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This $79 “No-Laundry” Shirt stays fresh for 30 days without washing, thanks to its engineered fabric

The future keeps finding new ways to make water feel precious. Some of it goes to lawns, some to laundry, some to the AI data center working overtime to generate recipes for vegan, gluten-free, keto brownies made without chocolate. So when a shirt shows up claiming 30 days of wear without a wash cycle, the concept lands with a mix of curiosity, skepticism, and a weird amount of relevance. That curiosity is reasonable. The skepticism, depending on how you feel about a decade of textile engineering research, may not hold up.

HercLéon offers the HercShirt V5.0 in three versions. The Budget model stays smell-free for 3+ days, the Standard version stretches that to 14+ days, and the Max model is the one built for 30+ days between washes. The difference comes down to how many odor-fighting elements are woven into the fabric. Budget uses one, Standard uses four, and Max uses all seven. According to the brand, that seven element system includes copper, silver, zinc, gold, volcanic ash, and two proprietary ingredients, all embedded directly into the shirt rather than applied as a surface treatment.

Designer: Wen Muenyi / HercLéon America

Click Here to Buy Now: $39 $49 (20% off). Hurry, only 21/100 left! Raised over $246,000.

Copper is the shirt’s frontline defense, targeting the bacteria responsible for the locker-room smell that ruins gym gear by day two, with natural antimicrobial properties that have been recognized for centuries and are currently deployed on hospital surfaces to reduce microbial load. Silver handles a second class of odor-causing microbes, and its use in medical dressings and performance textiles makes its role here read as engineering rather than marketing. Zinc addresses the sharper, sulfurous compounds produced during heavy sweating, and because it is gentle on skin and widely used in skincare products, it adds another layer of protection without compromising comfort. Gold supports the performance of the other active elements, helping the smell-control system work together more effectively, and because it is highly stable, it helps the fabric maintain consistent performance across many washes. Volcanic ash absorbs moisture and environmental odors before they settle into the fabric, functioning as a porous internal sponge that traps what it catches until washing can clear it out. The final two elements stay off the published ingredient list, a reasonable call from a brand that has spent years narrowing this formula down to something that works.

Pack one shirt for a week-long trip instead of seven, and you begin to understand what HercLéon is selling, because the whole point of a trip is to have less on your plate, not to check a bag, wait at baggage claim, fight for trunk space, or spend vacation time looking for laundry. The V5.0 is built to hold up from a morning gym session to dinner at eight without a change, covering the kind of full-day travel that defeats most performance shirts by mid-afternoon. Shirt odor itself comes from seven distinct chemical processes, not one, which is why most fabrics may accidentally help with one or two types while the HercShirt was built to address all seven. Off-grid users, healthcare workers, and new parents with no bandwidth for weekly wash cycles all figure into HercLéon’s intended audience, and none of those use cases require a stretch of imagination to map. The shirt’s proposition is fundamentally about reclaiming time and space, two things that clothing has rarely been designed to address this deliberately.

Most performance shirts earn their odor-control claims through surface treatments, finishes applied at production that fade with every wash, while the HercShirt’s active elements are woven in and designed to perform like new for years. That construction choice means the odor control does not follow the same fade curve that makes most performance gear feel ordinary by its tenth wash. Most tees die in the wash rather than from wear, and because the HercShirt is washed far less frequently, it skips the cycle that degrades fabric, with one shirt reportedly outliving roughly seven ordinary tees. The brand estimates the V5.0 goes through around five times fewer wash cycles than a conventional tee across its lifespan, which reframes the premium price as a replacement-cycle calculation rather than a fashion expense. Less washing also means less water, less detergent, and less energy use, which quietly loops back to the resource anxiety the shirt was practically designed to exist inside.

The HercShirt V5.0 is available in three configurations, letting you choose how long you want to go between washes. The entry-level Budget model costs $39 and uses one active element for over three days of wear. For $69, the Standard version steps up to four elements, pushing the wear time to two weeks or more. The top-tier Max model, priced at $79, includes all seven elements and delivers on the full 30-day promise. All versions are designed to be smell-free from the start, with the only difference being their endurance.

Sizing is offered from Small to 4XL for men and Small to 2XL for women. The shirt is currently available in a matte, deep ink black, though a charcoal gray color has also been unlocked, with navy blue, maroon, and forest green planned as future options. For those looking for a more personalized fit, a set of three custom-tailored shirts is available for $399. HercLéon ships internationally to the US, Europe, Japan, and India, among other regions. While delivery for the V5.0 is estimated for November 2026, earlier generations of the HercShirt are currently available for purchase on the company’s website.

Click Here to Buy Now: $39 $49 (20% off). Hurry, only 21/100 left! Raised over $246,000.

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What If Nothing Made an IEM for Audiophiles? This Community Concept Imagines One

Music lovers are gradually developing a deeper appreciation for in-ear monitors (IEMs) as they explore the world of personal audio. The Chi-Fi market, in particular, has grown into a crowded space filled with brands such as Moondrop, Truthear, Simgot, Kiwi Ears, ThieAudio, and FiiO. At the same time, established names including Sennheiser, Final Audio, Campfire Audio, Meze Audio, and Audio-Technica continue to attract listeners looking for detailed and analytical sound.

