Tag Archives: speakers

These 5 Speakers Are So Beautiful They Could Hang in a Museum – and They Actually Sound Amazing

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For years, high-end audio meant choosing between performance and aesthetics, often leaving enthusiasts with bulky, utilitarian “black boxes” hidden in corners. Function ruled, and beauty took a backseat, even as the music demanded more from its equipment.

Today, a quiet revolution is reshaping audio, as Statement Speakers redefine both sound and design, turning the speaker into a sculptural presence. By merging electronics with artistry, these creations prove that high-fidelity sound need not remain unseen. Here’s how new-age speakers command attention, inviting the ear and the eye to experience music in perfect harmony.

1. Geometric Shapes in Audio

Modern speakers are increasingly embracing geometric shapes, moving beyond traditional rectangles to bold, sculptural silhouettes. These forms aren’t just aesthetic as they define the speaker’s character, presence, and identity in any space, making each piece a functional statement of design.

The geometry also serves an acoustic purpose. Cones, pyramids, and other angular profiles create natural chambers that distribute sound evenly, producing immersive 360-degree audio. From every viewpoint, the speaker resembles a refined sculpture in glass, metal, or other materials, merging art and technology.

The Tresound Mini is a compact desktop Bluetooth speaker that refuses to be just another black box on your desk. Its cone-shaped silhouette is sleek and architectural, merging minimalist aesthetics with purposeful form. TRETTITRE, the emerging HiFi brand behind it, bridges traditional audio quality with forward-thinking design, making the speaker feel as much like a modern sculpture as it does a high-performance audio device.

Beyond its striking profile, the Tresound Mini rethinks the desktop experience. A bamboo fiber carrying bag doubles as sustainable, protective packaging, enabling true portability without sacrificing style. Every detail, right from the geometric form to the tactile materials, reflects careful consideration of function and environment.

2. Sound Wave Design

Some of today’s most provocative speaker designs aim to make the invisible visible, transforming sound waves into tangible forms. Fluid, rippling surfaces trace the frequencies of audio, giving physical shape to what is usually only heard. These designs turn the act of listening into a visual experience, inviting the eye to follow the rhythm of music in real time.

By capturing the motion of sound in materials like polished resin or aluminum, these pieces become sculptural embodiments of the music they produce. The result is hardware that’s as lively and expressive as the music, combining art with high-quality sound.

Loopen, a sculptural speaker concept from Design by Joffey, reimagines how sound can look and be experienced. Its bold cobalt-blue form features concentric circular loops radiating from a central speaker driver, creating a visual echo of sound waves in motion. These loops are not merely decorative as they form the structural framework, supporting the speaker while emphasising its sculptural identity. A minimalist oval base and two slim uprights keep the design light, while simple, flush-mounted controls preserve the clean lines. Every element is functional, from the geometric layout to the tactile finish, making the product immediately understandable without explanation.

Compact and thoughtfully proportioned, Loopen is designed for personal spaces like desks or bedside tables, offering both visual and acoustic engagement. By turning audio into a tangible form, the speaker bridges technology and design, giving users an object that delivers clear sound, structural integrity, and aesthetic impact.

3. Slim Décor

Ultra-thin speakers are redefining the idea of “hidden” audio. No longer tucked into corners or walls, these sleek panels are designed to be seen as much as heard, blending effortlessly with minimalist interiors. Inspired by modern wall art, they turn speakers into visual statements.

Disguised as slim frames or textured canvases, they use advanced vibration technology to deliver powerful sound from profiles barely an inch thick. Perfect for “less is more” interiors, these speakers combine gallery-worthy aesthetics with exceptional audio performance, showing that elegance and sound quality can coexist seamlessly.

The DIYR speaker includes an ultra-thin, flat-panel design that transforms the entire surface into a vibrating diaphragm, producing immersive sound while appearing more like a decorative panel than a traditional speaker. At first glance, it’s easy to forget it’s even an audio device. This approach allows the speaker to blend seamlessly into interiors, be propped against walls, or act as a space divider, while delivering rich, evenly distributed sound that fills the room rather than projecting from a single point.

Beyond its striking appearance, the DIYR speaker combines intuitive assembly with high-quality engineering. Using exciters on a 4mm cardboard membrane, it creates a diffuse, ethereal sound profile powered by a 40W amplifier, 40Hz–20kHz frequency range, and a 7,200mAh rechargeable battery. Bluetooth 5.1 and aux connectivity add flexibility, while customizable surfaces let it double as functional, stylish décor.

