Audio-Technica’s new wireless ATH-AL5NC completes its open-back headphone lineup
The new AT cans offer great sound and convenience, even if they can't be truly noise-cancelling.
Tag Archives: accessories
The 8BitDo Ultimate 3E Is the LEGO Set of Gaming Controllers
Most controllers ask you to adapt to them. The 8BitDo Ultimate 3E flips that arrangement entirely, building a controller around the idea that your hands, your genre, and your platform should decide its shape instead of the factory floor. The face buttons, the d-pad, and even the joystick tops snap in and out as swappable modules, turning what’s usually a sealed, one-size-fits-all object into something closer to a toolkit.
Pop off the magnetic faceplate and the accessory pack reveals its real purpose. A silicone membrane d-pad sits next to a tactile micro-switch version, and the joysticks come in tall, dome, and thick-neck shapes, each suited to a different grip or genre. Racing games favor a different thumb position than platformers, and for once, the hardware bends to match instead of forcing a single compromise across everything you play.
Designer: 8BitDo
Underneath those swappable caps, the joysticks themselves run on Tunneling Magnetoresistance sensors, a technology built specifically to resist the drift that eventually creeps into analog sticks after enough hours of use. Interactive RGB fire rings pulse around the base of each stick, translating movement into visual feedback in real time, a small touch that turns an otherwise invisible input into something you can actually watch respond.
The triggers carry their own bit of adaptability. Hall-effect sensors power two selectable trigger-stop positions, letting a shooter’s hair-trigger tap coexist with a racing game’s need for a longer, more gradual pull. Switching between them takes a flick of a physical switch, not a trip through a menu, which matters when a genre change happens mid-session rather than between them.
Connectivity spreads just as wide as the physical customization. The Ultimate 3E runs 2.4G wireless and wired modes for Xbox and PC, and switches to Bluetooth for mobile devices, now backed by a USB-C signal adapter for steadier range across more rooms and setups. Apple has officially signed off on compatibility too, covering iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and even Apple Vision Pro, stretching the controller’s use well past the console it was designed around.
An integrated wireless charging dock handles power without cables cluttering a desk, while two pro-level back buttons and a pair of extra-fast bumpers add inputs for players who map more complex combinations. Three custom profiles let different games, or different people, keep their own configuration ready to load instantly, and a 3.5mm jack keeps wired headphones in the mix for anyone who still prefers a physical connection over Bluetooth audio.
None of this treats customization as an afterthought bolted onto a finished product. Every swappable piece, every sensor choice, feels like it was scoped out before the shell was ever molded, built around the idea that serious players tend to have very specific, very personal preferences about how a controller should feel in their hands.
The post The 8BitDo Ultimate 3E Is the LEGO Set of Gaming Controllers first appeared on Yanko Design.
Japanese Designers Just Solved the Dead Battery Diffuser Problem
There are several times a day when you’ll want to sit down and take in the aroma of your favorite essential oils. It might be early in the morning to help you wake up, right when you start work and need a boost of energy, at the end of the day when you’re relaxing, journaling, or reading, or right before bed so the scent can help you settle into a good night’s sleep. At any of those moments, your oil diffuser is your best friend, that is, unless it runs out of battery or charge right in the middle of your routine.
If you’re using the Battery-Free Aroma Diffuser, that’s one problem you’ll never have. As the name suggests, it’s completely battery-free and skips the fancy ultrasonic tech found in most diffusers on the market. All you need is a candle; its rising heat spins a built-in propeller that carries the scent of your essential oil of choice, and you’re all set to relax or recharge, whichever one you need. Setting it up becomes part of your morning or nighttime ritual, giving you what’s been called “magic powered by a single flame.”
Click Here to Buy Now: $290.00
This diffuser was designed by Yu Ito and Yoshimi Kemmotsu of SOL style. Most diffusers on the market run on batteries, charging cables, and plastic ultrasonic components. This one skips all of that and works on nothing more than physics, heat, and fire. Its minimalist, elegant design only adds to the “magic” of the experience, as you watch your essential oils fill the room in a way that feels almost mystical. Because so much of the piece is transparent, you can see exactly how it works, from the flickering candle flame to the visibly spinning propeller above it.
The process of using the diffuser is refreshingly simple and doesn’t involve a lot of steps. Start by placing your essential oil of choice in the dedicated compartment located at the center of the propeller. Light a candle and set the cover in place. Wait about two to three minutes for the rising heat to spin the built-in propeller, and once it’s turning, it will carry the scent of your oils and fill the space around you.
The diffuser itself is built from aluminum, glass, and iron, materials chosen for being sustainable and long-lasting, so you’re not contributing to the pile of dead batteries or broken plastic housings that come with most electric diffusers. Because it needs no outlet and no batteries, it’s also completely portable. Set it up on your dining table, your nightstand, or even take it outside for a quiet evening on the patio.