One thing I’ve noticed while following the IEM space is how often these products embrace transparent or semi-transparent shell designs. There is something visually appealing about being able to see the components inside, while the distinctive form immediately sets IEMs apart from the everyday wireless earbuds most people use. This design language also happens to align closely with Nothing’s visual identity, making the idea of a Nothing-branded IEM feel like a natural extension of the company’s existing audio lineup.

Designer: Nothing Community

The concept in question comes from the Nothing Community, where a member shared renders imagining what an IEM designed by Nothing could look like. The idea explores a familiar IEM silhouette, but reinterprets it through the brand’s signature transparent aesthetic and restrained use of color. It is not a radical departure from the designs already seen across the IEM market, but the Nothing treatment gives the concept a distinct character that would likely appeal to fans of the brand.

The renders bring to mind the visual language of Nothing’s earlier audio products, particularly the transparent approach associated with the Ear (1). Instead of hiding the internal components behind an opaque shell, the concept makes them part of the visual experience. A transparent finish could also work particularly well with an IEM, where the intricate internal arrangement is often part of what makes these products interesting to audio enthusiasts.

The community response suggests that the concept has some room for further exploration. One commenter specifically expressed interest in seeing a black and transparent version, while another asked what specifications people would want from such a product. Those reactions highlight an interesting possibility: a Nothing IEM could potentially bridge the gap between the company’s design-focused consumer electronics and the increasingly popular world of enthusiast audio.

For now, this remains a community-created concept rather than an official Nothing product. Still, it is an intriguing exercise in imagining how the company’s transparent design philosophy could translate into a more enthusiast-oriented audio product. With Nothing already established in the personal audio space, the idea of a dedicated wired IEM does not feel entirely out of place.

The post What If Nothing Made an IEM for Audiophiles? This Community Concept Imagines One first appeared on Yanko Design.

WWDC 2026, Six Weeks Later: What Actually Shipped

If Liquid Glass is the face of iOS 27, the intensity slider is the part that decides whether that face is wearing reading glasses. Apple never showed it during WWDC 2026, even though it may be the most visually crucial control in the entire redesign. This one setting lets users adjust the strength of the transparency effect system-wide, which means it directly shapes readability, contrast, depth, and the overall vibe of Apple’s biggest interface experiment in years.

That makes its quiet arrival in the public beta feel kind of wild. Apple presented Liquid Glass as a confident design statement, but the slider reveals something more interesting, a design system with a built-in self-correction mechanism. Suddenly the story is not only about what Apple announced on stage. It is about what Apple had to add once the software met real screens, real eyes, and real people who do not want their Control Center looking like a soap bubble.

Designer: Apple

Six weeks separate the WWDC 2026 keynote from iOS 27 Public Beta 2, and in software terms, that is enough time for a lot to shift. Public Beta 1 landed July 13 with the slider and a Siri AI rollout to general users. Beta 2 followed on July 22 with speed improvements, a Screen Time overhaul, and more. Together they paint a picture of iOS 27 that looks noticeably different from what Apple demoed at Apple Park in June.

App icons have been getting the same quiet treatment. Beta builds are shipping with re-layered icons that carry more visual depth than what showed up on stage, tweaking how the foreground and background elements of each icon interact with the glass effect behind them. It reads as subtle in a screenshot and feels significant once you are actually navigating the phone. The whole system carries a different visual weight than the keynote suggested.

Apple built Siri AI on Google’s Gemini, and that partnership is the backbone of the biggest headline in iOS 27. The revamped assistant can hold context across apps, answer open-ended questions, and dig into your emails, messages, and photos to surface relevant information, putting it in genuine competition with ChatGPT and other conversational AI tools for the first time. What the keynote mostly skipped was how that Gemini handoff surfaces visually inside Siri’s UI, what the latency actually feels like, and how different it is from the ChatGPT integration Apple shipped in iOS 18.

Thirty percent faster app launches, 80% faster AirDrop, 70% faster Photos capture loading. Apple is putting some big performance numbers on the table, benchmarked against an iPhone 11 Pro Max running iOS 26.4.2, which is more specific than the usual “up to” framing with nothing behind it. Whether those gains hold on newer hardware in real daily use is still something beta testers are working out.

macOS 27 Golden Gate is running the same play in parallel, bringing Liquid Glass refinements to the desktop and putting Siri AI inside Spotlight. It also becomes the first macOS to fully drop Intel support and retire Rosetta 2, which is its own headline for a different day. For anyone designing or building for Apple platforms, September is the target, when the stable release lands alongside the iPhone 18 lineup. The betas are the closest thing to a final spec sheet right now, which makes that quiet little slider a pretty loud signal about where Liquid Glass is actually headed.

The post WWDC 2026, Six Weeks Later: What Actually Shipped first appeared on Yanko Design.

This New Museum in Shenzhen Looks Like a Piece of Landscape That Was Always There

It took six years from competition win to opening day, but the Shenzhen Natural History Museum was always going to be worth the wait. Designed by the 3XN, B+H Architects, and Zhubo Design consortium, the 105,300-square-metre building opened to the public on July 28, 2026, beside Yanzi Lake in the city’s Pingshan District. It is the largest natural history museum in South China and one of the most architecturally ambitious public buildings completed anywhere in the world this year.

