Tag Archives: Gadgets

Cyberpunk 2077 Just Got a Commodore Collab That’s Absurd and Logical

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The original Commodore 64 launched in 1982. Cyberpunk 2077, the game, is set in 2077. The gap between those two years is roughly the entire history of the personal computer, which makes the Commodore 77 either the most absurd collaboration in gaming hardware history or the most logical one, depending on how you look at it. At $377, it’s clearly betting on the latter.

The 77 is a special edition of the Commodore 64 Ultimate, the FPGA-based revival that earned a 10/10 from IGN when it launched in 2025. FPGA recreations matter because they reproduce the original hardware’s behavior at the circuit level rather than running it through conventional software emulation. The practical result is compatibility with 99.9% of the 10,000-plus game and peripheral library built up over four decades.

Designer: Commodore

Under the hood, this edition upgrades the processor from the AMD Artix XC7A50T to the more powerful XC7A100T, pushing the ceiling from the Commodore 64 Ultimate’s speed to 77MHz. That’s a long way from the original machine’s 1 MHz, though the number was clearly chosen as much for the name as for the engineering. It also connects to modern TVs via HDMI and supports Wi-Fi and USB, covering the practical bases without compromising what the platform does.

The design is where Cyberpunk 2077 fully takes over. The main body is a distressed, weathered yellow with graffiti tags, a brushed-metal plate, and a teal power indicator. The bottom of the shell is smoked-gray translucent, with multicolor LEDs glowing through from beneath. It boots into a custom BASIC 2.0 startup screen themed around Seocho Electronics, a fictional Night City manufacturer, which separates this from a sticker job.

The most compelling piece of the package is the demo. Called “The Shard,” it ships on an exclusive cartridge designed to look like the data chips from Cyberpunk 2077 and was created by Arise, a long-running Polish C64 demo group with a serious reputation in the scene. It’s a non-interactive 8-bit audiovisual experience, not a playable game, with a 24-channel stereo SID soundtrack by chiptune artist LukHash. For anyone who follows the C64 demo scene, Arise and LukHash together is a meaningful combination.

The spiral-bound user guide is another thing entirely. It comes packed with Cyberpunk 2077 lore alongside type-in BASIC programs that you can key into the machine yourself, which is about as 1982 as anything in the box. It’s the kind of detail that only makes sense if you understand what a Commodore 64 actually meant to the people who grew up with one, and it suggests whoever put this together understood the audience fairly well.

This is Commodore’s first franchise hardware collaboration in 68 years of existence. That’s worth pausing on. The Commodore 64 became a cultural landmark not through corporate restraint but through the things people built on it, the games, the demos, the music, the code. The Commodore 77 is a collector’s object, but the BASIC programs in that guide are an open invitation to do something with it rather than just admire it.

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This AI-Powered Nature Guide Is Designed to Reduce Children’s Screen Time

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Most technology designed for children asks them to look down. Quest asks them to look around. At first, the idea of using artificial intelligence to reduce children’s screen time may sound contradictory. Yet that contradiction is exactly what makes Quest compelling. Rather than competing with the physical world for a child’s attention, this AI-powered nature companion redirects it towards leaves, insects, birds, rocks, textures, sounds, and the small details that often go unnoticed.

Designed for children aged six to eleven, Quest transforms outdoor discovery into an ongoing learning adventure. It is not a conventional educational device, nor is it simply a camera that identifies objects. Its purpose is more ambitious: to turn technology into a quiet bridge between curiosity and the natural world.

Designer: Viraj Gapchoop

During the day, children carry Quest while exploring parks, gardens, trails, or even their own backyard. When they encounter something unfamiliar, they can use the device to identify it. Quest’s AI-powered vision system recognizes plants, insects, birds, rocks, and other natural objects, confirming each discovery with gentle haptic feedback before responding through conversational audio.