4. Earthy Design

Some of today’s most innovative speakers are crafted from ancient, natural materials. Sand, concrete, and minerals are reimagined to create housing that is sustainable and acoustically precise. The natural density of these materials dampens unwanted vibrations, producing clear, balanced sound that preserves the integrity of the music.

Visually, these earthy, textured designs resemble artifacts from desert landscapes, adding a grounded, tactile quality to modern interiors. By combining advanced audio technology with raw, organic beauty, designers are creating speakers that feel timeless.

High-end speakers often evoke black boxes, polished wood, or minimalist Scandinavian forms, but the Econik 1851 by Anton Erbenich breaks all those conventions. This active loudspeaker is 3D-printed entirely from quartz sand, resulting in a textured, almost ancient-looking surface that doubles as a functional acoustic solution. The mineral composition dampens micro-vibrations, ensuring cleaner, more accurate sound while giving the piece a sculptural presence. Its stacked, nearly spherical forms reduce standing waves, and subtle side protrusions create an organic, pod-like aesthetic.

The suspension system is equally deliberate as steel cables hang the speakers from a curved stand, isolating them from surface vibrations and allowing them to float weightlessly in space. With integrated amplification and signal processing, setup is simple. At the same time, the understated sand tones and elegant forms make the Econik 1851 a statement of sophisticated design that is bold and understated.

5. Retro Speaker

For the vinyl-loving audiophile, retro-inspired speakers blend mid-century charm with modern technology. Warm wood grains, tactile brass knobs, and vintage grill cloths recall the elegance of 1970s hi-fi systems, evoking nostalgia without compromising style. These pieces act as functional décor while celebrating the tactile pleasure of classic design.

Beneath their “old-school” exterior, they pack high-resolution Bluetooth connectivity and modern audio performance. This fusion allows listeners to enjoy the sensory satisfaction of vintage hardware with the convenience and clarity of today’s digital sound.

Founded by Etsy co-founder Robert Kalin and NASA engineer William Cowan, A for Ara challenges the conventions of modern smart speakers by bringing ritual and joy back to music listening. Their retro-modern speakers combine eclectic design styles with traditional and contemporary fabrication techniques, creating pieces that feel both timeless and playful. The FS-1 and FS-2 feature two visual components: a base housing the audio drivers and acoustic cabinet, and an upper, phonograph-inspired horn that amplifies sound while evoking the organic shape of a morning glory flower.

Standing 54 inches tall, the FS-1 pairs a slender horn with a geometric base and a 13” front-firing woofer, while the FS-2 amplifies its whimsical character with a boxy, leaf-patterned cabinet and three long-throw 12” woofers. Both deliver audiophile-grade sound without LEDs or metallic detailing, offering an immersive, joyous listening experience that turns audio equipment into art.

When sound transforms into sculpture, the home becomes a gallery. Modern speakers are no longer hidden appliances but are statement pieces that merge high-fidelity performance with visual artistry.

The post These 5 Speakers Are So Beautiful They Could Hang in a Museum – and They Actually Sound Amazing first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Sculptural Speaker Concept That Sounds Good From Every Spot in the Room

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Most wireless speakers look like speakers. They announce themselves with grilles and ports and branding, and they tend to disappear into a corner or a shelf where the acoustic compromise of their placement gets quietly accepted. The room works around the speaker rather than the other way around. For a category that has grown enormously in the past decade, the design ambition behind most of what’s on the market hasn’t quite kept pace with the technology inside.

The Mirage Onda concept comes at that problem from two directions at once. On one side is a five-decade-old Canadian audio brand whose reputation was built on omnidirectional sound, long before the concept became a selling point for portable speakers. On the other is a design studio that has treated the speaker not as a functional box but as a sculptural object with genuine presence in a room.

Designer: Andrea Ponti (Ponti Design Studio)

The brand history matters here. Mirage introduced the world’s first bipolar speaker in 1987, and spent the following decades developing omnipolar technology, the idea that sound should radiate in all directions as it does in a live space, rather than being aimed at a single listening position. That philosophy is what the Onda is built around. The speaker delivers a true 360-degree audio experience through its acoustic architecture: four woofers at the base produce warm, rounded bass that fills the room with depth and body, while an upward-facing midrange driver with a diffuser ensures even sound distribution, and a tweeter paired with a dedicated diffuser handles crisp high frequencies.