The design has a name, “Delta,” and it earns it. Rather than arriving as a monument on a plinth, the building rises from its river-delta setting as a continuous terrain of sloping roofs, planted terraces, and granite-clad surfaces that seem to have been worn into shape by water and time. The façade reads like a cliff face, its carved openings hinting at the galleries within. From a distance, the silhouette folds into the surrounding hills as naturally as it folds into the brief.

Designer: 3XN, B+H Architects & Zhubo Design

Kim Herforth Nielsen, founder of 3XN, framed the ambition plainly: “Nothing in nature is square. Nature is amorphous, dynamic, and always in formation. From the beginning, the ambition was to create not a building, but a piece of landscape that had always been there.” That idea holds all the way to completion. Internally, five cone-shaped volumes organize the museum’s principal exhibition halls, and moving between them feels less like navigating a floor plan and more like moving through a cave system, with atria, terraces, and framed views appearing and dissolving as you go.

Across eight themed exhibition halls, visitors trace 4.6 billion years of Earth’s history, from the origins of the universe through to the specific ecosystems of southern China. Exhibition designers Atelier Brückner and Museum Studio worked alongside the architects to integrate specimens, large-scale installations, and cinematic media with the curved cone geometries, turning the galleries into environments rather than rooms.

The roof is as considered as anything inside. B+H, who served as lead consultant, executive architect, and landscape architect, designed a walkable park that extends the surrounding ground plane up and over the building, connecting the museum to Yanzi Lake and the region’s wider network of rivers and wetlands. Viewing terraces, planted thematic zones, and gathering spaces make it a civic destination in its own right, one that functions on a Tuesday morning just as well as a Saturday afternoon.

The museum is part of Shenzhen’s “Ten Cultural Facilities of the New Era,” a city-wide infrastructure investment that has quietly been reshaping one of the world’s most dynamic urban environments. The Natural History Museum is the most visually compelling of the lot, and the one most likely to be remembered.

The post This New Museum in Shenzhen Looks Like a Piece of Landscape That Was Always There first appeared on Yanko Design.

Skullcandy’s $280 Headphones Pack A Subwoofer For Your Skull, And A Knob To Control How Hard It Hits

Everyone is obsessed with making gadgets sleeker, flatter, and more touch sensitive these days. So naturally, Skullcandy looked at that trend and said, nah, let us put a knob on it. The new Crusher 1080 ANC headphones (with sound by Bose) have an honest to goodness rotary dial sitting right on the ear cup, and it might be the single best design decision on the whole product.

Turning that dial controls the Crusher Bass feature, which is Skullcandy’s way of saying we built a subwoofer into your headphones. Twist it one way for a light rumble, twist it the other way and your skull becomes part of the sound system. It is a small, satisfying, slightly ridiculous piece of hardware, and after years of swiping at touch panels that never quite register your finger, it feels like coming up for air.

Designer: Skullcandy

Click Here to Buy Now

Bose headphones are great. They are also expensive enough to make you wince a little at checkout. So when Skullcandy rolled up with a pair of headphones that borrow actual Bose tech, including its noise canceling and audio engine, and slapped a $280 price on them, it got my attention fast. That is $170 cheaper than Bose’s own flagship, for tech with the Bose name stamped right on it. Whether the sound quality actually holds up against the real deal is a separate question, but on paper, this is a genuinely aggressive move.

Bose’s fingerprints have their way of showing up everywhere else as well. QuietControl active noise canceling uses six microphones to quiet the outside world, TrueSpatial creates a wider, more speaker like soundstage with head tracking, and the WaveForm audio engine keeps things clear even at high volume. There is also Personal Sound tech from Mimi, which builds a hearing profile tailored to you rather than relying on a generic preset. Toss in Bose-assisted call clarity and custom EQ modes, and Skullcandy is clearly betting that borrowed expertise beats going it alone.

The everyday stuff is handled well too. Automatic wear detection pauses your audio the second you take the headphones off, a low latency mode keeps games in sync, and the onboard buttons can be remapped to whatever functions you actually use. Battery life comes in at 60 hours with ANC off and 50 with it on, and a 10 minute charge buys you another 4 hours of playtime. The one number that raises an eyebrow is weight. At just over 13 ounces, these are noticeably heavier than rivals like the Sony XM6 or Bose’s own QuietComfort Ultra, the price you may pay for packing in all that bass hardware.

None of this guarantees the 1080 ANC will beat Bose or Sony at their own game, and we will not know for sure until these are actually strapped to some ears. But Skullcandy is not really trying to win a spec sheet fight here. It is selling a headphone with a genuine identity, one built around a feeling rather than a feature list, with a knob you can grab and twist like it is 1985. In a market full of interchangeable slabs of black plastic, that alone makes the Crusher 1080 ANC worth a second look.

Click Here to Buy Now

The post Skullcandy’s $280 Headphones Pack A Subwoofer For Your Skull, And A Knob To Control How Hard It Hits first appeared on Yanko Design.