If you’ve shopped for a diffuser before, you’ve likely come across a big name like Vitruvi, whose Stone Diffuser is frequently ranked among the best overall by outlets like Wirecutter and InStyle. Vitruvi’s design is genuinely beautiful, but it’s still an electric, ultrasonic device that needs to be plugged in or charged to run. More budget-friendly brands like InnoGear and Urpower take a similar ultrasonic approach at a much lower price, but they typically trade craftsmanship and material quality for affordability, leaning on plastic components that don’t hold up as well over time.
The Battery-Free Aroma Diffuser doesn’t try to compete on mist output, app connectivity, or color-changing lights. Instead, it carves out its own lane by focusing on ritual, sustainability, and craftsmanship. You won’t get smart features or adjustable settings, but you also won’t ever need to charge it, replace a battery, or worry about internal electronics failing. It does come at a premium, priced around $249 compared to the roughly $30 to $130 range most ultrasonic diffusers occupy, but for design lovers and sustainability-minded shoppers, that price reflects a genuinely different kind of product rather than just another gadget competing on specs.
At the end of the day, the Battery-Free Aroma Diffuser isn’t trying to be the most powerful or the most tech-forward diffuser on your shelf, it’s trying to be the most memorable. Whether you’re using it to ease into your morning coffee, get into a work groove, unwind after a long day, or settle in before bed, lighting that single candle and watching the propeller slowly spring to life feels far more intentional than simply pressing a power button. It won’t die mid-session, won’t need a replacement battery, and won’t end up as e-waste a few years down the line. For anyone looking to turn aromatherapy into an actual experience rather than just another appliance to switch on, this quiet, flame-powered design might be one of the most beautiful ways to get there.
The post Japanese Designers Just Solved the Dead Battery Diffuser Problem first appeared on Yanko Design.
The Paper Clock That Hides Its Hands in Plain Sight
Most clocks announce the time whether you asked or not. Digital displays blink at you in red or blue, counting down like they’ve got somewhere better to be. Even a classic analog face, the kind you’d find above a mantel or in a hotel lobby, still demands you stop and decode two hands sweeping past a dozen numbers. It’s efficient, sure, but it’s also a little relentless. Time gets shoved in your face instead of simply existing around you.
Mauricio Romano’s corrugated paper clock takes the opposite approach. There are no hands. No numbers. No glowing digits. Instead, a pleated disc of paper, folded like an oversized fan or a flower caught mid-bloom, hangs on the wall with a colored cord trailing down from its center. A hidden magnet inside nudges individual pleats open or closed to mark the hours, so the clock doesn’t tell you the time so much as it lets you notice it, if you’re paying attention.
Designer: Mauricio Romano
Romano first sketched this idea more than a decade ago as a design student, back when he was exploring his own synesthesia and how shapes could stand in for things that usually live in other senses. That early version, called the Geometry Clock, used triangles that shifted to represent numbers once you learned the logic. This corrugated version feels like the same instinct, matured. Instead of geometry you memorize, you get folds you feel. The mechanism is quieter, the material is warmer, and the whole object reads less like a gadget and more like a piece of kinetic sculpture that happens to keep honest time.
What actually gets me about this piece is the material choice. Corrugated paper is cheap, disposable, the stuff of shipping boxes and school projects. Romano folds it into something that looks closer to a paper lantern or an accordion caught in a gust of wind, then colors it in deep red, cobalt, teal, and a dusty terracotta that all photograph beautifully against a plain wall. It’s the kind of object that could sit in a design gallery just as easily as a living room, and it doesn’t apologize for being decorative first and functional second.
That ordering matters. A clock you have to study for a second before you understand what hour it is isn’t a clock built for glancing. It’s built for living with. You walk past it a dozen times a day and maybe don’t register the time at all, and then one afternoon you actually stop, trace the folds, and realize it’s later than you thought. That small delay, the beat between seeing the object and understanding what it’s telling you, is the whole point. It turns timekeeping into something closer to noticing the light change outside a window.
There’s an argument that this makes the clock less useful, and that argument isn’t wrong. Nobody is checking a corrugated paper sculpture to catch a train. But plenty of design right now is chasing that same tension between object and instrument, blurring the line until function becomes almost secondary to the experience of owning something beautiful. A speaker that looks like a piece of pottery. A lamp that looks like folded silk. This clock belongs to that same family, and it makes its case well.
As of now, Romano’s corrugated clock exists mostly on Instagram, shared in different colorways without a confirmed release date or price. It might stay a study piece, the kind of concept that circulates and inspires without ever hitting a shelf. I hope it doesn’t. A wall clock that refuses to shout, that asks you to slow down and read folded paper instead of glancing at a screen, feels like exactly the kind of quiet object worth having in a house full of louder things.