The result is a speaker that doesn’t ask you to position yourself relative to it. A discreet backlit touch interface sits between the lower body and the upper platform, while the removable magnetic upper grille lifts away to reveal the tweeter in Mirage’s signature deep purple. That upward-firing arrangement, coupled with the diffusers above and below, is what sends sound outward into the room in all directions rather than toward a fixed sweet spot.

Four polished aluminum pillars connect the lower body to the upper platform in a striking suspended configuration, while the distinctive rounded-square footprint, softened edges, and monolithic silhouette give the speaker a timeless character that integrates effortlessly into modern environments. The fabric grille wraps the body in a dual-color textile that adds warmth to what could otherwise be a purely hard-edged industrial form. Three colorways are available, ranging from a warm sand tone to charcoal and all-black, each one giving the Onda a different character while keeping its proportions unchanged.

Put it in the center of a room, and it works. Put it on a side table or near a sofa, and it still works, because the sound isn’t dependent on where you happen to be sitting relative to the driver. That’s the practical promise of omnidirectional audio at the room scale, and it’s something that most mainstream speakers, regardless of price, simply don’t attempt.

Onda builds on Mirage’s legacy, blending heritage with minimalism and contemporary sophistication. The design reflects clarity, balance, and sculptural presence, which is a rare combination in an audio product that still has to justify its place in a room by actually sounding good. Both sides of that equation matter here, and the Mirage Onda takes both of them seriously.

The post The Sculptural Speaker Concept That Sounds Good From Every Spot in the Room first appeared on Yanko Design.

WiiM’s First Soundbar Has a Round Touch Display Built Into the Front

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The soundbar has become the default home theater upgrade for anyone who doesn’t want to fill a room with floor-standing speakers and receiver cabinets. It’s a sensible trade-off, but most soundbars operate as completely passive objects once they’re set up, reflecting nothing about what’s actually playing or offering any real interaction beyond a remote nobody can ever find. The visual side of the experience has always been an afterthought.

WiiM is entering the soundbar market for the first time with the WiiM Bar, and the defining choice it made is a 2.1-inch round touch display embedded in the center of the bar’s front face. That decision drives the entire product concept, making the soundbar itself a point of interaction rather than something you control exclusively from your phone or a remote that lives behind a couch cushion.

Designer: WiiM

The glass-covered round display sits within a gentle wave-shaped recess on the bar’s surface, showing album art, track info, the time, EQ settings, Smart Presets, and Recently Played content in a format readable from across the room. A tap plays, pauses, skips, switches sources, or selects an EQ profile without reaching for anything else. Clock faces and dynamic wallpapers take over when nothing’s actively playing.

Sonically, the WiiM Bar delivers a true 3.0.2 Dolby Atmos configuration using an eight-driver array: three front mid-woofers, three front tweeters, and two full-range drivers on top that fire upward for height effects. Four passive radiators, two on the front and two on the rear, extend the bass response. The system peaks at 135W and includes HDMI eARC alongside optical, line-in, and configurable USB audio connections.

RoomFit auto-correction measures the acoustic characteristics of the space and adjusts the output accordingly, so placement against a wall doesn’t work against the sound. A Clear Voice mode uses AI-powered dialogue separation in real time, which is genuinely useful for anyone who reaches for subtitles not because a show is quiet, but because the mix buries speech under effects. Night Mode keeps that clarity intact at lower volumes.

The 3.0.2 configuration is a starting point rather than a ceiling. Compatible WiiM devices can be added wirelessly as surrounds and a subwoofer, taking the system to a full 5.1.2 home theater without additional wiring. The WiiM Home App manages EQ, Smart Presets, and multi-room grouping, letting the bar sync with WiiM Amp, Ultra, Pro, and Mini devices across the rest of a home.

Streaming reaches over 20 services through the app, with direct casting via Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect, Qobuz Connect, Google Cast, Roon, and Amazon Music Cast. Wi-Fi 6E covers all three bands, Ethernet offers a wired fallback, and Bluetooth 5.4 with LE Audio handles device pairing. A USB host port lets the bar serve a personal media library to other WiiM and DLNA devices on the network.

The WiiM Bar ships in July 2026, priced at $479, available for pre-order now through wiimhome.com, Amazon, and select retail partners. For a market full of soundbars that treat control as an afterthought and expansion as an expensive aftermarket exercise, it offers a fairly direct argument: an on-device touch interface, honest Dolby Atmos performance, and a clear path to a proper surround setup whenever the moment calls for it.