Meet The Lamp That’s Actually Grown, Not Made

If you’ve never thought about bacteria as a design material before, Cenit might be the thing that changes that for you. The latest lighting collection from the collaboration between biotechnology company Polybion and Mexico-based design studio Natural Urbano is doing something genuinely different from what most lighting brands are doing right now, and it’s worth paying attention to.

To understand Cenit, you have to know a little about what came before it. Lapso was their first major collaboration: a sculptural pendant lamp handcrafted from five sheets of cultivated bacterial cellulose, a translucent, flexible material called Celium that Polybion grows using bacteria. Not synthetically manufactured. Not extracted from a forest. Grown, from bacteria, using agricultural waste. Lapso was already a bold statement when it debuted at the London Design Festival in 2025. Each lamp came with a certificate of authenticity and a two-month production lead time, because you can’t rush biology.

Designers: Polybion x Natural Urbano

Cenit follows that same philosophy but takes it further. For the first time, the duo has combined Celium with natural ash wood and stainless steel, bringing the material into a more structured, versatile family of lighting objects. The collection comes in both pendant and table formats, which is a smart move that Lapso didn’t make. Lapso was undeniably sculptural, a piece you’d plan a room around. Cenit feels like it wants to live with you in your home across different spaces and moods, without demanding all the attention in the room.

The specific variant used here is Celium Manto, layered in a way that calls to mind the gradients of a horizon. The collection’s name, Cenit, means zenith in Spanish, the highest point in the sky, and the visual reference lands. When light passes through the layered cellulose, it does something that no synthetic material can fully replicate. It glows with an organic warmth, the kind you usually only get from paper or natural stone, but lighter and more alive-feeling.

A lot of sustainable design still requires us to compromise somewhere. Rougher edges. Less refined finishes. A feeling that the eco-credentials come at the cost of beauty. Cenit does not ask that of you. The combination of ash and Celium Manto is genuinely beautiful, in a way that’s considered and deliberate rather than rustic or raw. The stainless steel elements give it structure without weight. The ash brings warmth without heaviness. And the cellulose does what it always does in Polybion’s hands: it makes you stop and look.

Beyond the material, what makes this collaboration particularly interesting is where it’s coming from. Natural Urbano, founded by Sebastián Beltrán and Lorena Márquez, and Polybion, based in Guanajuato, are actively positioning Mexico as a place where design and biotechnology meet at a serious, global level. That’s not a small thing. The conversation about sustainable and biofabricated design has historically centered on European studios and Scandinavian minimalism. Watching a Mexican collaboration work at this level, with this degree of craft and material innovation, feels significant.

The pendant and table formats in Cenit also suggest that Polybion and Natural Urbano are thinking about a longer game. Moving from a collectible sculptural piece like Lapso into a more scalable, multi-format collection points to the kind of ambition that doesn’t just want to make a beautiful object. It wants to change what beautiful objects are made from, and it’s doing that without sacrificing the craft or the story behind the material.

Biofabricated materials are still a niche, but collections like Cenit make the niche feel a lot less obscure. When something looks this considered and lives this comfortably in a real interior, it becomes a lot easier to imagine a future where Celium shows up in more homes, more spaces, more everyday things. Cenit is the kind of work that makes you want to ask more questions about what your objects are made of, and that, as far as I’m concerned, is exactly what good design is supposed to do.

The post Meet The Lamp That’s Actually Grown, Not Made first appeared on Yanko Design.

This ‘Liquid Metal’ Ducati 821 Was Built by Hand in Vietnam, and Only One Remains

How does the greatest Ducati of the last decade get built four thousand miles from Bologna, in a workshop most people have never heard of? Ducati’s home turf is basically hallowed ground, all red paint and Borgo Panigale badges and a hundred years of racing pedigree breathing down every design decision. Bandit9 clearly did not get the memo, and thank god for that. The Saigon based atelier, founded by former creative director Daryl Villanueva, builds bikes the way a sculptor builds a monument, one hand shaped panel at a time, with zero interest in playing by anyone else’s house style. Their take on the Ducati 821 takes a stock Monster and turns it into something that somehow feels more Ducati than the actual Ducati. It is the kind of move you only get to make when you have absolutely nothing to lose.

Only nine of these were ever going to exist, and eight of them are already gone, which means we are looking at the very last one on the shelf. Bandit9’s resume includes permanent spots in the collections of MoMA and the Petersen Automotive Museum, so this is not some garage tinkerer getting lucky once. Underneath the bodywork sits Ducati’s own 821cc Testastretta L-twin, 110 horsepower, a 3.3 second sprint to 60 mph, wrapped in a hand formed shell that splits clean between brushed aluminum and gloss carbon fiber. At $49,900 for the last unit, you are buying the argument as much as the motorcycle.

Designer: Bandit9

The material split down the middle grabs you first, and while it looks cosmetic, it actually serves a functional purpose. Brushed aluminum wraps the nose, tank, and belly, while gloss carbon fiber takes over the tail section, and the seam between the two materials tracks the actual bodywork geometry instead of sitting on top of it like a paint job. That tail section deserves its own moment, a bullet nosed unit with an LED strip tracing the ridge line into a tucked amber turn signal, wrapped in exposed weave carbon that catches light like a jewel. Flip to the cockpit and Bandit9 sweated even the smallest details, milling a top yoke in aluminum with a tiny embedded LED trip readout nested between the fork caps. Most custom shops would leave that space blank or bolt on an aftermarket gauge. Bandit9 machined a bespoke solution instead, because subtlety does not appear to be part of their vocabulary.