The post The Paper Clock That Hides Its Hands in Plain Sight first appeared on Yanko Design.
This Paper Pet Made of 400+ Circles Actually Moves When You Touch It
We live in a society where it seems like everything around us has to be functional. Every gadget needs an app, every object needs a purpose, and every purchase has to justify itself with a to-do list. But sometimes, you just need something that’s beautiful, well-made, and yes, still serves a role in your life, no matter how small or simple that role might be. In this case, an item made entirely of paper relieves stress and offers a fun, soothing sense of calm in the middle of a busy day.
Meet PÉPET (stylized with an accent, pronounced “peh-peh”), a palm-sized, handmade “pet” made completely out of paper. It doesn’t really do anything in the traditional sense; there are no batteries, no electronics, nothing to plug in or charge. What it does instead is quietly upgrade your desk or shelf into something worth looking at twice. And on the days when you need something tactile to relieve stress or help you unwind, it doubles as a strangely comforting, semi-inanimate companion.
Designer: Takeo Paper Products
Each PÉPET is built from more than 400 circles of paper, cut into different sizes and stacked in alternating large-small order. The paper itself is called NT Rasha, a fine-touch specialty paper available in 120 colors. That alternating arrangement is the real secret here. It creates tiny air pockets between the layers, and those pockets are what give this “pet” its personality.
I call it semi-inanimate because, even without a single mechanical part, PÉPET wobbles, sways, and shifts when you stroke it in the palm of your hand. The gaps between layers also catch shadow, so the piece seems to shimmer as it moves. It’s almost as if it has a life of its own, and that subtle motion gives it a calming, almost therapeutic quality. Its pear-shaped silhouette isn’t just for looks, either; it’s specifically designed to maximize that jiggly, lifelike movement.
Paper is usually thought of as static and flat, something you write on or fold and then forget. But the way PÉPET is engineered turns that idea on its head, transforming ordinary paper into what feels like a small, breathing creature. Even if you never touch it and simply leave it on display, it’s striking enough to earn a second glance, and then genuinely surprising to whoever discovers it moves when touched. It offers a tiny analog ritual tucked into the space between work and doomscrolling, and unlike almost everything else on your desk, it never needs to be assembled, charged, or updated.
That’s really the charm of PÉPET: it asks nothing of you. In a world where so many objects come with instructions, subscriptions, or maintenance schedules, this is refreshingly low-stakes. You don’t need to feed it, walk it, or worry about it dying on you mid-meeting. All it asks is a few seconds of your attention, and in return, it gives you a small, quiet moment of delight.
It’s also worth noting that PÉPET isn’t just a clever gimmick. It started as an award-winning design concept before Takeo Paper Products turned it into a retail product, which means the craftsmanship behind it is as considered as the whimsy on the surface. That combination of thoughtful engineering and playful personality is exactly what makes it stand out in a market full of screens and buttons.
Ultimately, PÉPET is a reminder that not everything needs a plug to bring you joy. Sometimes the most soothing things are the simplest ones: a scrap of well-made paper, cut into hundreds of tiny circles, that somehow feels alive in your hands. Whether it’s sitting quietly on a shelf as a conversation piece or getting a gentle stroke during a stressful afternoon, PÉPET proves that a little bit of unnecessary beauty is sometimes exactly what we need.
The post This Paper Pet Made of 400+ Circles Actually Moves When You Touch It first appeared on Yanko Design.
What is a dual-band router and why is it important for good Wi-Fi?
Modern routers have two or more bands, but what's the purpose of a dual-band router? Here's what it does and why it matters.
The $100 Keypad That Puts Each AI Coding Tool Behind Its Own Button
Every developer juggling AI agents right now knows the feeling of context switching until the whole workflow blurs together. Copilot suggests something in one window, Claude Code runs a task in another, and a dozen prompts live scattered across notes and muscle memory. The Logitech MX Keypad exists to collapse all of that into nine small screens sitting next to the keyboard, each one a physical shortcut into a specific piece of that chaos.
Every key on the keypad carries its own full-color LCD display, so instead of memorizing which function key does what, you glance down and see an icon that actually represents the command underneath it. Press one, and it can refactor a function, trigger a prompt macro, or hand off a task to an AI agent entirely. That small visual feedback loop turns an abstract keyboard shortcut into something closer to a labeled button on a control panel.
Designer: Logitech
What makes the hardware worth paying attention to is where Logitech chose to draw the compatibility line. Instead of building this around one coding environment, the MX Keypad works across GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, VS Code, and IntelliJ IDEA at once. A developer bouncing between an IDE and a terminal-based AI agent doesn’t need separate tools for each, just a different page of keys pulled up on the same nine buttons.
