appeared on Yanko Design.

When Your Speaker Is Also a Puzzle, Music Hits Different

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Most speaker designs ask a pretty simple question: how do we make this thing louder and smaller? Merge asks a completely different one. How do we make music something you can actually take apart?

Created by a five-person design team, Junchuan Shi, Junhao Lv, Xiangzhao Meng, Ping He, and Genghao Ma, from a cross-institutional collaboration across Sichuan Vocational and Technical College, CityU Macau, TUT, and QZUIE, Merge is a conceptual speaker system that just picked up a 2025 European Product Design Award in the Consumer Electronics category. It’s the kind of student concept that makes you wonder why no major brand has thought of it first.

Designers: Junchuan Shi, Junhao Lv, Xiangzhao Meng, Ping He, Genghao Ma

The central idea is deceptively clever. Merge physically separates music into its component layers: the accompaniment on one module, the vocals on another, and the full combined sound handled by the complete assembly. You choose what you hear depending on how the pieces are arranged. Pull the vocal module away, and you’ve got an instant karaoke track. Keep just the vocal module, and you hear a singer stripped back from all the production. Snap everything together and you get the whole song. It sounds gimmicky when you describe it that way, but it really isn’t. It’s an intuitive way to interact with music that streaming apps, for all their data and algorithms, still haven’t cracked with the same sense of physical satisfaction.

The three modules connect via electromagnetic induction, which also handles charging between units. That detail matters more than it sounds. It means the product doesn’t rely on fiddly clips or pins; the connection is seamless and the experience stays clean. When you hold all three pieces assembled, they sit together like a solid little object. When you pull them apart, you’re not wrestling with latches. You’re just… separating music.

Visually, the design is confident without being loud. The modules are geometric and compact: a rectangular flat piece, a squared speaker body, and a triangular wedge that caps the top when assembled. The whole thing sits in your palm like a premium toy, which is very much the point. The team describes the tactile experience of rearranging the modules as analogous to playing with building blocks, and that framing is spot on. Listening becomes a physical act rather than a passive one. You’re not adjusting a slider on an app; you’re literally picking up a piece of the song and putting it somewhere else.

The color language is considered too. The renders show options in slate blue, orange-coral, silver metallic, and white-grey, each colorway with its own character but all sharing the same graphic vocabulary: pixel waveform icons and quiet typography showing floating lyrics directly on the module surface. It reads like something between a well-designed toy and a serious piece of consumer electronics, which is an interesting space for a speaker to occupy.

I’ll be upfront: Merge is still a concept. It won in the EPDA’s conceptual category, and it hasn’t crossed into production territory yet. That’s a long road, and the audio technology behind splitting tracks in real time at the hardware level would require serious engineering. The images are renders and physical prototypes, not retail-ready products. But the best conceptual design has always worked like that. It shows an industry where something should go, even when the technology and the business case haven’t fully caught up yet.

What makes Merge genuinely compelling is that it treats the listener as someone with curiosity rather than just convenience-seeking habits. The assumption baked into most audio product design is that people want everything done for them, simplified, smoothed over. Merge assumes the opposite: that people might actually enjoy engaging with the layers of a song, touching them, moving them around. Given how obsessed the current cultural moment is with stems, remixes, and stripped-back sessions, that assumption feels exactly right.

Whether it ever becomes a product you can buy, Merge is already doing the thing good design is supposed to do. It makes you look at something ordinary and ask why it was never done this way before.

The post When Your Speaker Is Also a Puzzle, Music Hits Different first appeared on Yanko Design.

Nike x Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds promise great design, super secure fit, and impressive audio

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Earbuds are a holy grail accessory for fitness freaks who want to get in the groove to focus on their goals without outside distractions or losing out on ambient awareness when needed. Shokz OpenFit Pro and Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 have already proven their mettle in this space, with Nothing Ear (Open) and Anker Soundcore V20i also proving to be good value for money.

Apple has growing confidence in their fitness earbuds, and that’s the reason they’ve teamed up with Nike to release the Nike x Powerbeats Pro 2 Special Edition. Looping in LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers Forward, the American sports apparel brand has a valid reason to go with Beats for a set of fitness-focused wireless earbuds. These special edition buds come with tailored health tracking capabilities targeted towards athletes and heart rate monitoring integrated with the Nike Run Club app.

Designer: Beats by Dre and Nike

As one can see, the design is the major focus with these earbuds. They have a dual-tone finish in matte black and Volt splatter design. One earbud has the Beats branding while the other sports the Nike logo in black, lending the pair a distinct style appeal. The charging case carries the same theme and Nike’s “Just Do It” tagline on the inside. According to Beats CMI Chris Thorne, the earbuds are a result of the two brands’ “performance, culture and sports — the attributes of today’s athlete.”