The absence of a dominant screen is an important design decision. Instead of pulling the child into a visual interface, Quest keeps their attention on the object in front of them. Audio and touch become supporting cues, allowing the experience to remain rooted in the physical environment.

More importantly, Quest is not designed to answer every question immediately. It might ask a child to look more closely at the shape of a leaf, listen to the rhythm of a bird’s call, or compare the surface of two stones. Through these prompts, the device encourages observation before explanation.

This subtle shift matters. Rather than positioning AI as an all-knowing authority, Quest uses it as a conversational guide. The child is not simply given information; they are invited to notice, interpret, and investigate. Learning becomes participatory, and the moment of identification becomes an “aha!” experience earned through attention.

The concept is built around three principles: Capture, Converse, and Celebrate. Children capture what interests them, converse with Quest to better understand it, and later celebrate those discoveries through storytelling.

That final stage begins at night. When placed into its charging dock, Quest transforms into a bedside storytelling projector. The plants, insects, feathers, rocks, and animals discovered during the day become the ingredients for a personalized bedtime story, with the child placed at its center.

A beetle found beneath a stone might become the guardian of an underground kingdom. A feather collected on a walk could inspire a journey across the clouds. A flower discovered in the garden might hold the secret to restoring an enchanted forest.

In this way, Quest does more than reinforce factual learning. It gives emotional meaning to discovery. Information gathered during the day is reimagined through narrative, helping children connect memory, imagination, and knowledge. Nature is no longer something observed once and forgotten; it becomes part of a personal story.

The nighttime experience also transforms Quest from an individual learning device into a shared family ritual. Parents and children can revisit the day’s discoveries together, talk about what they found, and experience a story shaped by those moments. Bedtime becomes an opportunity for reflection, connection, and imagination rather than another isolated digital interaction.

This is where Quest’s human-centered approach becomes most visible. The product does not attempt to replace outdoor play, parental involvement, or a child’s imagination. It is designed to strengthen all three.

Still, designing AI for children requires restraint. Quest’s success would depend not only on what it can recognize or generate, but on knowing when to speak, when to ask a question, and when to remain quiet. If every encounter is interrupted by information, curiosity can quickly become instruction. The device must support independent exploration without over-directing it. That balance is central to the concept. Quest does not aim to make nature more digital. It uses digital intelligence to make children more attentive to nature.

Young children are often described as asking hundreds of questions each day, a reflection of their instinctive desire to understand the world. Quest is designed around protecting that instinct rather than replacing it with instant answers. It treats curiosity not as a problem to resolve, but as something to extend.

At a time when many digital products are designed to hold attention for as long as possible, Quest proposes a different role for technology. Its interface is deliberately quiet. Its value lies not in keeping children engaged with the object itself, but in helping them engage more deeply with everything beyond it. The most interesting thing about Quest, then, is not that it uses artificial intelligence. It is that the intelligence knows when to step aside.

The post This AI-Powered Nature Guide Is Designed to Reduce Children’s Screen Time first appeared on Yanko Design.

A Korean Designer Just Built the Lucky Charm Gen Z Always Wanted

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I’m not a huge believer in horoscopes or fortune-telling, but I do enjoy reading those random fortune cookie sayings. I also like those “screenshot your fortune” or “tap to see your horoscope for today” posts on Instagram. So when I saw TOBI and how simple but fun this little accessory is, I knew I’d want one if it ever becomes an actual product I can buy.

TOBI is a concept for a Tamagotchi-like device that gives you random one-line fortune messages every time you press the button. Rather than just a machine spewing out these lines, it is a keyring-sized device designed to have a personality and be your “friend,” giving you advice or horoscopes whenever you need some random motivation.

Designer: YuJung Jung

This “cyber friend” comes in a compact oval design that can fit into your wallet, bag, or even clip onto a belt loop. Just hold the button for a couple of seconds and it will introduce itself to you, then give you the one line you may be looking for to kickstart your day. There are no additional features, just a message whenever boredom or curiosity strikes. Instead of reaching for your phone and doom-scrolling, you just press the button and get your one line.

