Le Labo Quietly Made a Diffuser Out of Concrete

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Diffusers are one of those things that don’t necessarily have to be decorative as long as they fulfill their function. Their main role is to, well, diffuse essential or scented oils into your home to bring a specific scent that you want or need. There are still decorative diffusers out there, of course, but design isn’t really a major priority for most people. But if it comes from a brand like Le Labo, then you expect something that is beautifully crafted, just like their famous scents.

The Le Labo Concrete Home Diffuser turns what looks like a block of cement into a work of art that smells really good. Instead of its iconic redwood base diffuser, you get a concrete shell giving it a raw and brutalist aesthetic that still looks luxurious in your space. It’s even designed to also act as an ambient lamp, adding even more purpose to this already useful home accessory.

Designer: Le Labo

Each unit of this limited-edition home diffuser is actually individually hand-cast and hand-finished, so no two pieces are exactly alike, making it a sculptural piece as well as an actual diffuser. The deep patina finish on the concrete block adds to its character. The whole setup comes with an Edison bulb so the diffuser literally glows even as it diffuses your scented oil, so it also serves as ambient light for your space.

The design of the whole diffuser set is meant to add a more architectural feel to the whole ritual of diffusing oil. Rather than see it as an appliance, you can look at it as a piece of art or as part of your room’s aesthetic. The diffuser comes with Le Labo’s rich, signature scent SANTAL 26 oil, which gives off a coconut-lemongrass vibe with creamy sandalwood and vanilla undertones. The nebulizer technology of the diffuser breaks the oil into an ultra-fine mist without using heat so you get the full scent.

What makes the nebulizer approach especially smart is that it keeps the fragrance completely intact. Heat-based diffusers can subtly alter the chemical makeup of fragrance oils, which means what you’re smelling isn’t always a true reflection of what’s in the bottle. With this cold-diffusion technology, you get SANTAL 26 exactly as it was meant to be experienced: warm, smoky, and layered, filling every corner of your room without losing any of its depth or complexity. It’s the kind of detail that most people won’t immediately notice, but that makes a real difference in how the scent actually performs in your home.

Being a limited-edition piece, the Concrete Home Diffuser also carries an added sense of exclusivity. Le Labo launched it in select markets on October 5, 2026, with a wider rollout planned starting December 1, 2026, and the timing feels almost perfectly designed for the holiday season. If you’ve been trying to figure out what to get the person on your list who seems to already have everything, this checks all the boxes. It’s functional, it’s beautifully made, it smells incredible, and because each piece is hand-cast, no two are exactly the same. That’s a pretty hard combination to beat as a gift.

The Le Labo Concrete Home Diffuser is ultimately the kind of object that makes you rethink what a home fragrance product can actually be. It’s not just something you plug in and forget about. It’s something you put on display, something that actively contributes to how your space looks, feels, and smells, all at once. It’s also cast and finished by hand right here in the U.S., which adds another meaningful layer of craftsmanship to an already thoughtfully designed piece. Whether you’re picking it up for yourself or as a gift, it’s the kind of thing you’re not likely to regret. If Le Labo’s goal was to blur the line between home fragrance and home décor, they’ve absolutely nailed it with this one.

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Lenovo’s budget brand just dropped a 27-inch all-in-one PC for under $700

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Lenovo’s Lecoo brand started in 2018 selling smart cameras, a router, and a baby monitor. Nobody at that launch was picturing a 27-inch desktop computer. Eight years later, Lecoo sells laptops, tablets, mini PCs, and now a proper all-in-one. It’s a bit like a kid who began with a lemonade stand and now owns the whole street. My read is that Lecoo is Lenovo’s playground for affordable, good-looking hardware that doesn’t risk the bigger brand names.

The new Lecoo N27 Pro pairs a 27-inch, 2560×1440, 100Hz screen with a Core i5-13420H, 16GB of RAM, and a choice of 512GB or 1TB of storage. It arrives in Cloud Feather Black and Snow Feather White, with a wireless keyboard and mouse in the box. Prices run from ¥4,499 (about $671) to ¥4,999 (about $745). Lenovo has only launched it in China so far, and there’s no word on a US release. If it ever lands here, a lot of pricier 27-inch all-in-ones will start sweating.

Designer: Lecoo (Lenovo)

A Big Screen That Punches Up

Apple’s 27-inch iMac launched in 2009 with a 2560×1440 display, and the world gasped. That same resolution now shows up in an affordable all-in-one, at roughly 109 pixels per inch. The 100Hz refresh rate makes scrolling and window dragging feel smoother than on the usual 60Hz panel. Coverage of 99% sRGB keeps colors honest enough for photo edits and Netflix nights. The stand tilts back 15 degrees and forward 5, so you can angle it toward your slouch.