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KLH’s $1,000 Floorstanding Speaker Actually Fits in Your Apartment

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Serious hi-fi speakers have long demanded a certain kind of listener, one with a dedicated room, a generously sized space, and the freedom to place enclosures wherever the acoustics dictate. That’s a fine arrangement for a fortunate few, but most people live in apartments, condos, and first homes where the furniture stays where it is, and the speakers need to fit around it, not the other way around.

KLH Audio has spent nearly seven decades building speakers for exactly that reality, and the Model Four is its latest expression of it. Unveiled at High End Vienna 2026, it’s a three-way acoustic suspension loudspeaker designed to fill the gap between the bookshelf-sized Model Three and the fuller Model Five, bringing genuine floorstanding performance into a cabinet compact enough to sit comfortably close to a wall.

Designer: KLH Audio

The technology that makes this possible is acoustic suspension, the sealed-enclosure design that KLH pioneered in the 1950s. Unlike ported enclosures, which become muddy and bloated when pushed against a wall or tucked into a corner, a sealed cabinet performs consistently wherever it lands. The Model Four delivers tight, accurate bass with just a few inches of rear clearance, a freedom that ported designs simply can’t match.

The cabinet measures 26 inches tall and just 8.25 inches deep, making it the shallowest floorstanding speaker in KLH’s lineup. The included 6-degree slanted riser adds the angle needed to align the tweeter and midrange with the listener, bringing the total depth to just under 11 inches. That’s narrower than many bookshelves and considerably thinner than the floor plans most audiophile floorstanders require before they’ll sound right.

Inside the sealed, reinforced MDF enclosure is a three-driver system assembled from the best parts of the broader Model Collection. An 8-inch pulp-paper cone woofer reaches down to 46Hz, a 4-inch pulp-paper midrange handles vocals and instruments with the same clarity that earned Model Five its reputation, and a 1-inch aluminum dome tweeter extends the response to 20,000Hz. Power handling reaches 150 watts, with peaks up to 600 watts.

Not every room sounds the same, which is why KLH carried over its three-position Acoustic Balance Control switch, a feature the brand introduced in the 1960s. It gives listeners a way to adjust the mid and high-frequency character to match their room’s natural acoustics, a practical acknowledgment that the speaker will land in spaces KLH can’t anticipate. Five-way gold-plated binding posts handle connectivity on the back panel.

The visual side of the package is equally considered. KLH’s mid-century modern design language shows up in the knit grilles and wood-veneer cabinetry, available in English Walnut with a Stonewash Knit Grille, Black Ash with a Grey Knit Grille, and White Oak with a Black Knit Grille. The matte black riser stand ships with the speaker, keeping the total out-of-pocket cost honest from the start.

The Model Four arrives in September 2026 through premium audio dealers and directly from KLH Audio, priced at $999.99 per speaker, or $1,999.98 per pair, with a 10-year warranty and the riser stand already included. For anyone who has spent years making peace with bookshelf speakers because larger alternatives demanded a dedicated room, it’s the kind of offer that closes the argument.

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One Speaker, 10 Drivers, 400 Watts: DALI’s Vega Changes the Game

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The audio world has always had a bit of a hoarding problem. Amplifiers, preamps, turntables, towers, subwoofers, cables that cost more than a weekend trip. The traditional hi-fi setup has never been known for its minimalism. It’s a rabbit hole, and a beautiful one at that, but a rabbit hole nonetheless. So when a 43-year-old Danish speaker company decides to put everything into a single box and call it done, it’s worth paying attention. That’s exactly what DALI did with the Vega, and I’ll say upfront: I didn’t expect to be as interested in it as I am.

The Vega is an all-in-one wireless sound system built from the ground up. Drivers, amplification, DSP control, all of it developed in-house. The result is a single unit that sits in your room like a piece of furniture and quietly does the work of an entire rack of equipment. It packs 10 drivers into its slim 683mm-wide enclosure, including ultra-light 25mm soft dome tweeters and bass-midrange drivers arranged back-to-back to minimize cabinet resonance. Total amplification lands at 400 watts across eight channels. For a single speaker, those are serious numbers.