The renders show that it will come in different colors to match your preference. The screen that shows the message takes up about a third of the surface. It scrolls horizontally in a computer-like font, just like unfurling a slip of paper from a fortune cookie. Even though it’s just a keyring, it’s designed to feel like a little companion you’ll want to keep close, like a pocket-sized pet, except you don’t need to feed it or keep it alive.

What makes TOBI stand out from the sea of minimalist gadgets being designed right now is the emotional intent behind it. Seoul-based industrial designer YuJung Jung didn’t set out to build another piece of tech. The goal was to create something that sits closer to a charm or a lucky trinket than an actual device, the kind of object you carry not because you need it, but because it means something to you, or at the very least, makes you smile. Jung even developed the proportions through repeated sketches, and the familiar metal keyring was a deliberate choice, one that places TOBI squarely in the same category as the amulets and lucky charms people have carried for centuries. That’s a surprisingly rare thing to aim for in the world of product design, and it’s exactly what makes TOBI feel so different.

There’s also something quietly rebellious about the whole concept. TOBI is deliberately, almost stubbornly, simple. In a time when every app, gadget, and wearable is competing for your attention with notifications, feeds, and endless features, TOBI offers exactly one thing: a single sentence, delivered when you choose. No algorithm deciding what you see. No pressure to keep scrolling. Just one line that you can carry with you, or choose to let go of.

It also lands right at the intersection of two things that are genuinely having a moment, tactile collectible objects and fortune-telling culture. Whether it’s tarot cards, birth chart apps, or manifestation journaling, people are leaning hard into mystical rituals right now. TOBI takes that same energy and wraps it in something you can hold in your hand and clip onto your keys. That’s a combination that feels both timely and timeless, the kind of thing you’d gift to a friend who already has everything.

For now, TOBI remains a concept, a beautifully realized one, but a concept all the same. There’s no release date, no crowdfunding page, and no price tag attached just yet. But honestly, the fact that it doesn’t exist yet somehow makes it more exciting to follow. Thoughtful, specific designs like this don’t always stay as renders forever. And if TOBI ever does make it to shelves, I have a feeling the waitlist would be very, very long, and I’d be somewhere near the front of it.

The post A Korean Designer Just Built the Lucky Charm Gen Z Always Wanted first appeared on Yanko Design.

The 7-in-1 Charging Station That Actually Belongs on Your Desk

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At some point, most of us made peace with the idea that the charging situation on our desks would always be a little ugly. A tangle of cables running to a flat power strip wedged behind the monitor, a USB hub perpetually on the verge of toppling, a wall wart blocking every outlet beside it. We accepted the chaos because the alternative was supposedly to sacrifice power for aesthetics, or aesthetics for power. The MFish E-Tank 7-in-1 Desktop Charging Station argues that’s a false choice. After looking closely at what this thing actually delivers, I think it has a strong point.

The E-Tank brings four USB-C ports and three AC outlets into a single compact station, pushing up to 240 watts of total shared output and up to 140 watts through a dedicated USB-C port via PD 3.1 fast charging. That single-port output alone can charge a MacBook Pro 16″ to 50% in roughly 30 minutes, which is the kind of performance that used to require a dedicated wall brick eating up half a power strip on its own. The three AC sockets are generously spaced, too, so chunky adapters actually fit side by side without blocking each other. That detail alone signals that the designers thought practically first and aesthetically second, which is the right order for hardware that has to work every day.

Designer: MFish

What powers all of this under the hood is GaN 6.0, the latest iteration of gallium nitride technology that has been quietly rewriting the rules of compact charging hardware for a few years now. Compared to traditional silicon-based designs, GaN runs cooler, delivers more power in a smaller form factor, and tends to be more energy-efficient overall. MFish pairs it with smart load-balancing zones that automatically adjust output based on what’s connected, so a power-hungry laptop and a low-demand pair of earbuds aren’t competing for the same allocation. It’s the kind of intelligent background function that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but you feel its absence when it’s not there.

