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The $170 Clock That Wants You Off Your Phone at Night

Most of us fall asleep holding the very thing that’s keeping us awake. The phone. The infinite scroll. The algorithm engineered to make you feel like you’re missing something if you put it down. It’s a strange modern paradox, that a device built for connection has become the dominant object in one of the most intimate spaces in our home: the bedroom. Hatch seems to have understood this better than most, and their Restore 3 is a quiet but deliberate argument for doing things differently.

On paper, it’s a smart sleep clock. A well-designed one, yes, but still, at its core, a bedside device that helps you fall asleep and wake up. What makes it worth talking about isn’t necessarily the specs, though they’re solid. It’s the philosophy behind it. The entire product is built around the idea of putting your phone down, and keeping it that way.

Designer: Hatch

That’s where the redesigned hardware comes in. Unlike its predecessor, the Restore 3 has five physical controls: three on top, including a pause button, an Unwind Swap button, and what Hatch calls the Big Button, plus two more on the sides for the bedside light and alarm toggle. You can swap your wind-down routine, adjust volume, and silence your alarm without ever picking up your phone. It sounds minor until you realize how reflexively most of us grab the phone the second the alarm goes off, then somehow lose forty minutes to Instagram before we’ve brushed our teeth.

The design itself is clean and restrained in a way that feels intentional. Compact at roughly 7.24 inches wide and just over 5 inches tall, it comes in three muted colorways: Putty, Greige, and Cocoa. None of them scream “tech product.” All of them could pass for a ceramic lamp or a minimalist decor piece, which is likely the point. It’s designed to disappear into your nightstand while doing a lot of work. The time display is almost comically understated, barely noticeable at a glance.

Where the Restore 3 earns its $169.99 price tag is in the routines. Hatch structures your night into three stages: unwind, sleep, wake. During the unwind phase, you can cycle through immersive light and audio experiences, including meditations, bedtime podcasts, sleep soundscapes, and layered ambient sounds. The sleep phase takes over from there, and in the morning, a gradually brightening sunrise alarm eases you out of sleep rather than yanking you out of it. You set all of this through the companion app and then, ideally, never touch your phone again until morning.

The optional Hatch+ subscription, at five dollars a month or fifty for the year, unlocks over 100 sounds and lighting programs, with new content added regularly. A 30-day trial comes included with every purchase, which is a smart way to explore the full library before committing. Without the subscription, you still get access to more than 20 alarm sounds and 12 color noise options, which is genuinely more than most people will ever cycle through.

A few caveats worth naming: the Restore 3 doesn’t track your sleep. No biometric sensors, no data scores, no readiness analysis to scroll through every morning. For some, that’s a dealbreaker. Personally, I think it’s a feature. Sleep culture has gotten strangely clinical, with people waking up to check scores and percentages before they’ve had coffee. The Restore 3 isn’t interested in quantifying your rest. It just tries to improve it.

It’s also worth noting that the sunset mode, which winds down the lighting at night, isn’t as gradual as some competing sunrise alarms. If you’re particularly sensitive to light cues, that’s a real consideration. Still, the Restore 3 gets far more right than it gets wrong. It’s a thoughtfully designed product in a category that tends toward the overly clinical or the embarrassingly basic. The fact that it actually looks good on your nightstand while doing something genuinely useful puts it in a rare category. Sometimes the best tech is the kind that quietly asks you to use less of it.

The post The $170 Clock That Wants You Off Your Phone at Night first appeared on Yanko Design.

Japanese Designer Built Furniture With No Glue or Screws

Most furniture is held together by things you can’t see. Mortise-and-tenon joints, steel brackets, wood glue applied in generous amounts before being clamped overnight. The craft of traditional joinery is genuinely impressive, and furniture historians will rightly tell you it’s one of the oldest engineering feats in human history. But a Japanese designer named Tact Inoue just asked a simple question: what if you didn’t need any of that?

His answer is Mocky, a furniture series that throws out conventional joinery entirely and replaces it with heat, pressure, and the natural behavior of a material most people walk past every day without a second thought.

Designer: Tact Inoue

The material in question is artificial wood, specifically the kind composed of wood flour and resin, commonly used in outdoor decking. It’s not a glamorous material by any stretch. You’ve probably seen it on a boardwalk, a backyard patio, or a poolside deck. It blends in, does its job, and gets credited with being “low maintenance.” Tact Inoue looked at that material and saw something different entirely.