Designer: DALI Speakers

What makes the Vega interesting beyond the specs is how it actually approaches the problem of sound in a room. DALI developed a proprietary technology called Adaptive Stereo Enhancement (ASE), which creates a wide soundstage from a single unit in real time. It’s not a gimmick simulation of stereo. It’s an adaptive system that reads the incoming signal and responds accordingly, without introducing the artificial artifacts that can make these kinds of technologies feel forced. Whether it fully delivers on that promise is something we’ll have to wait until it reaches more listening rooms to confirm, but the approach itself is genuinely thoughtful.

Then there’s the Adaptive Orientation Adjustment (AOA), which automatically optimizes the speaker’s output based on how you’ve placed it. Standing upright on a shelf, mounted flat against a wall in landscape, hung vertically in portrait. The Vega adjusts in real time for each scenario. It even includes an OLED display that rotates with the unit’s orientation. That’s the kind of considered detail that separates a product designed by people who actually care from one that was designed by committee to hit a price point.

And speaking of price points: $4,500 USD is not a casual purchase. I won’t pretend otherwise. But when you start comparing it to the cost of assembling a proper separates setup at equivalent quality, the math starts to look different. A decent amplifier, a quality streamer, a pair of speakers at this level, the cables to connect them all. It adds up fast. The Vega consolidates all of that into one device, one box, one cable to a power outlet.

Aesthetically, DALI made choices I genuinely respect. Real wood veneer in Dark Oak or Natural Oak, anodized aluminium details, custom woven fabric. It looks more like something you’d find in a well-appointed Scandinavian living room than a piece of audio equipment. The volume wheel alone is its own small obsession: glass, acrylic, and anodized aluminium riding on an aerospace-grade ball-bearing mechanism. That’s not a specification; that’s a tactile experience someone designed on purpose.

Connectivity is thorough without being overwhelming. BluOS handles streaming and multi-room audio. HDMI, optical, analogue, USB audio, and Bluetooth cover wired sources. Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, and Apple AirPlay 2 round out the wireless side. You can plug in a turntable or connect a TV, and the Vega handles both within the same system.

The Vega launches in select markets in September 2026, with broader availability following in October and November. Whether the hi-fi world embraces it or resists it on principle is a conversation that will be had loudly in forums and listening rooms for months. But the idea at its core, that great sound shouldn’t require great complexity, is one that’s long overdue for a proper answer. DALI’s version of that answer is elegant, ambitious, and a little bit expensive. Most good answers are.

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Hiroshi Fujiwara reinterprets Bang & Olufsen’s iconic designs to redefine living room luxury in liquid black

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Hiroshi Fujiwara has had his influence stamped in multifaceted spheres – Carrera Chronograph x Fragment Limited Edition and the MC20 Cielo Fuoriserie are some impressive examples we came across. The streetwear legend has now teamed up with audio pioneers Bang and Olufsen for a collection that is destined for a minimalist yet classy living room setup.

The designer has long been fascinated by B&O and has desired to collaborate with the high-end Danish audio brand someday. While Hiroshi had installed their Beocenter 2300 integrated sound system at home in 1991, it actually took 35 long years to work on a project with them. That moment is right now, as Hiroshi (under his design studio Fragment Design) has worked on four B&O masterpieces to give them the black finish only achievable by hand.

Designer: Hiroshi Fujiwara x Bang & Olufsen

The famed collection is slated for debut today, with it being shown off until next week inside the Isetan Department Store in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Thereafter, it’ll be rolled out across Japan from 27 May for display, before eventually being released on 3 June globally and in stores for eager buyers.

Instead of working on a completely new model for the collaborative, the consensus was settled on reworking the Beoplay H100 headphones, Beosound A1 portable speaker, Beosound Shape speaker, and Beosystem 9000c triple pillar CD system. These signature B&O products are slapped with the designer’s signature monochrome aesthetic. Of course, B&O’s artisanal skills come into play as the team of designers lends these brand’s classics anodized, hand-polished finish for that perfect liquid-like high gloss finish.

Beoplay H100 and Beosound A1 3rd Gen Fragment Edition

It doesn’t get any darker than the Beoplay H100 Fragment Edition headphones, as they exude pure class in gloss black anodized skin. This finish is complemented by the black leather headband and cushions for all-day wear comfort. Contrasting the dark is the white Fragment Studio and B&O logos on the outside of each of the earcups. The over-the-ear headphones are priced at a steep $2,400, but that is expected when two big names collaborate.