The design is where things get genuinely interesting. The E-Tank doesn’t look like a power station. It has a clean, upright form, an anti-slip suction cup base that keeps it anchored to your desk, and a touch-controlled RGB ambient light ring that can cycle through colors and modes or switch off entirely for a more understated look. The fact that it also comes in a soft pink colorway alongside the standard version is a deliberate design choice I appreciate. It signals that MFish isn’t building exclusively for the gaming setup crowd, and that charging hardware doesn’t have to default to aggressive all-black aesthetics to be taken seriously as a product.

The RGB feature will split people, and that’s fair. If your workspace leans professional or minimal, even a soft ambient glow can feel like noise. But the touch control makes switching it off immediate and simple, so it reads as a bonus layer rather than a core identity. I’d call it an optional mood element rather than a defining one, which is exactly how these things should work.

At $129.99, the E-Tank isn’t budget-range, but it’s reasonably priced given what it covers. Seven ports across two format types, GaN 6.0 internals, dual-zone protection running continuously, and a form compact enough to sit on your desk without dominating it. Compare that to piecing together a separate USB-C hub, a power strip, and a standalone fast charger, and the cost starts to feel more proportional fairly quickly.

The larger statement the E-Tank makes is one the tech industry has been slow to fully absorb: the tools and accessories that live on your desk every single day deserve the same level of design intention as the devices they support. A charging station isn’t just utility infrastructure. For most people, it’s one of the most-used objects in their entire workspace. A product that handles serious power while still looking considered and intentional is a genuinely different thing to own, and MFish is making a real case for that with this one.

The post The 7-in-1 Charging Station That Actually Belongs on Your Desk first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Click Wheel Is Back, and This Pocket Player Has 4 DACs

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The Shanling Q2 is a pocket-sized hi-fi player that fits four Cirrus Logic CS43131 DAC chips into a body smaller than most wallets. It measures 80mm x 50mm x 13.5mm, weighs 83g, and supports PCM up to 768 kHz/32-bit alongside native DSD512 playback. It also has a Click Wheel, which, depending on your age, will either mean nothing to you or mean a great deal.

The Click Wheel here is a touch-sensitive ring that sits alongside a 2.09-inch touchscreen, giving you two ways to move through menus and adjust volume. The touchscreen handles the broader interface work while the wheel handles the tactile stuff, volume adjustments and quick navigation without staring at a screen. Four physical buttons round it out. The combination is deliberate and slightly nostalgic, and it works.

Designer: Shanling

Those four DAC chips working in tandem are why the audio section matters. Through the 4.4 mm balanced output, the Q2 pushes up to 425mW into a 32 Ω load, which is enough to properly drive full-size headphones that most portable players give up on. The 3.5mm unbalanced output still delivers 120mW. Both gain settings, low for sensitive in-ear monitors and high for harder-to-drive cans, give you control over the amplifier’s output to match your headphones precisely.

One of the more useful things the Q2 can do is disappear into your current setup rather than replace it entirely. The bidirectional Bluetooth 5.2 works in both directions: as a transmitter to wireless headphones and speakers, and as a receiver that turns the Q2 into a DAC and amplifier for your smartphone. Plug a set of wired headphones into the Q2, pair it with your phone via Bluetooth, and you get a meaningful upgrade over your phone’s built-in audio without any extra hassle.

There’s no internal storage, which keeps the Q2 light and simple, but the microSD slot accepts cards up to 2TB. Most high-resolution music libraries won’t come anywhere near filling that, but it’s generous enough that the storage question essentially disappears. The dual-band Wi-Fi supports AirPlay and DLNA for wireless streaming, and native Tidal support means you don’t have to rely on stored files at all if you’d rather not.