The IPX4-rated earbuds come with a redesigned nickel-titanium ear hook, making them lighter while retaining the promise of a secure fit, even with the most rigorous activity. Battery life on these is rated at up to 45 hours with the charging case, and 10 hours on the standalone earbuds. You can expect the same level of ANC, transparency, and passive isolation as the original Powerbeats Pro 2. Of course, voice-calling performance, audio listening quality, and the heart rate sensing features are all what make these a bang for the buck.

Apart from all these features, they can also be wirelessly charged for convenience. Without doubt, they are the prime candidates for your everyday needs. Powerbeats Pro 2 Nike Special Edition was initially available through an early access lottery via SNKRS. For eager buyers, the global launch will be on March 20 via Nike and Apple’s official websites for $250. In-store availability is limited to locations including the United Kingdom, China, the United States, and Singapore.

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Gen Z Is Obsessed With These 5 Cassette-Era Gadgets & They Just Got a Full Design Upgrade for 2026

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Something shifted in how people want to listen to music. Streaming gave everyone access to everything, and somewhere in that abundance, the experience got thinner. You stopped owning albums. You stopped reading liner notes or staring at cover art while the opening track played. The playlist just kept moving forward. That isn’t nostalgia talking. It’s a design problem, and one the cassette era solved without knowing it was solving anything.

The products worth paying attention to in 2026 absorbed the analog era’s lessons and built something genuinely new from them — better components, better battery life, cleaner construction. Cassette-era warmth, fully reengineered for a world that also has Bluetooth and USB-C. From a $49 speaker shaped exactly like a real mixtape to a 104-watt boombox covered by WIRED and Forbes at launch, each one makes a specific case for listening differently.

1. Side A Cassette Speaker

The cassette tape was always more than a format. It was an object you labeled by hand, kept in a glove compartment, or assembled specifically for someone who needed to hear certain songs in a certain order. The Side A Cassette Speaker takes that intimacy and wraps it around a Bluetooth speaker that earns a second look before it plays a note. Shaped faithfully like a real mixtape, transparent shell and Side A label intact, it sits in its clear case-turned-stand like a relic that also connects to your phone. At $49, it is the most honest nostalgia product in this category right now, because it commits to the premise completely rather than gesturing at it from a polite distance.

What keeps it practical day to day is how little it demands from you. Bluetooth 5.3 handles pairing, a microSD slot covers offline listening, and at 80 grams, it disappears into a jacket pocket without thought. Battery life runs six hours at maximum volume, and a full recharge takes two, which means it soundtracks a full workday and refuels overnight. The sound is tuned warm, which suits the object better than raw precision ever could. For anyone who spent time making mixtapes, or anyone who didn’t but understands why people did, this is the version of that feeling you can carry and actually hear in 2026 rather than only remember.

Click Here to Buy Now: $49.00

What We Like

  • Cassette-faithful design works as a display piece when it isn’t playing
  • Bluetooth 5.3 and a microSD slot give you two reliable ways to listen

What We Dislike

  • A single-driver setup won’t satisfy anyone looking for real volume or full-range sound
  • Only three units available at the time of writing

2. RetroWave 7-in-1 Radio

The boombox era was about more than cassette decks. It was about radios you could carry anywhere, tuning dials you could feel through your fingers, and sound that filled a room without asking permission first. The RetroWave 7-in-1 Radio captures that in a compact, Japanese-inspired frame. The tactile tuning dial, the warm retro casing, and AM/FM/shortwave reception give it the presence of something lifted from a 1984 shelf. It also streams Bluetooth, plays MP3s from USB or microSD, runs an LED flashlight, an SOS alarm, a hand-crank and solar charging, and a 2000mAh power bank that charges other devices when yours runs low. Seven functions in one object, packaged inside something that earns its place on a shelf every single day.

The seven functions working together are where the RetroWave earns its position in a 2026 home rather than a nostalgia market. Daily desk companion and off-grid emergency tool are roles that typically live in completely separate product categories, and the RetroWave collapses them into one object without obvious compromise on either side. The battery delivers up to 20 hours of radio time on a single charge. Solar and hand-crank inputs keep it running when the grid fails or the trail goes deeper than expected. At $89, it solves problems you haven’t had yet while looking precisely right sitting on a counter, a shelf, or inside a go-bag. That specific combination is considerably harder to design than it appears.