Then there is the more sober Beosound A1 3rd gen portable Bluetooth speaker priced at $475. Predictably, this one too has the high-gloss finish and the brand’s double lightning logo etched under the grille. According to Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre, Bang & Olufsen’s Senior Director of Design, the “artisanal anodization and polishing process” has been implemented for the first time on their portable collection.

Beosound Shape and Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition

With these two creations, you begin to fathom the gravity of this collaboration. The Beosound Shape is a wall-mounted speaker system that combines flower-shaped driving units to bring sublime sound to the living room. The modular audio system gets the monochrome fabric treatment for the six surrounding petals, and the inner gray unit completes the aesthetic look. Priced at $7,100, this beautiful audio system is one for a minimalist living room setting. Apparently, Fujiwara headed straight to his hotel room after seeing the original Shape speakers and sketched the seven-title flower configuration for his version.

The collector’s piece of the line-up is the Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition, which defines the amount of skill and expertise put into making it. This is a made-to-order setup that costs a mind-numbing $69,650 and is Japan-exclusive only. It’s in itself a collection as it has the dedicated CD system, Beolab 28 loudspeakers, and the Beoremote One two-way remote. The six-disc 90s CD player is famed for its automatic CD swapping mechanism once the playback is finished on one disc.

The post Hiroshi Fujiwara reinterprets Bang & Olufsen’s iconic designs to redefine living room luxury in liquid black first appeared on Yanko Design.

Hiroshi Fujiwara reinterprets Bang & Olufsen’s iconic designs to redefine living room luxury in liquid black

Posted on by

Hiroshi Fujiwara has had his influence stamped in multifaceted spheres – Carrera Chronograph x Fragment Limited Edition and the MC20 Cielo Fuoriserie are some impressive examples we came across. The streetwear legend has now teamed up with audio pioneers Bang and Olufsen for a collection that is destined for a minimalist yet classy living room setup.

The designer has long been fascinated by B&O and has desired to collaborate with the high-end Danish audio brand someday. While Hiroshi had installed their Beocenter 2300 integrated sound system at home in 1991, it actually took 35 long years to work on a project with them. That moment is right now, as Hiroshi (under his design studio Fragment Design) has worked on four B&O masterpieces to give them the black finish only achievable by hand.

Designer: Hiroshi Fujiwara x Bang & Olufsen

The famed collection is slated for debut today, with it being shown off until next week inside the Isetan Department Store in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Thereafter, it’ll be rolled out across Japan from 27 May for display, before eventually being released on 3 June globally and in stores for eager buyers.

Instead of working on a completely new model for the collaborative, the consensus was settled on reworking the Beoplay H100 headphones, Beosound A1 portable speaker, Beosound Shape speaker, and Beosystem 9000c triple pillar CD system. These signature B&O products are slapped with the designer’s signature monochrome aesthetic. Of course, B&O’s artisanal skills come into play as the team of designers lends these brand’s classics anodized, hand-polished finish for that perfect liquid-like high gloss finish.

Beoplay H100 and Beosound A1 3rd Gen Fragment Edition

It doesn’t get any darker than the Beoplay H100 Fragment Edition headphones, as they exude pure class in gloss black anodized skin. This finish is complemented by the black leather headband and cushions for all-day wear comfort. Contrasting the dark is the white Fragment Studio and B&O logos on the outside of each of the earcups. The over-the-ear headphones are priced at a steep $2,400, but that is expected when two big names collaborate.

Then there is the more sober Beosound A1 3rd gen portable Bluetooth speaker priced at $475. Predictably, this one too has the high-gloss finish and the brand’s double lightning logo etched under the grille. According to Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre, Bang & Olufsen’s Senior Director of Design, the “artisanal anodization and polishing process” has been implemented for the first time on their portable collection.

Beosound Shape and Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition

With these two creations, you begin to fathom the gravity of this collaboration. The Beosound Shape is a wall-mounted speaker system that combines flower-shaped driving units to bring sublime sound to the living room. The modular audio system gets the monochrome fabric treatment for the six surrounding petals, and the inner gray unit completes the aesthetic look. Priced at $7,100, this beautiful audio system is one for a minimalist living room setting. Apparently, Fujiwara headed straight to his hotel room after seeing the original Shape speakers and sketched the seven-title flower configuration for his version.

The collector’s piece of the line-up is the Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition, which defines the amount of skill and expertise put into making it. This is a made-to-order setup that costs a mind-numbing $69,650 and is Japan-exclusive only. It’s in itself a collection as it has the dedicated CD system, Beolab 28 loudspeakers, and the Beoremote One two-way remote. The six-disc 90s CD player is famed for its automatic CD swapping mechanism once the playback is finished on one disc.