Battery life holds up well relative to what’s being asked of the hardware. The 3.5mm output gets up to 13.5 hours; the balanced connection trims that slightly to 12.5 hours. Run the Q2 as a Bluetooth receiver using LDAC, and you get up to 16.5 hours, which comfortably covers a long-haul flight or a full day of listening without needing to think about charging.

The aluminum-alloy frame and glass rear panel keep it feeling premium in hand, and available colors are Smoky Grey, Moonlight Silver, and Twilight Orange. The MTouch OS runs on an Ingenic X2000 processor, and the interface is reportedly clean and fast enough that it doesn’t get in the way of actually using the player. In USB DAC mode, it extends its usefulness to desktop setups, handling PCM up to 384 kHz/32-bit from a connected computer.

The Q2 retails at around $269, which puts it squarely in the serious-but-not-extreme tier of portable hi-fi. It ships with a case, a USB cable, and a manual, and it’s available in all three colorways from launch. For anyone who has ever felt their phone was the weak link in an otherwise respectable headphone setup, the Q2 is a reasonably direct answer to that specific frustration.

The post The Click Wheel Is Back, and This Pocket Player Has 4 DACs first appeared on Yanko Design.

Backbone’s iPhone Gaming Controller Goes Translucent for Xbox’s 25th Anniversary

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Remember when you could see inside your Game Boy? Or your iMac? Or basically every piece of tech your parents told you was “too expensive to touch”? The early 2000s were absolutely obsessed with showing you the guts of things, and honestly, it ruled. Backbone apparently remembers too, because the new Xbox 25th Anniversary Edition of their Pro controller just raided the Controller S color archive and came back with three translucent shells that smell like 2002 in the best possible way.

Crystal Clear, Iconic Blue, and Bold Orange. Those aren’t made-up retro-adjacent names. Those are the actual original Xbox Controller S colorways, pulled straight from Microsoft’s retail catalog from back when controllers felt like objects worth bragging about. Backbone did their homework, and it shows.

Designer: Backbone

The Iconic Blue and Bold Orange units aren’t fully see-through. The grip bellies have a frosted, almost cloudy quality, and the plastic deepens where two layers of shell overlap, creating a subsurface glow effect that’s half-accidental, half-beautiful. The Bold Orange, particularly, looks backlit in direct light, the kind of amber warmth you’d get through sea glass. Crystal Clear is a different proposition entirely: genuinely transparent, every internal rib and screw boss visible, the trigger mechanism readable through the shell. Three colorways, three completely different personalities, all from the same tooling.

Every surface your hands actually contact is solid black. The thumbstick caps, the D-pad, the face buttons, the rear paddles, the trigger tips. Opaque, grounded, present. Everything else goes translucent and pulls back visually. It’s a simple call that makes the controller feel intentional rather than just see-through for novelty’s sake, your hands know exactly where to land, and the shell gets to be the art. The one exception is the Backbone button, which stays orange across all three colorways. On Bold Orange it vanishes completely into the shell; on Crystal Clear and Iconic Blue it’s a single warm accent, doing all the color work by itself.

The bridge connecting the two grips carries a fine perforated dot-matrix texture, the “BACKBONE” and “XBOX 25” co-branding, and a miniature Xbox sphere in place of the O. That whole wordmark sits on the one surface that disappears the second you dock a phone. Permanent branding, placed where only you see it. There’s something genuinely charming about that.

Hardware-wise this is the full Backbone Pro package underneath the anniversary paint: full-size ALPS thumbsticks, Hall Effect triggers, two remappable rear paddles, ultra-quiet face buttons, Bluetooth LE with FlowState one-press device switching, and dual batteries rated to 40 hours. USB-C wired or fully wireless, works across phones, tablets, PCs and TVs. The whole thing sits under 200 grams. No changes from the base Pro, which is absolutely fine when the base Pro is already regarded as the best thing you can strap to a phone for serious gaming.

The Backbone Pro Xbox 25th Anniversary Edition is $159.99, preorders are open now, and shipping kicks off in October 2026. It comes with a free month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and one gentle warning: it’s sold as a blind box, so the universe picks your color. All three are in equal production, all three look great, and the orange is objectively the most dramatic. Pick accordingly, or just roll the dice.