Ducati’s own 821cc Testastretta 11 degree L-twin sits underneath all that hand formed metal, still producing 110 horsepower and 65.8 ft-lb of torque, enough to send the bike from 0 to 60 mph in about 3.3 seconds. A custom tubular steel trellis frame carries the engine, paired with 43mm Sachs forks up front and an adjustable Sachs monoshock out back, while dual 320mm Brembo monobloc calipers handle the stopping duties. None of that is particularly radical on paper, and that is the point. Bandit9 never touched the parts that make a Ducati go fast or stop hard, they only rebuilt everything around it by hand. No stamping press currently exists that can produce a single panel wrapping from the front cowl over the tank and down the body without a seam, so every curve on this bike got there because a person spent months shaping metal the way a watchmaker shapes a case. That is what craftsmanship actually looks like, no marketing spin required.

Nine of these were ever going to exist, and eight already have owners, so the math here is simple. Bandit9 has spent years building a reputation that includes permanent placements in the collections of MoMA and the Petersen Automotive Museum, putting them in rare company within the custom bike world, alongside names like Deus Ex Machina and Icon, but operating on a different plane of ambition entirely. Founder Daryl Villanueva, a former graphic designer and creative director, runs the Saigon based atelier less like a garage and more like a small design house that happens to build motorcycles instead of furniture or typefaces. At $49,900, the last unit is not cheap, but measured against months of hand labor and a production run that will never reopen, the number starts to make sense. Whoever buys it walks away with a working sculpture that also happens to be a genuinely quick motorcycle.

Ducati will keep building excellent motorcycles in Bologna, and nobody is arguing otherwise. But Bandit9’s 821 makes an honest case that great design does not need a postcode, a century of racing heritage, or a factory at all, just a workshop, a stubborn sense of craft, and someone willing to spend months getting a single curve exactly right. The last unit will sell fast, probably to someone who already owns a garage full of things most people only see in magazines. What happens after that is anyone’s guess, though I would not be surprised if Bandit9 is already sketching whatever comes next. For a company that keeps proving Bologna does not have a monopoly on great Ducatis, retirement does not seem to be part of the plan.

The post This ‘Liquid Metal’ Ducati 821 Was Built by Hand in Vietnam, and Only One Remains first appeared on Yanko Design.

Huion Note E Review: The Notebook That Never Runs Out of Pages

Huion has made a name for itself with digital drawing tools that empower creatives, both professional and hobbyist alike, regardless of their budgets. It has lately dabbled in the realm of standalone Android tablets, bringing its technologies that would allow designers and artists to let their creativity roam free, figuratively and literally. It even put out some “Smart Notebooks,” catering to the note-taking crowd more than artists.

Against this backdrop, the Huion Note E arrives with an ambitious goal: to be the electronic notebook to replace your handful of paper notebooks. It’s designed to even look the part! But this has been attempted before by many companies, including more expensive fruit-labeled slates, so how does the Note E fare in this regard? Is it able to deliver that paper-like writing experience, or is that just another bullet point in a smorgasbord of disjointed features? We take out our thinking caps, jot down our musings, and take it for a spin to find out.

Designer: Huion

Aesthetics

Huion dubs the Note E as an Electronic notebook, and the first impression you get definitely supports that characterization. Out of the box, it already sets itself apart from typical Android tablets and even from e-readers that have thick bezels and a wider left edge. That left edge uses a rough textured material that mimics the appearance and experience of spines on some paper notebooks.

In fact, the Huion Note E tries quite hard to push that notebook metaphor, almost to the extreme. Instead of your typical smooth edges, the tablet’s sides have an unusual ridged structure that looks like pages of a notebook. That is, if your notebook used black paper. All in all, the Huion Note E presents itself well as an electronic A5 notebook, which helps endear itself to those planning to make the switch from paper to digital.

The included cover adds a pinch of luxury to that presentation, with a PU leather material on the outside and a soft, felt-like texture on the inside. It’s reminiscent of premium journals and their leather-like covers, reinforcing the image of the Huion Note E as an electronic notebook. It’s nothing grand or spectacular, but small touches like these help give the product a distinct personality as a carefully designed object rather than just another tablet in the market.

The Huion Note E embraces a very minimalist design, at least aside from those aforementioned details. Without any physical volume controls, only the power button, USB-C port, and holes for the mics, speaker, and cover break the flow of the ridges around the device. The LCD screen with anti-glare nano-etching is laminated and lies completely flat, just like a page of a notebook. The back is also pretty bare, save for the Huion branding in the middle and the camera bump in a rather unconventional corner. The back has a somewhat matte texture that is, unfortunately, quite a smudge and fingerprint magnet.

The included stylus, a Huion PW510 with PenTech 3.0, follows that same minimalist aesthetic. It has no side buttons, for better or for worse, and aside from the pen nib, the only interaction point is the springy eraser on the other end. The 9mm-diameter barrel has two flat sides that keep it from rolling off a table. Amusingly, the pen seems to roll on its “back” more often than not, ensuring that the Huion name on the barrel is always visible.