Click Here to Buy Now: $89.00

What We Like

  • Seven functions cover daily listening, emergency power, and off-grid communication in one device
  • AM/FM/shortwave reception works without any internet connection

What We Dislike

  • 8W speaker output is modest for anyone expecting outdoor or large-space sound
  • Solar charging acts as backup only and cannot fully recharge the battery independently

3. FiiO Echo Mini (Snowsky)

The Walkman moment was never really about audio quality. It was about having your music with you, completely yours, untouched by anyone else’s programming or curation. The FiiO Echo Mini, released under the Snowsky imprint, brings that feeling back in a form that looks exactly like a vintage cassette player from the outside and performs like a current hi-res audio device from the inside. Dual CS43131 DAC chips from Cirrus Logic handle the audio processing, earning it Hi-Res certification from the Japan Audio Society. The retro interface and cassette-player proportions are a direct reference to early Sony and Aiwa portables, down to the tactile controls and the way it sits in the palm of your hand.

Where the Echo Mini separates itself from the nostalgia-only tier is in what it can actually do for your listening. It supports FLAC, DSD, WAV, OGG, and other lossless formats, and accepts microSD cards up to 256GB, which means a library that would have filled an entire shelf of cassette cases in 1988 now fits in a slot smaller than your thumbnail. Dual headphone outputs and Bluetooth connectivity cover both wired and wireless listening from the same device. An independent power supply keeps the audio circuitry isolated from interference, which is the kind of engineering detail that doesn’t show up in the design but surfaces immediately in how it sounds. This is what a Walkman would have become if the engineers had forty more years to keep working on it.

What We Like

  • Dual DAC chips and Hi-Res certification deliver audio quality that the original Walkman never came close to
  • 256GB microSD support with multi-format lossless playback builds a serious portable library

What We Dislike

  • Playback-only with no recording function, which rules it out for anyone who wants to make tapes
  • The deliberate retro cassette aesthetic won’t suit every listener or every room

4. Retrospekt CP-81 Portable Cassette Player

The CP-81 is the cassette player that stopped trying to be a hi-fi device and leaned fully into being a cultural artifact, and somehow that turned out to be exactly right. The clear plastic body shows the mechanism in full, the controls are exactly where you expect them, and the included RFH-01 headphones with their orange foam cushions make the whole package feel like something pulled from a very specific and beloved corner of 1983. Sold at MoMA Design Store, Nordstrom, and Urban Outfitters, it has collaboration editions with Miffy, Peanuts, and Hello Kitty that treat the cassette player as a canvas rather than just a device. It has 4.8 stars across 174 reviews, which is noteworthy.

What grounds it is that it actually works as a cassette player, not just as a shelf piece. The CP-81 plays, fast-forwards, rewinds, and records, with a line-in microphone jack that most modern cassette players quietly dropped from the spec sheet. Power comes from two AA batteries or a USB-C input, so it runs on whatever you have available. The people who buy it tend to keep it out on a desk rather than in a drawer. That’s partly the design doing its job, and partly because a cassette player that looks this considered, at this price, with this many ways to use it, is genuinely hard to put away.

What We Like

  • Records as well as plays, with a microphone jack that makes line-in recording straightforward
  • USB-C and AA battery power options mean it works wherever you need it to

What We Dislike

  • The clear plastic body shows every fingerprint, which matters more than it should for something this tactile
  • Collaboration editions sell out quickly, and availability varies across retailers

5. We Are Rewind Curtis Boombox GB-001

The boombox never fully disappeared. It got quieter, more compact, and less certain of what it was trying to be. The We Are Rewind Curtis GB-001 has none of that uncertainty. At 19 inches wide and 15 pounds, it is a proper boombox in the original meaning of the word: something you carry by its full-width folding handle and set down in a room that then belongs to the music. Four hi-fi speakers, two Class D woofer amplifiers, and two tweeters, push 104 watts across a frequency response of 40 to 20,000Hz. The cassette deck plays and records. The guitar amp input takes a real guitar. These are functional commitments, not marketing features, and they give the GB-001 the same confidence the original boombox had before the category forgot what it was for.

What lifts the GB-001 beyond a premium nostalgia product is how fully it commits to every part of the premise. Bluetooth 5.4 covers streaming when the tapes run out. The backlit VU meters — the detail WIRED noted immediately in its January 2026 review and the first thing every Gen X person in the room points out without being asked — are deliberately and gloriously analog. Forbes covered the North American launch the same week. Techmoan put it on camera in December 2025. The coverage it has earned reflects what the product actually is. At $579, this is the most serious purchase on this list, and also the most direct one: if you want a boombox that means it, this is the only new boombox in 2026 that does.

What We Like

  • 104 watts across four hi-fi speakers produces real, room-filling sound rather than novelty volume
  • Cassette recorder and guitar amp input make it a functional, creative instrument, not only a playback device

What We Dislike

  • At $579, the full value rewards buyers who use the cassette deck regularly, not just Bluetooth
  • Battery life has been flagged across multiple reviews as shorter than expected for a unit of this size and price

The Cassette Era Didn’t Come Back. It Came Back Better.