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The Cyberdeck Trend Went Viral and Raspberry Pi Just Made It Official

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A cyberdeck, as Raspberry Pi defines it in its freshly published official build guide, is something you make to solve a problem that a conventional tablet or laptop simply can’t, or just to build something entirely your own for no reason beyond the satisfaction of doing it. That definition is broad on purpose. The cyberdeck trend has been all over social media and the Internet for months now, and Raspberry Pi has finally stepped in with its own version.

The concept traces back to William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels, where cyberdecks were the portable hacking tools of futuristic underground operators. What people are building now is less dystopian but arguably more interesting: compact, custom computers assembled from parts, housed in whatever enclosure the builder can imagine, running whatever software fits the project. Briefcases, mint tins, old pocket computers, wooden boxes, purses, prop replicas, and more have all served as cyberdeck enclosures.

Designer: Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi’s reference build keeps things approachable for first-timers. The brain of the whole thing is a Raspberry Pi 5 board paired with Raspberry Pi flash storage. The keyboard is the Rii RK302, a low-profile Bluetooth model small enough to fit inside the chosen case. Audio comes from the Pimoroni Picade Max USB Audio, a compact USB-C sound card with a 3W stereo amplifier that handles everything through a single connection, leaving the 40-pin GPIO header completely free for other uses.

Power comes from a LiPo battery tucked underneath the keyboard plate, a small but deliberate detail that keeps the layout clean while making the computing stack accessible whenever needed. The whole assembly sits inside a black Pelican-style hard case, which is weatherproof, carries a handle, and is widely available at various price points. It’s an unassuming container that happens to hold a working personal computer inside.

The guide is structured around four decisions: brains, peripherals, power supply, and case. Each section walks through the considerations that matter most, power consumption, processing power, fit, and form, without prescribing a single right answer. The Pelican-style case gets the most airtime because Raspberry Pi says the case is what defines a cyberdeck. Pick a different container, and you get a fundamentally different machine.

Customization is built into the concept from the start. A Raspberry Pi Pico can be added as a secondary processor to drive a smaller auxiliary display, control LEDs, or monitor the battery level in real time. The guide notes this explicitly and frames it as just the beginning of what you can bolt on. For anyone who wants a project that never really finishes, that’s part of the appeal.

The timing connects to something real. The viral wave of cyberdeck content on the Internet has pulled in creators who’ve built these machines into everything from jewelry boxes to rehabbed thrift store bags. Some have attracted millions of views. Raspberry Pi’s social team admitted it “hasn’t been able to get away from” the trend, which makes the official guide feel less like a product launch and more like the company finally joining a conversation it had been watching for a while.

The post The Cyberdeck Trend Went Viral and Raspberry Pi Just Made It Official first appeared on Yanko Design.

At $69.99, the Boya Notra Neo Is the AI Note-Taker That Students Can Finally Afford

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The Plaud NotePin costs $169. Boya’s own Notra flagship launched in February 2026 at $149.99. For a stretch, if you wanted a dedicated AI recorder with real transcription and AI-powered organization, you were looking at spending north of $150, which quietly priced the category out of reach for the students and young professionals who arguably needed it most. Every new tech category does this: it launches expensive, finds its early adopters, and then figures out how to bring the price down. Boya just compressed that timeline significantly with the Notra Neo, a $79.99 AI recorder that retains the core AI note-taking experience of the flagship.

Launching September 4th at IFA 2026 in Berlin, the Notra Neo targets students, young professionals, multilingual users, and anyone who has been curious about AI note-taking but wasn’t ready to drop $150 on the experiment. The spec differences from the Notra are real but they’re calibrated: storage drops from 64GB to 8GB, the ambient pickup range goes from 10 meters to 5 meters, and battery life trims from 24 hours to 20. The core AI feature set remains available, with transcription across 140-plus languages, speaker identification, summaries, to-do lists, mind maps, and AI Search across your entire recording history. Automatic switching between Ambient, Phone Call, and Bluetooth recording modes means the device reads the situation and adjusts without you touching a setting. Pre-orders open August 24 at $69.99.