Ergonomics

The comparison with a paper notebook doesn’t stop at the appearance. The Huion Note E is almost exactly the size and thickness of an 80-page A5 notebook. At around 348g, it almost weighs as much as one, though the cover adds around 100g more to that ensemble. It’s still light and slim enough to carry everywhere you’d normally take notebooks with you, with the advantage that you only need one Note E versus a stack of A5 notebooks.

That also means it’s convenient to hold the Huion Note E up in one hand, though your exact comfort will depend on your hand size and grip. Those with larger hands or longer fingers might be able to more comfortably grip both edges to hold the tablet like a notepad, while some might prefer gripping the textured left edge instead. That said, the device has enough heft that it can start to feel a bit tiring after a long period of time.

The Huion PW510 pen’s 9mm diameter also makes it a joy to hold and use. It has enough girth to feel comfortable without being too chunky. The body is also well-balanced, so nothing weighs down your hand to get in the way of writing. The lack of a side button aligns with the goal to mimic a pen and paper experience, though at the expense of some useful functionality. The pen magnetically attaches to the side of the Note E, making it easy and convenient to stow away the pen when not in use. There’s also a pen loop on the included cover, though designed in a rather unusual way.

That magnetic cover itself is a bit of an odd duck, sadly. While it’s understandable that Huion avoided using extra-strong magnets that would have affected the EMR pen’s performance, the mechanism they chose feels both unintuitive and flimsy. There are two small prongs inside the spine of the cover, and you have to slide the tablet up or down, depending on whether you’re removing or attaching it, respectively. Given the size of the prongs, it feels like an accident waiting to happen.

One rather curious note is the placement of the power button, which also functions as a fingerprint scanner, on the upper right edge. I usually open books or notebooks from that corner, so when I flip the cover open, my finger naturally brushes against the power button and automatically unlocks the tablet so I don’t have to do that step consciously. Whether that design was intended or not, it was still a nice touch, no pun intended.

Performance

Huion already has quite a number of Android-powered tablets in the market, including a 10-inch one with an E Ink screen. The Note E, however, has a distinct purpose that calls for a rather different combination of hardware and software features. It’s meant to be a highly portable digital notebook first and foremost, so everything else falls under this lens, both the good and the bad.

Specs and Battery

The Huion Note E is unambiguously what would be considered a mid-range tablet, especially with its MediaTek Helio G99 processor. While that may have been billed as a gaming chip for budget smartphones back in 2022, it doesn’t hold a candle to today’s mid-tier silicon, at least in theory. In practice, however, it actually performs quite well, especially with 6GB of RAM that gives apps sufficient space to operate. It’s no racehorse, for sure, but that isn’t even the point of this device in the first place.

The tablet comes with 128GB of RAM, which is modest by 2026 standards, especially without any option to expand it with a microSD card. It will be enough to hold notes, pieces of art, and ebooks aplenty, but you’ll definitely feel cramped for anything else. You will definitely feel the intentional limitations Huion put in place, preferring to focus on the core use cases for the device: note-taking with a bit of drawing and reading on the side.

That’s also why the Huion Note E’s camera story is almost non-existent. There’s an 8MP shooter on the back that’s primarily for scanning documents, notes, and books. You can take passable photos, definitely, but the quality is so basic you’d be better off reaching for your smartphone. Yes, you can probably snap up a reference for your drawing, but don’t expect accurate colors, let alone fine details. Unsurprisingly, there is no front-facing camera, even for video calls.

A 4,500mAh battery sounds a little too modest for a tablet, but it does surprisingly well. On standby, with 2 or 3 benchmarks run, it lasted almost three days from full to 5%. On a full day of regular use, you won’t even need to reach for a power bank until the next day. The 18W “fast” charging speed is definitely a bummer, requiring 2.5 hours to top up.

Display and Pen

Where the Huion Note E excels is, of course, the screen and stylus experience, which isn’t surprising given the brand’s core technologies and target market. The 8.4-inch laminated LCD screen comes with an anti-glare nano-etched surface that is advertised to provide a traditional pen-on-paper experience. In practice, it feels more like writing on a sheet of smooth, high-quality paper, like the ones you’d find in Japanese-made notebooks and planners. It doesn’t exactly have that “scratchiness” of regular paper, but there’s enough resistance that it doesn’t feel like plastic sliding on glass.

With a 1920×1200 resolution, the 60Hz screen boasts a pixel density of 270 PPI, close to what ereaders offer. Huion doesn’t advertise it as something similar to E Ink, nor does it even talk about a paper-like reading experience. It’s still an LCD screen, though with some features aimed at helping reduce eye strain. For example, it opts for DC dimming over the more popular PWM to reduce flickering that hurts the eyes over long periods of use.

All of these come together to deliver a screen that is sharp, clear, and colorful, allowing for a variety of uses that go beyond just scribbling or reading. Under bright light, even under the sun, the screen is still readable, especially at max brightness. The anti-glare finish does affect viewing angles, but very few people would read or write at an extreme angle anyway.