The post Hiroshi Fujiwara reinterprets Bang & Olufsen’s iconic designs to redefine living room luxury in liquid black first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Ceramic Vase Is Actually a Phone Speaker That Needs No Power

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The home has become increasingly cluttered with gadgets that need charging, pairing, and their own dedicated spaces. Even something as simple as playing music from a smartphone often involves a Bluetooth speaker sitting on a shelf, waiting for its battery to drain. There’s been a quiet counter-movement in product design, where objects do their jobs without power and sit in a room the way a vase or a mug would.

Kenji Abe’s ECHO is exactly that kind of object. It’s an analog speaker that amplifies smartphone audio simply by being set on top of the phone, requiring no power, no pairing, and no setup beyond placing it down. The concept takes its cues from wind instruments and seashells, two forms that have been shaping and projecting sound for centuries without the help of electricity.

Designer: Kenji Abe

The inside of ECHO works like a chamber, built to catch the phone’s audio and carry it outward in soft, diffused waves rather than projecting it directly. The geometry draws from the same logic as a cupped hand, but with more control over how sound travels. The result isn’t a dramatic volume boost so much as a room-filling quality that feels warmer than a powered speaker on a desk.

The choice of material makes as much of a statement as the form. Abe uses glazed ceramic, the same material found in vases, mugs, and tableware, giving ECHO a texture and presence that belongs in a home rather than on a tech shelf. It doesn’t look like an accessory. It looks like something that was always there, something that simply happened to be placed near a phone.

That quality matters when the phone is on the kitchen counter and you want music while cooking, or on a desk where you’d rather not have a speaker taking up permanent residence. ECHO doesn’t need to live next to a charging cable or be put away between uses. It sits on the table and becomes part of the room, as unobtrusive as any other ceramic piece nearby.

A guest walking in wouldn’t necessarily clock it as a tech product. That’s partly the point. The glazed surface catches light the way pottery does, and the form is quiet enough to sit beside books or plants without demanding attention. When a phone is slid underneath it, it starts doing its job. When the phone is gone, it just stays there, still looking like it belongs. The same underlying principle runs through the Battery-free Amplifying iSpeakers, where a Duralumin metal enclosure amplifies a smartphone’s audio without any power.

Abe designed ECHO to exist comfortably in a room even when it isn’t doing anything, a goal most speakers never consider. Most audio accessories announce themselves. This one quietly waits, and when a phone is close enough to fill the cavity with sound, the room gets a little warmer and a little fuller without anyone having to reach for a power button.

The post This Ceramic Vase Is Actually a Phone Speaker That Needs No Power first appeared on Yanko Design.

This AC Does 5 Jobs at Once and Looks Like Furniture on Your Wall

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The split air conditioner is one of the least loved objects in any home, which is a strange thing to say about something most people couldn’t live without. It works, technically, but it tends to make its presence known in all the wrong ways. The air is too direct, the noise is a constant background irritant, and the plastic box on the wall rarely belongs in any thoughtfully designed interior.

From that frustration comes WellFlow, a concept that reframes what air conditioning is supposed to do for the people living around it. Rather than engineering a better cooling box, the designers built something closer to a wellness device. It’s a concept that received validation through the iF Design Award in 2026 and was first revealed at IFA Berlin 2025.

Designer: Merve Nur Sökmen, Zehra Sarıarslan

The most immediate shift is in how air actually moves. Conventional units push output in one direction, landing directly on whoever is in the room. WellFlow uses four-way diffusion to spread conditioned air from all sides without targeting anyone in particular. Sensors also monitor occupancy and steer airflow accordingly, so the unit quietly adapts to the room rather than expecting the room to tolerate it.

Beyond airflow, the system also handles humidity, air purity, ambient lighting, and sound. A built-in humidifier balances moisture levels rather than leaving the air artificially dry, which is one of the most common complaints about running a conventional unit through the night. Circadian lighting and integrated speakers complete the picture, creating conditions that support sleeping, concentrating, or quietly winding down, depending on what the moment calls for.

All of this adjusts automatically. The system continuously monitors temperature, humidity, and air quality, then fine-tunes its output without any manual input. A baby’s room needs different conditions than a home office or a gym corner, and WellFlow is designed to recognize those differences. Its behavior was shaped through user research spanning new parents, older adults, and people with respiratory sensitivities, groups that conventional air conditioners routinely fail to address.