That pattern of paging matters more than it sounds. The keypad can hold multiple profiles, so switching from a Python project running through Copilot to a JavaScript refactor handled by Claude Code becomes a single tap rather than a mental reset. Anyone who has lost a train of thought hunting through browser tabs for the right prompt will recognize the value in never breaking eye contact with the code itself.
Underneath the surface, the MX Keypad ships with prebuilt plugins that Logitech had developers test directly against real coding platforms, rather than shipping generic templates and hoping they fit. An SDK opens the door further, letting teams build their own tools around internal workflows, while a community marketplace means the plugin library keeps growing without waiting on Logitech’s own release schedule.
None of that ambition comes wrapped in bulky, wasteful materials either. The body is made with recycled plastics, keeping the hardware in line with the sustainability commitments Logitech has built into its broader MX ecosystem. It is a small detail, but for a device meant to live permanently on a desk, it matters that the object itself doesn’t feel disposable.
At $99.99, the MX Keypad occupies a strange but clarifying position in a developer’s setup. It doesn’t replace a keyboard, and it doesn’t try to be an AI tool in its own right. Instead, it works like a translator between fast-moving human intent and the growing swarm of coding agents developers now manage daily, one labeled key at a time.
The post The $100 Keypad That Puts Each AI Coding Tool Behind Its Own Button first appeared on Yanko Design.
What is the Anker ‘smart display charger’ and what does that screen even do?
Anker's new smart display plug-in wall chargers might be small, but they actually do a lot more than just tell you how fast they're charging your devices.
What’s the difference between Sony WF-1000XM6 and WF-1000XM5 earbuds?
Everything you need to know to decide which set of Sony earbuds are right for you.
This Japanese Bottle Opener Catches the Cap So You Never Chase It Again
When you come home after a long, hectic day, sometimes all you want to do is sink into the couch, scroll through your phone, and crack open a cold drink. But when that “cold one” happens to be a bottle of beer or soda, things do not always go according to plan. The opener slips, the cap bends and gets mangled, or it pops off and goes skittering across the counter or under the couch. It is a minor inconvenience, sure, but it has a funny way of taking a little of the relaxation out of what should be a simple, satisfying moment.
The First Pour Bottle Opener was built to fix exactly that. Made by Suwada, a legendary Japanese blacksmith house, it is an elegantly crafted tool designed to let you enjoy your drink in peace. Its flowing, sculptural silhouette also makes it a genuine piece of design rather than a purely functional gadget you shove in a drawer and forget about.
The bottle opener is forged from solid, corrosion-resistant stainless steel and finished with a hand-applied satin coat that gives it a soft, understated shine. Its shape isn’t flashy or complicated, and that’s exactly the point: the stripped-down, minimalist form is what makes it look right at home sitting out on your kitchen counter, bar cart, or shelf, instead of buried in a drawer with your corkscrews and other odds and ends. It’s also a quiet nod to Suwada’s roots. The company has been forging blades and metal tools in Tsubame-Sanjo, a Japanese region famous for generations of metalworking mastery, so the craftsmanship behind this little opener runs a lot deeper than its price tag might suggest.
Where the First Pour really earns its keep is in the details. It opens bottle caps cleanly without bending or denting them, so you’re not left with a crushed, jagged souvenir every time you crack open a drink. It also has a built-in magnet that catches the cap the instant it pops free, rather than letting it clatter onto the counter, roll under the fridge, or scuff up your countertop. It’s a small addition, but it’s the kind of thoughtful touch a lot of openers skip entirely, and one that makes a genuine difference every single time you use it.
For comparison, a mainstream option like the OXO Good Grips Bottle Opener retails for around $10 and gets the job done just fine, thanks to a soft, non-slip handle built for everyday comfort. It’s a reliable, no-frills tool, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it is purely utilitarian: there’s no magnet to catch the cap, no display-worthy design, and no real story behind how it’s made. At $65, the First Pour Bottle Opener costs several times more, but you’re paying for hand-applied craftsmanship, a heritage that spans centuries, corrosion-resistant stainless steel, and a magnetic cap-catch that solves a problem most openers on the market, including OXO’s, simply don’t address. It’s less an “opener versus opener” comparison and more a question of whether you want a tool that just works, or one that works beautifully and looks the part while doing it.
I don’t usually think much about something like a bottle opener when I’m shopping for my kitchen. It’s one of those tools you buy once and only think about again when it fails you. But something like the First Pour Bottle Opener makes you reconsider how small changes, whether to design or function, can matter more than you’d expect. Using it turns a mundane, thoughtless task into a small, satisfying ritual, one you can look forward to with that end-of-day (or, let’s be honest, middle-of-the-day) cold drink. Sometimes it really is the small things that make a good moment feel a little better, and this humble little tool is proof that even the objects we take for granted deserve a second look.
The post This Japanese Bottle Opener Catches the Cap So You Never Chase It Again first appeared on Yanko Design.