The Huion PW510 stylus that comes in the box utilizes the brand’s PenTech 3.0 technology, promising 8,192 levels of pressure as well as tilt sensitivity. It definitely works as advertised with no latency in any app, reproducing that joyful feeling of seeing “ink” flow smoothly from the tip of the pen as it glides across paper. Sadly, the design of the 1.6mm felt nib makes it harder to take full advantage of tilt, but it’s definitely there.

Software

That the Huion Note E is specifically designed for note-taking is perhaps best seen in the mixed bag that is the software experience. It runs on a customized Android experience that more closely resembles an e-reader than a typical Android tablet. Most of the features and settings are still there, just hidden and sometimes even locked down.

There is thankfully not much bloatware installed, save for some “basic” Google apps. Ironically, while the device does support Google Play, you have to take some extra, but thankfully easy, steps to register the device. It’s an unfortunate situation, but not a complete deal-breaker. Once you get past that, almost any app on the Play Store is available to install.

Huion’s built-in software, however, leaves some things to be desired. The launcher, which has “tabs” on the left, is designed to be minimal and distraction-free. It’s also the only way you can get to the Huion Notes and To-do apps, as they are baked into the launcher, following the practice of some Android ereaders. Unfortunately, it’s so minimalist that there’s no option to rearrange apps in the Favorites tab (but you can do that in the All Apps tab), nor is there a dark mode that will avoid blinding your eyes in a dark room.

The Huion Notes app is also capable but basic, designed more for quick notes rather than elaborate journals and planners. You have four “pens,” only one of which takes advantage of pressure sensitivity. There’s no way to directly type in text, forcing you to write by hand and then convert to text, but once text is already there, you can edit normally with a keyboard. One key feature is the ability to record audio while writing, for example while taking notes in a lecture, and you can later play the recording back and watch your handwriting appear in sync.

The built-in To-Dos app is even more basic, simply letting you scribble a task, which it converts to text, enter sub-tasks, and assign due dates and times. You can type in text at all, so you’ll really have to do everything with the stylus, which is the entire point in the first place. You don’t type in your paper notebook, after all.

HiPaint, which some consider to be the Android Procreate, is also pre-installed, but you can install any drawing app of your choice. With Huion’s display and pen tech, turning the Note E into a portable digital sketchbook is like second nature. Of course, you can also read books, comics, and, if you really want, scroll through social media, though the reading experience might be subpar compared to a color E Ink device.

Sustainability

The Huion Note E doesn’t exactly score well in this criterion. The device is mostly plastic, with no mention of recycled parts. The packaging is compact and minimal, but there’s still quite a bit of plastic there as well. The device itself is only rated for IP40, which practically means no protection even against accidental splashes. It does run Android 15, which was last year’s release, but there is no clear upgrade path moving forward.

The Note E’s sustainability advantage is in what it saves in the long run, even if indirectly. It is trying to create a culture of swapping out paper notebooks for electronic ones, at least for the more disposable use cases. The battery-free stylus is not only, well, battery-free but also saves up on energy you would have used to charge the pen. Small wins, definitely, and hopefully Huion would move toward stronger sustainable practices and materials soon.

Value

At $369, the Huion Note E is hardly what you’d consider a budget tablet. It does include an excellent stylus and a somewhat ambiguous cover, but if you’re looking for hardware chops, you’d best look elsewhere. A mono speaker and a single 8MP camera are not what you’d consider modern features. It is definitely not the only Android tablet with a stylus, either.

What Huion brings to the table isn’t just another Android device, but one that is clearly designed, both in hardware and software, for a specific, focused purpose. That it looks like an A5 notebook isn’t an accident, and, incomplete as it may be, the streamlined software experience is quite intentional. The Note E aims to be your one electronic notebook to replace your other paper notebooks, and it definitely gets the job done, with plenty of room for growth.

Verdict

There is no shortage of Android tablets that support pen input, from the large and expensive “Pro” slates to E Ink readers. At first glance, the Huion Note E looks like yet another entry in that market, but just turn it to the side, and you will immediately see that it’s a different beast entirely. It’s an electronic notebook first and foremost. Everything else is just side effects.

What really sets the Huion Note E apart is the carefully selected mix of features and limitations that make it look less like a mass-market device and more like a considered object. It looks like the object it’s meant to replace, and the limitations it has in place streamline rather than restrict the experience. Sure, there are a few quirks, most of which can be fixed with software updates, but, in the end, the Huion Note E still manages to deliver its promise: an enjoyable writing experience on a notebook that never runs out of pages.

The post Huion Note E Review: The Notebook That Never Runs Out of Pages first appeared on Yanko Design.

Nike launches Air Zoom Hyperslide, pair of slip-ons that heat and massage your feet

In 2024, Nike and Hyperice got together for a pair of boots that used air compression to massage athletes’ feet. Now, the two stalwarts in their own domains have joined forces again to release Nike Air Zoom Hyperslide – a pair of slides that could easily be the most innovative iteration of recovery slides ever made. Designed to heat and massage your feet after a long day’s work or activity, it uses Hyperice’s recovery technology with Nike Air Zoom cushioning.

The combination makes the slides ultra-comfy to wear after a tiresome day and increasingly relaxing for the feet post-workout. This convenience is made possible with the magnetically connected Hyperslide Pod, which resides in the adjustable, wide coverage midfoot strap of the slide. The pod is removable, but when it’s attached to the slide, it “provides targeted Hyperice heat and vibration massage across the top of the foot,” Nike confirms.