None of these products asks you to give up modern life for a feeling. The Side A speaker pairs over Bluetooth. The RetroWave runs 20 hours without a socket. The Echo Mini carries a full lossless library on a card smaller than a thumbnail. The CD Cover Player hangs on a wall. The Curtis boombox records. The best version of the cassette era is the one being made right now.

What makes each worth the attention isn’t nostalgia as a pitch. It’s the specific design decision behind each object. A speaker shaped like a tape because that was the only honest form. A radio that belongs in a go-bag as much as on a shelf. A CD player that brings the artwork along. These are for people who want music to feel like something. That instinct is now being answered.

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Philips Moving Sound line-up impresses with retro chunky form and peppy colors

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Philips is going all in with the retro vibe of 80s, because why not? The era was signified by bold colors and freedom of expression that somehow got lost in the craving for clean designs. The Dutch multinational wants to bring back that classic feel with its Moving Sound line-up that’ll have you drooling over. That pure magnetism of the retro-futuristic design sense, paired with the bright hues, is enough to get the party started.

The new range is a modern reinterpretation of the 1980’s Philips Moving Sound design, and on the inside, there is technology of modern times. This audio accessory lineup is headed by two portable Bluetooth speakers, a pair of headphones, and cheeky earbuds that are hard to resist. All of them come in attractive color combinations for a nostalgic feel. Most importantly, sustainability is at the core of the range, featuring replaceable batteries, extensive use of RCS-certified plastics, and FSC-certified plastic-free packaging.

Designer: Philips

The Tube (MS80) and The Roller (MS60) Speaker

Philips has brought two portable Bluetooth speakers to the fore, which overshadow any other option on the market for their bold retro feel. The €349.99 (approximately $402) Tube (MS80) speaker is a boxy option with the bright yellow hue contrasted well with the matte black and the LED lighting around the speaker ring. It is not all looks as the IP67 rated speaker produces 140W of thumping sound via the two five-inch woofers, two tweeters, and a dual passive radiator setup. The Tube (MS80) retains the nostalgia with a color display showing the looping cassette animation. The speaker has a 24-hour battery life, which will obviously depend on the volume levels at which it is played. Modern connectivity options like Bluetooth 5.5, Auracast, and USB make this a true audio lover’s accessory.

On the other hand, The Roller (MS60), priced at €179.99 (approximately $208), is similar to the Tube (MS80) with a smaller footprint and more contoured look. The stereo layout comprises woofers, tweeters and passive radiators, and for low-end addicts, the bass can be tuned up using the Bass+ feature. The IP67 speaker generates 60W sound and comes with the same modern connectivity options as the big brother. Since it generates less wattage, it is also rated at 24-hour battery life. You can also utilize the speaker as a battery bank for power-hungry gadgets.

The Buds (MS3) Earbuds

These are one of my favorites in the lineup for their cheesy appeal. The IP54-rated Buds (MS3) wireless earbuds come with a round case that has a touchscreen display on top to show the current playing track and an option to toggle the next or previous tracks. The hues on this are purely magical with the yellow, teal and neon pink splattered in perfect proportions. The buds boast six microphones in total for hybrid ANC, and come with Spatial Audio, multipoint connectivity, Swift Pair support, and Auracast. The promised battery life of 42 hours with ANC off is quite impressive, and a 10-minute quick charge lasts for two hours. For €79.99 (approximately $92) The Buds (MS3) are an absolute steal.

Ringo Duo (MS1) Headphones

Philips was not going to miss out on the retro feel of on-ear headphones for this line-up. They have the telltale nostalgic look and feel, reminding me of the Back to the Future flick. They are lightweight and will take you back to the golden era if you pair them with music from the 80s. Audio quality from these is impressive courtesy of the 40mm drivers, and the promised 26 hours battery life should last you a couple of days of pure music bliss. You can connect them via Bluetooth or a wired connection, making them well-suited for daily driving. You won’t get anything better than the Ringo Duo (MS1) headphones priced at €34.99 (approximately $40).

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Apple Gave AirPods Max a Brain Transplant After 5 Years (Same Design, New Chipset)

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Apple just gave the AirPods Max a brain transplant, and after five years on H1 silicon that was already a generation behind when the AirPods Pro 2 launched in 2022, it was due. The H2 is the real story here, because everything else on this headphone is identical to what shipped in December 2020. Same aluminum frame, same stainless steel headband, same mesh knit ear cushions, same 385-gram weight, same $549 price. ANC is rated at 1.5x more effective than the previous gen, and the full H2 feature set, Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Isolation, and Live Translation, all land here for the first time. What changed is everything running underneath a design that was already doing its job.