Designer: BOYA

Click Here to Buy Now: $69.99 $79.53 (12% off). Hurry, deal ends in 48-hour!

Boya’s automatic scenario detection handles context management silently: Ambient kicks in for face-to-face conversations, Phone Call for phone calls (obviously), and Bluetooth when you’re on a virtual meeting through your earbuds. In Ambient mode, the device picks up 360-degree audio within a 5-meter radius, covering most classroom or conference table setups without precise positioning. For first-timers already managing a phone, a laptop, and half a dozen tabs, that simplicity matters more than any individual spec. None of this requires navigating a settings menu mid-session or remembering which mode you last used. A similar friction-removal logic powered the REETLE E-Ink iPhone case YD covered last year, where a single dedicated record button built into the frame turned out to be the one design decision that made the entire product click.

Keeping the full AI feature set identical to the flagship Notra is genuinely the most interesting product decision Boya made with the Neo. Transcription runs across 140-plus languages and dialects with speaker labeling, making it a credible tool for multilingual classrooms, international teams, and professionals who regularly conduct conversations across more than one language. The AI layer generates summaries, to-do lists, mind maps, and insights from those recordings, with 60-plus professional templates calibrated for different scenarios. AI Search lets you query your entire recording history without scrubbing through audio, which shifts this from a recorder into a searchable knowledge base. Everything syncs and exports through the Boya OS App and Web, with format options for audio, transcripts, summaries, and mind maps.

The Notra Neo boasts a cleaner front face than its flagship counterpart, swapping the “BOYA Notra AI” label for a simple “Boya” wordmark on a smoother surface. The form factor follows the compact square silhouette now standard in this category, but the softer branding reads younger and more consumer. Nothing about the physical profile announces entry-level in the way cheaper electronics sometimes can’t avoid, which matters for users already self-conscious about carrying a dedicated recorder. At $80, the Notra Neo competes less with the Plaud than it does with the phone propped against a water bottle, and that’s a smarter fight to pick.

Pre-orders for the Notra Neo open August 24, 2026, at a discounted $69.99. At its budget-friendly price, this is the most accessible entry point into dedicated AI recording the category has seen, and for anyone who has been putting off the experiment, the excuse just ran out.

Click Here to Buy Now: $69.99 $79.53 (12% off). Hurry, deal ends in 48-hour!

The post At $69.99, the Boya Notra Neo Is the AI Note-Taker That Students Can Finally Afford first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Elide Dewrinkler Lets You Smooth Out Clothes While You’re Still Wearing Them

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You step off the train, glance down, and your shirt looks like it spent the journey in a ball. You’re already late. There’s no iron in sight. The wrinkle-release spray you bought once left a faint watermark on your best dress shirt, and you’ve never trusted it since. Safaa Fojdar, a product design graduate from De Montfort University, has designed a device that speaks directly to that moment.

Elide is a portable, cordless dewrinkler built for on-body crease removal. The concept is straightforward, and the execution is clever: a vacuum-style nozzle funnels warm air onto fabric while gentle suction pulls the material taut. As the nozzle moves across a crease, the fabric is smoothed and held flat. The device operates at a skin-safe maximum temperature of 45 degrees Celsius, meaning it’s designed to be used directly on clothing you’re wearing, without risk of discomfort. A refillable spray bottle built into the cap lets you mist the fabric lightly before running the device over it, which helps release stubborn creases before the warm air locks them flat.

Designer: Safaa Forjdar

The science behind it is the Coandă effect, a fluid dynamics principle that describes how airflow tends to follow a curved surface rather than moving straight off it. Fojdar applies this to fabric, using the combination of moisture and suction to pull the material into alignment before the warm air dries and sets it. It’s a disciplined bit of physics applied to a genuinely everyday annoyance.