Designer: Nike

The heat therapy and vibration massage help reduce tension and relax the feet after strenuous training, a game of football, or a morning run. The comfort is, however, enhanced by the Air Zoom cushioning spanning the entire length of the footwear. The soft proprietary sole provides responsive comfort for everyday wear, which adds to the primary feature of heat and massage.

The Nike Air Zoom Hyperslide is created in two colors: Black and Beige. Despite the simplicity of the colors, the slides look distinct in their monochromatic finish. The silhouette is smooth and has a high-end construction feel to it, which revolves around the mounting hub for the magnetic pod.

The pod sitting at the top of the foot is the main aspect of the slide’s recovery capability. It is created to provide three levels of targeted heat to each foot, reaching 117 degrees Fahrenheit, or 47 degrees Celsius. The slides also create three levels of vibrations for a 15-minute recovery cycle. The pod is rechargeable and features a USB-C port for fast charging.

The levels of heat and vibration can be customized from the pod on the slides, or via the Hyperice app. For those, like me, who are often confused with the settings, the Air Zoom Hyperslide features onboard indicator lights signalling heat, vibration, or battery level. The slides are designed using feedback from athletes and are now being hailed for their soft cushioning, heat, and vibration working in tandem for post-workout recovery.

If you’re interested, we’ve learned that the Nike Air Zoom Hyperslide will be available globally starting September 29, 2026. The information is not official, but sources suggest the slides created to heat and massage your feet would cost $250.

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adidas x Carnival’s $170 Sneaker Is a Love Letter to Retro Gaming

Somewhere between digging through a crate of old game cartridges and reaching for a solid pair of running shoes, Bangkok-based streetwear boutique CARNIVAL found its latest idea. The result is the CARNIVAL x adidas Adizero EVO SL “The Grey Console,” and it’s the kind of release that doesn’t need to try very hard to get your attention. It earns it.

The concept is straightforward but well-executed: take the familiar grey shell of a retro gaming console, the kind that sat under your TV in the early 2000s, and translate that visual language onto one of adidas’ most capable modern runners. The grey mesh upper immediately reads like vintage hardware, the color of a Nintendo 64 or an original PlayStation left to age gracefully on a shelf. It’s industrial and a little utilitarian, but it also carries a specific kind of warmth that only nostalgia can give something.

Designers: adidas x Carnival

The real conversation starts in the details. The red, yellow, green, and blue accents scattered across the eyelets and branding aren’t subtle, but they don’t need to be. Those four colors are a shared visual memory for anyone who grew up with a controller in their hands. They’re shorthand for a specific era before streaming services and mobile gaming dominated everything, when plugging in a console felt like an event. CARNIVAL didn’t over-explain the concept. They trusted the design to speak, and it does.

What makes the execution particularly sharp is how disciplined the color placement is. The multicolor hits appear along the eyelets, surfacing only when you look closely. It rewards a second look. The grey mesh has a breathable, open texture that adds depth to the upper without overcomplicating the silhouette. The branding stays restrained, letting the colorway do the storytelling rather than relying on logos to carry the concept. The overall result is a shoe that reads as athletic from across a room and as a considered design object the moment you hold it.

Performance-wise, the shoe isn’t riding purely on its references. The Adizero EVO SL runs on adidas’ LightStrike Pro foam, originally developed for elite race-day running. The midsole delivers a soft, responsive bounce without feeling excessive or gimmicky. A dimensional outsole structure aids weight transfer during a run, and the Continental Rubber at the forefoot adds traction that actually holds up. It’s a performance shoe doing exactly what a performance shoe should, just with a story attached to it.

That combination, a technically credible runner dressed in pure nostalgia, is what makes this collaboration feel earned rather than opportunistic. The EVO SL has built a strong collab roster with names like BAPE, Pharrell, and Hartcopy. CARNIVAL slots into that lineup not by screaming the loudest, but by being the most specific. The “Grey Console” concept doesn’t try to appeal to everyone. It targets a very particular person: one who played video games growing up, grew into someone who cares about footwear, and now finds those two worlds overlapping in a way that feels genuinely satisfying.

That specificity is exactly what separates a great collab from a forgettable one. Too many collaborations chase something broadly recognizable but ultimately hollow. The best have a point of view. CARNIVAL has always been good at this. As a Bangkok-based retailer with a loyal following across Southeast Asia, they consistently bring a cultural perspective that doesn’t feel assembled by committee. The Grey Console is personal, and that’s precisely why it lands.

At $170, it’s priced fairly for what it offers. The LightStrike Pro midsole appears in adidas race shoes that cost considerably more. You’re getting actual running capability here, not just a lifestyle silhouette with a compelling colorway bolted on. The shoe dropped on July 22, and sizes disappeared quickly. Whether a wider rollout is coming remains unclear, which makes the limited availability feel oddly appropriate for a concept this specific.

Some releases are designed to be everywhere. Some are designed for the person who immediately understands what they’re looking at. The CARNIVAL x adidas Adizero EVO SL “The Grey Console” is firmly the latter. That’s not a complaint. It’s a compliment.

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