Adaptive Audio is what AirPods Max owners have been watching from the sidelines since AirPods Pro 2 launched in 2022. The mode dynamically blends active noise cancellation and transparency based on your environment, dialing back the ANC when someone speaks nearby and re-engaging it when you’re back on a loud street. It sounds incremental until you’ve used it for a full commute, at which point going without it feels like a step backward. H2 also brings lossless audio at 24-bit, 48 kHz, though only over a wired USB-C connection, so wireless listening stays capped at AAC. That’s a real ceiling to live with at this price, but the original AirPods Max never offered lossless in any configuration, so it’s at least movement.

Designer: Apple

Five years, and Apple didn’t touch the design, which makes sense once you understand what the design is doing. The aluminum ear cups and stainless steel headband aren’t decorative choices, they’re structural, and they’re why this thing still looks and feels like a premium object after years of use, while equivalent plastic-and-fabric builds from Sony and Bose at lower prices tend to show wear sooner. The AirPods Max weighs 385 grams, heavier than anything in the over-ear category at this tier, and it still doesn’t fold flat for travel. Sony’s WH-1000XM6 and Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra are both lighter, foldable, and notably cheaper. Apple’s bet was that material quality carries the argument, and for desk or commute use, it mostly does. The Digital Crown for volume and track control is still here, and it remains one of the better physical inputs on any over-ear headphone.

The Smart Case is still a pouch, not a case in any conventional sense. It’s a silicone sleeve that covers the ear cups and nothing else, leaving the headband fully exposed to whatever else is in your bag. It doesn’t fold the headphones flat, it adds no meaningful drop protection, and it looks like a small clutch that wandered in from a different product category. For $549, the carry solution should be better than this, and the fact that it’s unchanged after five years suggests Apple either rationalized it or decided the complaint volume wasn’t loud enough to act on. It’s the one part of the AirPods Max story that feels genuinely unfinished, and at this price, that friction sticks out more than it should.

Battery life holds at 20 hours, which is fine but trails the Bose QuietComfort Ultra’s 24-hour rating and Sony’s 30-hour claim on the XM6. What AirPods Max 2 actually has now is alignment with the rest of Apple’s audio lineup, a chip-level catch-up that makes this headphone feel current for the first time since launch. The ANC improvement is real, the H2 feature parity with AirPods Pro 3 is real, and lossless audio over USB-C gives the product a use case it never had before. If you own the original and spent three years watching Adaptive Audio and Conversation Awareness roll out to cheaper AirPods, the upgrade argument is now solid. First-time buyers are getting the version of this headphone the original was always pointing toward.

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AI Earbuds Designed Like Fine Jewelry, Not Consumer Electronics

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In most cases, wearable technology still announces itself as technology. Plastic shells, visible sensors, and utilitarian forms often make devices feel separate from the way people dress or present themselves. The AI Smart Gemstone Earpiece takes a different path. Instead of asking users to accommodate technology, it integrates technology into the language of personal adornment. Designed specifically with female users in mind, the earpiece approaches wireless audio as something that can live comfortably within fashion, jewelry, and everyday styling.

At first glance, the device does not read as a pair of earbuds at all. It looks remarkably similar to earrings. The form, scale, and surface detailing borrow directly from fine jewelry traditions rather than consumer electronics. Each earpiece is constructed from a copper acoustic chamber plated with eighteen karat white gold and inlaid with rare celestial gemstones, including meteorite fragments, tiger’s eye, opal, zircon, and obsidian. These materials introduce depth, color, and subtle light reflections that shift as the wearer moves. The result is a small object that sits on the ear like an accessory rather than a gadget.

Designer: Of Hunger

This shift in visual language matters. For many users, particularly women, accessories are an intentional part of how an outfit comes together. Traditional earbuds often interrupt that balance. They can feel out of place with formal clothing, evening wear, or carefully styled looks. The gemstone earpiece approaches the problem from the opposite direction. Instead of trying to hide technology, it celebrates it through jewelry craftsmanship. The gemstones and polished metal surfaces allow the device to complement clothing choices, hairstyles, and other jewelry pieces. Worn on the ear, it reads as something chosen for style as much as for function.

The experience begins even before the earbuds are worn. The charging case is designed to resemble a jewelry box rather than an electronics case. Opening it feels less like accessing a gadget and more like opening a pair of earrings. The earbuds rest neatly inside the case, echoing the presentation of high jewelry. This small gesture transforms a technical action such as charging into a familiar ritual. It reinforces the idea that the device belongs in the same category as personal accessories, objects that people care for and keep close.