Since you can’t buy the Lecoo in the US, the nearest comparison is whatever Lenovo sells here. The 24-inch IdeaCentre AIO i with the same Intel CPU is listed at $999.99, per Notebookcheck. Apple’s 24-inch M4 iMac started at $1,299 and has a gorgeous 4.5K screen, though on a smaller canvas. Most 27-inch all-in-ones on US shelves still stop at 1080p. The Lecoo offers a bigger, sharper panel for about $671, which is the kind of math that makes you check the shipping options.

Looks Worth a Desk Spot

The N27 Pro sits on a tapering stalk with an oval foot, which gives it more personality than the usual slab-on-a-stick stance. In Lenovo’s renders, the black version’s stalk looks ribbed and twisted, while the white one reads soft and airy. Lenovo’s Chinese product copy roughly translates to “arcs that hold rhythm,” which is fancy talk for round shapes done nicely. Color is clearly the trend this year, and we covered Lenovo’s six-color IdeaCentre AIO lineup just last month. The Lecoo plays the same game with two shades instead of six.

The box includes a white wireless keyboard and mouse running on 2.4GHz, so a tiny receiver does the talking and there’s no Bluetooth pairing dance. The mouse tracks at 1200 DPI, and Lenovo says the keyboard shrugs off spills, which my coffee habit appreciates. On the ports front, you get five USB-A, one USB-C, HDMI, and Gigabit Ethernet. That’s enough for a printer, a webcam, a thumb drive, and the one ancient gadget everyone still owns. The cable nest on your desk gets evicted, with a single power cord left as the lone tenant.

Enough Power for Real Life

Under the hood is Intel’s Core i5-13420H, a 2023 Raptor Lake-H chip with eight cores (four performance, four efficiency) and twelve threads. That is plenty for spreadsheets, video calls, homework, and a browser with too many tabs. The integrated Intel UHD graphics, with 48 execution units (the little workers that crunch pixels), will handle light photo work but won’t impress your gaming friends. Sixteen gigabytes of RAM keeps multitasking from turning into a slideshow. There’s no USB4 or Thunderbolt, so external GPUs are off the table.

The N27 Pro costs ¥4,499 (about $671) with 512GB and ¥4,999 (about $745) with 1TB, and it’s on sale in China now. Lenovo hasn’t announced a US launch, though Notebookcheck says Lecoo all-in-ones often reach other markets under the IdeaCentre name. Weight and brightness figures haven’t been shared yet, so those details will have to wait. Still, the formula is clear: a big sharp screen, a friendly face, and a price that doesn’t make your wallet flinch. Not bad for a brand that started with a baby monitor.

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LEGO’s Joker Wall Art feels like a brilliantly psychotic Batman comic cover come to life

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LEGO has taken one of the Joker’s most unsettling comic-book images and turned it into something I could actually imagine putting on a wall. The new The Joker Wall Art Comic Cover recreates the striking cover of 2011’s Detective Comics #880. Instead of treating it like a conventional LEGO mosaic, the company has built the artwork outward, giving the villain’s face a surprisingly sculptural presence.

What immediately stands out to me is how much the design depends on depth. The Joker’s eyes, nose, lips, and facial contours are built in layers, so parts of his expression appear to push forward from the surface. It is a small but very important distinction from the flatter LEGO Art sets. When viewed from an angle, this feels closer to a brick-built relief than a picture assembled from tiles.

Designer: LEGO

The unique approach to the build also complements the original artwork. The Joker’s pale face, exaggerated red lips, messy hair, and almost uncomfortable grin already have a graphic quality that translates naturally into LEGO. Here, the physical construction adds another dimension to an image that was originally confined to a comic-book page. I particularly like that LEGO has not tried to make the character look friendlier or more conventional. It embraces the disturbing quality of the source material.

There is also more going on beneath that instantly recognizable face. Look closer, and the deeper layers hide Batarangs, swords, flowers, and repeated “Ha, ha, ha, ha” details. These are not immediately obvious from across the room, which gives the finished piece something to discover after the initial visual impact. The build contains 1,849 pieces and is designed for adults aged 18 and up.

Once completed, it measures roughly 51 cm high, 38 cm wide, and 5 cm deep. It can be mounted on a wall or displayed standing on a shelf, so it works more like a piece of collectible decor than a traditional playset. There are no minifigures included, which makes sense given that the finished artwork is clearly the focus. For me, that is what makes this set interesting beyond its Batman branding. LEGO is increasingly treating its adult sets as objects that belong within a living space, and this one feels particularly suited to someone who wants fandom without filling a room with conventional character merchandise.