Because of its resin content, artificial wood can be heated until it softens. Inoue takes that softened state and presses the components together using a 20-tonne press machine. The heated surfaces fuse, adhering to each other as they cool. There are no fasteners, no glue, no mortise-and-tenon joints. The connection is the material itself. What comes out the other side looks nothing like what you’d expect from anything made of wood: warped surfaces, irregular joints, organic protrusions where two pieces met and merged under pressure.

And the thing is, it looks extraordinary. The imperfections are the point. Inoue isn’t treating the irregularities as flaws to be corrected before the piece ships. The warping and distortion that happen during the heat-pressing process are built into the design language of Mocky from the start. Irregularity is an active part of the making, not an accident of it. Each joint emerges from the behavior of the softened material rather than from a pre-drawn spec sheet. That’s a genuinely different relationship between designer and material, one where control is shared rather than total.

One of the standout pieces in the series is a bench that requires no aprons or stretchers to hold it together. The seat is made of two completely independent components that bond entirely through the fused connection. From a structural standpoint, that’s remarkable. From a visual one, it’s striking in the best way: a piece that looks grown rather than built.

That distinction matters. So much furniture design right now falls into one of two camps: aggressively minimal, where the process is hidden and the object looks like it appeared fully formed, or intentionally handmade, where visible effort is treated as the point. Mocky doesn’t fully belong to either. The process is visible, but it isn’t precious. The irregularity is intentional, but it isn’t decorative for its own sake. It reads as material honesty, which is a rarer quality in furniture than we might assume.

Inoue is also making a quieter argument about what artificial wood is for. It has spent its entire commercial life as a substitute, a stand-in for timber that doesn’t want to rot on your deck. Mocky pushes back on that framing. When you stop treating artificial wood as a replacement for something better and start treating it as a material with its own specific properties, it turns out it can do things natural wood never could. You cannot melt a solid oak leg into a joint. You cannot fuse cherry wood planks into each other using pressure alone.

That shift in perspective, from material-as-substitute to material-on-its-own-terms, is what makes Mocky feel genuinely interesting rather than just visually surprising. It’s a reminder that designers often do their best work not when they reach for the expected material, but when they ask what a rejected or overlooked one is actually capable of. The answer, in this case, is quite a lot.

The post Japanese Designer Built Furniture With No Glue or Screws first appeared on Yanko Design.

This iPhone Case Shows Any Photo You Want, Even With the Phone Off

Phone cases have been a stubborn category for personalization. Swapping the look of your phone has traditionally meant buying a different case altogether, waiting for it to arrive, and committing to whatever fixed image or color you chose until you get tired of it again. Custom print-on-demand cases get closer, but they’re still a one-and-done commitment once the ink is on the plastic.

The XTREM INNO Instant Custom Case takes a different approach entirely by putting a live E-Ink display on the back of the case. The circular screen sits on the rear of the case and can be updated anytime using the companion G-SHELL app. Pick a photo from your camera roll, tap “Cast Image,” and within seconds the display updates to show it. No charging cables, no dongle, no separate battery to keep alive.

Designer: XTREM

That last part is the piece worth pausing on. The display uses passive NFC technology, which means the case draws what it needs from the phone only during the update and then holds the image indefinitely using essentially zero power. The photo stays visible even with the phone switched off or the case detached entirely. It doesn’t dim, doesn’t drain the phone’s battery, and doesn’t require any kind of maintenance.

The E-Ink screen itself runs at 212 PPI with a four-color system covering black, white, red, and yellow. That palette is wider than most standard tri-color E-Ink screens, though it’s worth noting the display doesn’t replicate photorealistic color the way a phone screen would. Images take on a quality closer to a printed photograph or a high-contrast graphic, which has its own particular appeal depending on what you’re putting on the case.

A more recent feature lets users link their case with a friend’s and cast photos directly to each other’s displays. Send a selfie, a shared joke, a matching photo, or anything else from your camera roll straight to someone else’s phone case without going through a message thread first. It’s a genuinely odd little communication channel, and a lot more tactile than a reaction emoji.