Behind this jewelry-like presence lies a sophisticated technological system. The device operates on Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound architecture and uses thirteen millimeter dual magnet dynamic drivers paired with a HiFi grade composite diaphragm. This combination produces clear, balanced audio with a sense of spatial depth. The system also uses Open Wearable Stereo technology and air conduction sound transmission, allowing users to remain aware of their surroundings while listening. A three-dimensional sound field tuned by a professional acoustic laboratory with more than twenty-five years of experience ensures that the listening experience feels expansive and natural.

Interaction with the device remains simple and discreet. A touch-sensitive back panel on each earbud allows users to control playback or activate artificial intelligence features. The earbuds connect instantly through Bluetooth five point three when removed from the charging case. A spring-loaded mechanical structure allows the device to be worn with a single smooth motion, balancing comfort with stability. Each earbud weighs between twelve and fifteen grams, making it light enough for extended wear.

Artificial intelligence is deeply embedded in the experience. The system integrates ChatGPT and DeepSeek as its neural core, enabling functions that go far beyond music. Through the companion application, users can access real-time translation, intelligent conversation assistance, and meeting transcription. The application also allows users to customize acoustic equalization and connect to larger AI computing systems that power these features.

Battery performance supports everyday use without demanding constant attention. The earbuds offer approximately six to eight hours of listening time, while the charging case extends the total usage to around twenty hours. A ten-minute quick charge provides about one hour of playback, making the device practical for fast-paced daily routines.

The product itself emerged through a foresight-driven design process that explored how women might interact with wearable technology in an increasingly AI-supported world. The development team combined expertise in materials science, industrial design, acoustic engineering, and artificial intelligence. Several technical challenges had to be solved along the way, including integrating precious metals and gemstones with miniature electronics, creating an ergonomic wearing structure, and embedding acoustic modules alongside AI chips within a compact form.

Seen through a design lens, the AI Smart Gemstone Earpiece represents a subtle but meaningful shift in wearable technology. It treats personal devices not simply as tools but as objects that participate in how people dress, move, and present themselves. In doing so, it blurs the boundary between jewelry and electronics, suggesting a future where technology becomes something we wear with the same care and intention as the rest of our style.

The post AI Earbuds Designed Like Fine Jewelry, Not Consumer Electronics first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Zipper Is the Button. Finally.

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We’re used to devices and gadgets that have all complicated buttons and controls. But what if it wasn’t that way always? The gesture is almost embarrassingly simple. Pull a zipper open and sound plays. Pull it shut and the room goes quiet. No tapping a screen, no asking a voice assistant, no hunting for a button that somehow always ends up on the wrong side of the device. Just the same physical action you’ve been doing since you were old enough to dress yourself.

That’s the entire premise of ZIP, a concept speaker designed by Korean designers Taeyang Kim, Dugyeong Lee, Yejin Na, and Gijeong Shin. It’s one of those ideas that, once you see it, makes you wonder why it took this long. The concept draws directly from the universal expression “zip your lips,” mapping the act of silencing onto the most tactile and satisfying closure mechanism we use in everyday life. The zipper isn’t decorative here. It isn’t a style nod or an ironic wink. It is the interface. And that commitment is what makes ZIP genuinely interesting rather than just aesthetically clever.

Designers: Taeyang Kim, Dugyeong Lee, Yejin Na, gijeong Shin

Physically, the object is composed and self-assured. A compact rectangular body in brushed silver aluminum sits below a band of dark fabric bisected by a metal zipper, the kind of heavy-duty hardware you’d find on a quality jacket, not a flimsy fashion detail. The lower half houses the speaker grille: a grid of evenly punched dots that reads like something out of a Dieter Rams archive, which is very much a compliment. The visual language is minimal without being cold, functional without being dull. It looks equally at home on a credenza beside art books and on a desk next to a keyboard.

The prototype photos on Behance pull off something a lot of design projects fail to do: they make you feel the weight of the thing. The exploded component layout is especially good. You can see the actual speaker driver, the PCB, the battery, the zipper hardware, all laid out like a dissected argument for why this object should exist. It’s a working prototype, not a render, and that matters. Renders are promises. A functioning prototype is a proof.

What I keep coming back to is the conceptual integrity. A lot of tech and industrial design right now is obsessed with reducing interfaces to nothing: invisible touch surfaces, gesture sensing, proximity triggers. The instinct is understandable, but there’s a real cost to removing physicality from control. You lose feedback. You lose certainty. You lose the tiny neurological satisfaction of knowing you actually did a thing. ZIP goes in a different direction by betting that a familiar mechanical action can carry more meaning than a capacitive button ever will.