For deeper creases that need more persuasion, Elide is modular. A hot plate attachment converts the handheld device into a compact corded iron capable of reaching up to 200 degrees Celsius. The ironing module uses self-locking hinges that fold the plate away when not in use, keeping the form tight and pocketable. It’s the kind of considered modularity that turns a single-use gadget into a system.

Fojdar developed a working 3D-printed prototype and presented it at the New Designers event in London, where De Montfort University showcased its graduating talent. The inspiration came from a gap she couldn’t stop noticing: there was simply nothing on the market that could freshen up creased clothing without removing it, without leaving residue, and without requiring a power socket and a flat surface. Elide proposes an answer to that gap with real thought behind it.

Whether it makes it to production or stays a prototype, the logic is sound. The best design often starts exactly here: one specific, relatable problem and the patience to figure out why nothing has solved it yet.

The post The Elide Dewrinkler Lets You Smooth Out Clothes While You’re Still Wearing Them first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Cassette Revival Has Had a Player Problem, and FiiO Just Fixed It

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Vinyl already had its big cultural moment, dragging turntables and record stores back into the mainstream. Cassette tapes, quietly and without much fanfare, have been going through the same arc. Sales have been climbing for years, but the revival has lacked a player actually engineered for it. The FiiO CP11 is that player, and it comes with two years of R&D to back it up.

Getting to the CP11 wasn’t a straight line. FiiO originally planned to lead with the higher-end CP15, but as the new ultra-thin mechanism proved far more complex to engineer than expected, from structure and servo coordination to full system integration, the roadmap got reorganized. The CP11 was added earlier in the lineup so the new playback technology could reach people before everything else was perfected.

Designer: FiiO

The size of the thing is worth talking about. FiiO designed the CP11 to be genuinely pocketable, competitive with the Walkmans that defined portable listening decades ago. That’s a different proposition entirely from the thick, ungainly cassette players that have populated the modern revival market. The all-new ultra-thin transport mechanism is what makes that slim profile possible, and getting it right required repeated prototyping and refinement.

Inside, the CP11 moves away from the hardware compromises that hold most modern tape players back. It runs on a brushless motor paired with a new servo drive and revised circuit design, which together are meant to deliver more stable, accurate playback than conventional motors allow. The magnetic head has been upgraded as well, since even the warmest analog sound can only be as good as the head reading it.

Then there’s Bluetooth, which is probably the feature that makes the CP11 most interesting to a broader audience. The fully analog CP13, FiiO’s existing tape player, never had it. Adding wireless transmission here means you can pair the CP11 with any wireless headphones and listen to your mixtapes or favorite vintage tapes without a headphone cord to manage. The 3.5mm jack is still there for people who prefer it that way.

The design doesn’t try to pass off nostalgia as a substitute for intent. The body is clean and minimalist, available in cream, green, and silver colorways that feel more considered than retro-chic. There’s a battery hatch on the back, which suggests the cell might be user-replaceable, a small but meaningful detail for a device built around physical media and the culture of long listening sessions.

USB-C handles charging, which is a small but welcome concession to the present. It charges at 5V/2A, so any standard cable will do, and you won’t need to hunt for a specialized adapter while your tape collection gathers dust. Physical playback controls sit at the top alongside a dedicated Bluetooth button, keeping the experience tactile rather than forcing everything through a touchscreen or an app.

No pricing has been announced yet, though FiiO’s existing CP13 sells in the $99 to $110 range, giving some rough sense of where the CP11 might land. A late 2026 launch is the target, and the higher-end CP15 is progressing simultaneously, with its internals largely completed. The cassette revival doesn’t have a device worthy of leading it yet. The CP11 is making a case for the job.

The post The Cassette Revival Has Had a Player Problem, and FiiO Just Fixed It first appeared on Yanko Design.