The monochrome, graphic composition also gives it a stronger design presence compared to many superhero collectibles. The Joker Wall Art Comic Cover is priced at $169.99 and is available to preorder ahead of its January 1, 2027 release. At that price, it is certainly aimed at collectors rather than casual LEGO buyers. But if the idea is to own a piece of comic, this is it!

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This Hisense Vidda 4K projector swings on a rose-gold gimbal that looks like sculptural jewelry

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Samsung pulled off a sneaky trick with The Frame. A TV spends most of its life switched off, which means the biggest object in your living room is often a giant black rectangle glaring back at you. So Samsung taught it to hang art, and suddenly the void had a day job. Other TV makers took notes, and now matte finishes and wall-hugging slim designs are everywhere. The whole industry quietly agreed that a screen should look good even when nobody is watching it.

Projectors dodge the void problem, since the picture vanishes the moment the beam does. The box itself is another story, because plenty of them still look like they escaped from a 2006 school AV room. Vidda, the youth-focused sub-brand of Hisense, just launched the Big Eye M2 Pro Flagship Edition in China, and it looks like someone finally told a projector it’s allowed to dress up. It has a white body, a rose-gold lens ring, and a matching metal stand that would not embarrass itself next to a good lamp. The price is about $820 (5,499 yuan), or about $738 on promo.

A Stand That Retires Your Stack Of Books

That rose-gold arm does real work. It is a 360-degree gimbal, so you can tip the Big Eye M2 Pro up at the ceiling for lying-in-bed movie nights or swing it toward a wall, with no mount required. Every projector owner has built a leaning tower of cookbooks to get the angle right, and this retires the tower. The original M2 Pro had a gimbal too, so the idea is proven. At about 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) per the launch coverage, it weighs about as much as a well-fed house cat, so it’s a parked guest, not a backpack passenger.

The setup magic lives in that little dark window beside the lens. A CMOS sensor (basically a camera chip) handles autofocus, keystone correction (squaring up a skewed picture), screen fitting, and obstacle avoidance, so the image dodges your plant instead of landing on it. It also dims the laser if a person walks in front of the lens, which saves your eyeballs and your dignity when you get up for snacks. The 1.3x optical zoom (throw ratio 1.0 to 1.3:1) gives you a 100-inch picture from about 7.2 feet (2.2 m) and 150 inches from about 10.8 feet (3.3 m). That works in a bedroom or a living room without shoving the couch against the back wall.

1,800 CVIA Lumens Hiding Under The Jewelry

Looks aside, this is a proper upgrade over the original M2 Pro, which launched in China last year at 4,599 yuan (about $635) with a QuaLas32 laser rated at 1,200 CVIA lumens. The new QuaLas42 engine pushes that to 1,800 CVIA, a 50% jump that should mean a punchier picture when the curtains are half open. One caution: CVIA is China’s brightness standard and ANSI is the US one, so don’t line 1,800 up against the US model’s 1,300 ANSI and declare a winner. The same 0.47-inch DMD chip (the mirror array that forms the image) carries over, with about 44.6% more imaging area than the common 0.39-inch kind. Color coverage hits 110% of BT.2020, a very wide gamut where reds actually look like reds.

Sound gets a glow-up too. The original had two 10W speakers, while the Flagship Edition runs 20W across four, with two full-range drivers and two tweeters, plus Dolby Audio and DTS:X support. That should cover casual movie nights without a soundbar camping out beside it. Add HDR10+ and HLG support and a 40,000:1 dynamic contrast rating (measured across a whole scene, so those numbers tend to look huge), and the spec sheet reads like a pricier machine. Vidda has some credibility here, since a Zhihu tester measured the original at 1,351 CVIA against a 1,200 claim.

Console Ready, With One Catch

Gamers get an HDMI 2.1 port with VRR (variable refresh rate, which stops screen tearing) and ALLM (auto low latency mode, which flips the projector into fast mode when your console wakes up). Drop to 1080p and the refresh rate climbs to 240Hz, though 4K tops out at 60Hz, so you pick between sharp and speedy. PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch presets come built in, along with monitor-style extras like on-screen crosshairs and dark-area boost. A MediaTek MT9679 chip and 3GB of RAM run JUOS, Vidda’s China-market OS with AI search and on-screen content identification. The Hisense M2 Pro sold in the US runs VIDAA instead, so the software will differ if this ever travels.

Availability is China only for now. Moonlight White is on sale for about $820 (5,499 yuan), or about $738 with the launch promo, and Space Silver is reservation only. No US release has been announced. Stateside, the original Hisense M2 Pro debuted at $1,299.99 and has shown up around $949.99 at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H, while XGIMI’s Horizon 20 Max reportedly debuted near $2,400. If The Frame taught TVs that a black rectangle is optional, the Big Eye M2 Pro is a projector finally raising its hand to join the pretty half of the house.

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