The “zip your lips” metaphor also does something a lot of design thinking misses. It’s cross-cultural in its clarity. You don’t need to read a manual to understand what zipping something shut means in relation to silence. The designers describe it as proposing “a new interface that controls sound, inspired by the gesture of closing your mouth.” That isn’t just product language. It’s a considered philosophical position on what intuitive design actually means. Intuitive doesn’t mean invisible. It means immediately understood.

The styling throughout the Behance project reinforces this with a dry, confident visual wit. The image of someone holding the zipper module over their mouth says everything the project text says, but in about half a second. It’s the kind of visual shorthand that designers spend entire careers trying to achieve.

Whether ZIP ever becomes a commercially available product is, frankly, beside the point right now. What it demonstrates is a design team that understands the difference between novelty and concept. Novelty fades. Concept compounds. And the concept here, that the best interface is the one that already lives in muscle memory, is solid enough to carry a lot more than a speaker. It’s rare to look at a design concept and feel like the people behind it already know something important. ZIP is that kind of rare.

The post The Zipper Is the Button. Finally. first appeared on Yanko Design.

5 Best Tech Gadgets of March 2026

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March has a habit of delivering the products that January only promised. CES demos become preorders, concept renders start circulating with real specs attached, and the gadgets worth paying attention to separate themselves from the ones that were only ever meant to look good on a stage. This month’s picks share a common thread: each one challenges an assumption about how a familiar product category should behave, look, or fit into daily life.

What makes these five stand out from the usual parade of iterative upgrades is their willingness to subtract. Less screen time, less bulk, less noise, less compromise between form and function. They are not chasing specs for the sake of benchmarks or piling on features to pad a marketing sheet. From a handheld PC that refuses to apologize for its ambition to a concept camera that wants nothing more than for its user to look up from a screen, these gadgets are worth your time and attention this month.

1. GPD Win 5

The PSP’s body plan endures, and the GPD Win 5 is its most ambitious descendant yet. Packed with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor, up to 4TB SSD storage, and 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, this handheld runs a 7-inch 1080p display at 120Hz with Radeon 8060S integrated graphics. Starting at $1,400, this is not a portable console pretending to be a PC. It is a full PC compressed into two hands.

GPD removed the internal battery entirely, replacing it with a detachable 80 Wh pack that clips to the back. A quad heat pipe cooling system handles thermal loads across a TDP range from 28W to 85W on mains power. Hall effect triggers and capacitive joysticks eliminate drift and deadzone, while a proprietary Mini SSD slot pushes transfer speeds beyond microSD limits. Every design choice solves a problem created by one stubborn, central ambition: desktop-class performance in a handheld shell.

What we like

  • The external battery swaps in seconds, and plugging into the 180W adapter unlocks full 85W TDP performance that rivals many desktop setups.
  • Hall effect triggers and capacitive joysticks eliminate the drift issues that plague most handheld PCs after months of heavy use.

What we dislike

  • The external battery makes the device awkward to hold when attached, and the proprietary charger adds bulk to an already heavy travel kit.
  • Pricing starts at $1,400 and climbs past $2,000 for the top configuration, placing it deep into enthusiast-only territory.

2. NanoPhone Pro

Smartphones have spent a decade getting bigger. The NanoPhone Pro walks in the opposite direction with a credit-card-sized body measuring 0.4 x 3.8 x 1.8 inches and weighing just 2.8 ounces. Running Android 12 with Google Play certification, this 4G device handles calls, messages, navigation, and basic apps without demanding pocket real estate. At $99, it is built for minimalists, travelers, and anyone tired of their phone being the loudest object in the room.

The spec sheet is an exercise in deliberate restraint. A 4-inch edge-to-edge IPS touchscreen, dual SIM support, 2MP front and 5MP rear cameras, a 2000mAh battery, and expandable storage via microSD. Face ID handles unlocking. The NanoPhone Pro does not pretend to compete with flagships, and that restraint is the entire point. It is a quiet, pocketable alternative that runs WhatsApp, Google Maps, and everything else that matters without the attention-hungry weight of a modern slab phone.

What we like

  • The credit-card form factor disappears into wallets and running shorts, making it ideal for situations where a full-sized phone feels like overkill.
  • Google Play certification means the app ecosystem works without sideloading, so daily essentials like navigation and messaging run without friction.

What we dislike

  • The 5MP rear camera produces images that are functional at best, making this a poor choice for anyone who photographs anything beyond the occasional note or receipt.
  • Android 12 on a 4-inch screen feels cramped, and typing requires patience and smaller-than-average fingers.

3. Camera (1)

Photography migrated into phones and got buried under notifications. Camera (1), a concept posted on the Nothing Community forum by designer Rishikesh Puthukudy, imagines shooting as a tactile act again. The compact metal body fits a pocket but fills a hand, with all controls on a single edge: a shutter, a circular mode dial with a glyph display, and a D-pad reachable without shifting grip. The design draws from Nothing’s hardware-forward language with circuit-like relief and bead-blasted metal.