The physical form is just as deliberate as the behavior. Most air conditioners are conspicuously technical, with plastic housings that fight against any interior aesthetic. WellFlow uses a woven textile front panel with rounded corners and a matte finish, giving it a material quality far more associated with furniture than appliances. An ambient light halo behind the unit softly signals its presence on the wall without demanding any attention.

A pull-out front filter makes maintenance visible and intuitive, addressing something the design team identified as a recurring trust issue with conventional units. People often aren’t sure when or how to clean their filters, and that uncertainty quietly chips away at confidence in the device. WellFlow removes that ambiguity. For a machine designed around human comfort, even that seemingly small detail ends up mattering quite a lot.

The post This AC Does 5 Jobs at Once and Looks Like Furniture on Your Wall first appeared on Yanko Design.

Google’s $99 Gemini Speaker Is About to Land

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The smart speaker category has been quietly stagnating. Go ahead and look around your house. Chances are there’s a Nest Audio or an Amazon Echo gathering dust on a shelf, doing exactly what speakers did in 2018 but with a fresh coat of AI marketing layered on top. It still feels like a tech product, which is to say, it still looks like one. Google seems to have noticed.

The new Google Home Speaker, officially arriving spring 2026 at $99.99 and heading to 19 countries, is not a Nest. That’s the first thing worth saying. Google dropped the Nest name entirely, and the shape that went with it. The speaker is round, compact, and wrapped in a 3D-knitted eco-friendly fabric that reads less like a gadget and more like something you’d find alongside handmade ceramics and artisan candles on a design blog. Google is calling the colorways Berry, Hazel, Jade, and Porcelain. Those aren’t accident names. That’s homeware language, not consumer electronics language.

Designer: Google

That shift matters more than it might seem. The naming tells you exactly who Google is designing for now, and it isn’t the person who organizes their cable management. Porcelain and Hazel are colors a person picks when they’re thinking about how something looks on a bookshelf, not which one has the best specs. Whether the average buyer consciously registers this or not, the vocabulary of the product positions it closer to a Muji lamp than a mesh Wi-Fi node. For a category that has long been aesthetically stranded, that’s a meaningful move.

Underneath the fabric, the hardware story is genuinely interesting. The Google Home Speaker is built around Gemini for Home, which means it isn’t running a legacy assistant clumsily retrofitted with new AI layers. It has custom processing designed specifically for Gemini’s computational demands, meant to make conversations feel faster and more natural. A new light ring gives visual feedback as Gemini listens, thinks, and responds. The speaker also delivers 360-degree sound and supports stereo pairing. At $99, that’s a competitive package, especially compared to what Amazon and Apple are currently offering in the same price range, which hasn’t changed much in years.

Here’s the angle that gets underplayed in most coverage: Google built this speaker to coexist in an ecosystem that’s already expanding before the device even ships. Walmart’s Onn smart speaker appeared in CSA Matter filings in early May 2026, suggesting a budget tier of Gemini-compatible hardware is on its way. Google confirmed last October that Walmart’s Onn devices would work within Google Home. A $99 Google speaker alongside a cheaper third-party Gemini option creates a layered ecosystem where entry-level users get into the platform and those who want a more refined experience buy the Google-branded version. That’s a smarter market play than Google has made in this category in years.

What makes me take this launch seriously isn’t the hardware alone. Amazon has Alexa, which has gone through its own AI reinvention but still carries the aesthetic baggage of the cylinder era. Apple’s HomePod is excellent and priced accordingly. Sonos is navigating its own turbulent chapter. None of them are shipping something that looks like a river stone, costs $99, and runs a genuinely current large language model. Google, for once, doesn’t have obvious company in that specific lane.

The question I keep sitting with is whether the design conviction will hold once the product is actually in people’s homes. It’s easy to look good in product shots, and the Nest Audio looked great too. But if Google has genuinely committed to positioning this as a home object first and a gadget second, and if the Gemini experience inside it is as conversational as promised, then spring 2026 could mark something worth paying attention to.

The smart speaker had a moment, then it plateaued. A pebble-shaped $99 AI speaker with pastel names and a language model built for conversation might not sound revolutionary. Compared to what’s been sitting on kitchen counters for the last five years, though, it kind of is.

The post Google’s $99 Gemini Speaker Is About to Land first appeared on Yanko Design.