A curved light strip around the lens pulses for self-timers, confirms focus, or signals active recording. The engraved lens ring invites twisting rather than pinching. A rear display exists but stays deliberately out of the way, letting physical controls carry most of the interaction. Camera (1) is a student concept, not an official Nothing product, but the question it asks is worth sitting with: in a world where every screen demands something, what would a camera look like if it just wanted its user to notice what was in front of them?

What we like

  • The single-edge control layout keeps eyes on the scene rather than buried in menus, restoring a tactile shooting workflow that phone cameras abandoned years ago.
  • Nothing’s glyph design language translates well to a camera body, delivering mode feedback through simple icons rather than nested software screens.

What we dislike

  • As a concept, Camera (1) exists only as rendered images and community discussion, with no confirmed path to production or a working prototype.
  • The absence of a sensor, lens, and video specs makes it impossible to judge whether it could compete with even entry-level dedicated cameras.

4. Samsung Slac

Earbuds have looked like earbuds for too long. Samsung’s Slac concept, developed within the company’s design incubation programs, reimagines wearable audio as jewelry. Three components make up the system: an open ear ring for audio output, a wrist-worn ring that tracks listening data and doubles as a magnetic dock, and a home charging station. The circular form wraps around the ear without entering the canal, maintaining awareness of surrounding sound while layering music on top.

When listening ends, the ear ring snaps magnetically onto the wrist component, transforming into something that reads as a chunky bracelet rather than stowed tech. AI tracks a full 24-hour audio cycle, building preference profiles from sound intensity, pitch variation, and tonal characteristics. The design team behind Slak understands that Gen Z treats audio devices as expressions of taste, not utilitarian tools. Whether Slac reaches production is an open question, but the proposition that wearable tech should earn its place on the body through aesthetics feels like a direction the entire industry needs to follow.

What we like

  • The open-ear design preserves environmental awareness while delivering audio, solving the isolation problem that makes traditional earbuds socially awkward in many settings.
  • Magnetic docking between ear ring and the wrist component eliminates the pocket-case fumble and turns storage into a wearable moment.

What we dislike

  • Concept status means no confirmed specs on audio quality, battery life, or connectivity, making it impossible to evaluate whether the sound matches the visual ambition.
  • Open-ear audio struggles in noisy environments, and without active noise cancellation, Slac may underwhelm on busy streets or public transit.

5. DAP-1

Vinyl got its comeback, and dedicated digital audio players have been staging a quieter return. The DAP-1 concept by Frankfurt-based 3D artist Florent Porta is one of the most compelling arguments for why that return matters. The device carries a slim rectangular body with an OLED touchscreen, a perforated front-facing speaker grille, and an aesthetic sitting between Teenage Engineering and Nothing’s CMF line. It looks like it arrived from a timeline where iPods evolved into something more considered.

The standout decision is the built-in speaker, a feature most high-end DAPs skip entirely. Porta’s inclusion acknowledges that music is sometimes shared, not just private. The DAP-1 is built around FLAC playback, preserving audio quality without streaming compression artifacts. A USB-C port, 3.5mm AUX output, and illuminated power switch line the top edge, while rubberized feet and torx screws on the rear give the device a repairable, tool-like quality. As a concept, it exists only in renders, but the conversation it starts outweighs most finished products on the market.

What we like

  • The built-in speaker turns a solitary listening device into something social, removing the need for external hardware to share a track with someone next to you.
  • FLAC-first design philosophy treats audio fidelity as the primary feature rather than an afterthought buried in a settings menu.

What we dislike

  • Concept-only status means no production timeline, no pricing, and no way to evaluate real-world audio performance beyond what renders suggest.
  • Dedicated music players occupy a narrow niche, and carrying a separate device for audio requires commitment most listeners will not make.

Where March leaves us

Three of this month’s five picks are concepts. That ratio says something about where consumer tech sits in early 2026: the most exciting ideas are still in render engines, while the products that actually ship tend to iterate rather than invent. The GPD Win 5 and NanoPhone Pro prove that real, purchasable hardware can still surprise, but Camera (1), Slac, and DAP-1 suggest the most interesting design thinking is happening outside production timelines and quarterly earnings calls.

What connects all five is a shared instinct to push back against the default. Against bigger screens, against feature bloat, against the assumption that technology should demand attention rather than earn it. March’s best gadgets respect the space they occupy, whether that space is a pocket, an ear, or the palm of a hand. If even a fraction of these concepts make the jump to production, the rest of 2026 could be far more interesting than the usual upgrade cycle suggests.

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