The case itself is built around a sandwich structure that the company says improves wireless charging efficiency and heat dissipation compared to a standard case. It weighs just 40g, clears MagSafe compatibility fully, and has passed drop testing with reinforced corners and a patented frame. The material is treated against yellowing, which is one of the more persistent grievances with transparent cases over time.

Available for iPhone 15 through iPhone 17 models, the XTREM INNO case comes in Nova White, Noir Black, and Cosmic Orange. The circular E-Ink panel is the same across all variants; the color options refer to the frame and body of the case itself. A single case retails at $69.99, which is more than a typical protective case but significantly less than replacing an entire case every time you want a different look.

For people who already change their phone lock screen frequently or rotate between a few different photos they actually care about, the logic of a case that does the same thing doesn’t take much convincing. The technology’s already proven in e-readers; applying it to the back of an iPhone case turns out to be a surprisingly sensible place to put it.

The post This iPhone Case Shows Any Photo You Want, Even With the Phone Off first appeared on Yanko Design.

The 5 Best RVs & Motorhomes of July 2026

The RV market has never asked more interesting questions of itself. Whether you are planning your first camping trip or refining years of experience on the road, 2026 is delivering some of the most considered mobile homes the industry has produced. From a $64,000 entry-level trailer built to make the lifestyle genuinely reachable, to six-figure touring coaches that rival boutique hotels in finish and detail, the conversation around what a motorhome can be has shifted significantly.

This roundup spans a wide price bracket and an equally wide range of design philosophies. Some of these are built for couples chasing quiet weekends. Others are built for people who refuse to leave their mountain bikes or surfboards at home. One is still a concept, but an important one. What links all five is a commitment to design that goes beyond the floor plan and asks bigger questions about how we want to travel.

1. Bürstner Signature SMT

Germany’s Bürstner has spent years building some of the most carefully engineered compact motorhomes on the market, and the Signature SMT is their most resolved model yet. Built on a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter chassis and finished in fiberglass for a lightweight, durable shell, it leads with modularity. A privacy shutter between the kitchen and the rear bedroom means the space can be configured for a couple or adapted to host guests without sacrificing the feeling of a private retreat at the back.

For you, the Signature’s real strength is in what disappears. The drop-down double bed folds into the ceiling completely when not in use, returning the front lounge to full functionality. The retractable kitchen shelf doubles as a divider wall when raised. The bathroom’s sliding front wall retracts to free up the shower space. These are not gimmicks. They are genuine solutions to the tension between space and privacy that most motorhomes never quite resolve. Pricing starts at approximately $107,000 for the 735cm base model.

What we like:

The retractable shelf that doubles as a bedroom privacy wall is one of the cleverest interior details in its class
The raised roofline at the front gives the drop-down bed a genuinely comfortable clearance that most vans cannot match

What we dislike:

European pricing and limited US dealer networks make purchasing and servicing more complicated for American buyers
The modular interior requires occupants to actively manage transitions between configurations throughout the day

2. Leisure Travel Vans Unity TBX

The Unity TBX is what happens when a luxury motorhome builder takes the idea of an adventure garage seriously. Built on a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 3500, the 25-foot Canadian-made coach puts a 1,727-liter pass-through cabinet at the center of its design identity. That is not a storage afterthought. It is a decision that fundamentally changes what a motorhome can carry. Mountain bikes, surfboards, skis, fishing gear: it all fits, with 12- and 120-V outlets inside to charge electric bikes on the move.

For you, the TBX means you no longer have to choose between comfort and the gear that makes your adventures worth having. The interior sleeps four, with a convertible front lounge, twin beds in the rear, and a full kitchen featuring dual-burner induction, a compressor fridge, and a pull-out pantry. A 270-Ah lithium battery, 400 watts of solar, and AWD capability make this genuinely capable across all seasons. Starting at $237,000, it demands serious commitment, but it delivers a serious machine.

What we like:

The 1,727-liter pass-through garage is genuinely functional and not a marketing add-on
All-wheel-drive capability and four-season climate systems make it a credible year-round vehicle

What we dislike:

The $237,000 starting price, rising to $245,000 for AWD, puts it well out of reach for most buyers
At 25 feet, navigating tighter campgrounds and urban environments will require patience

3. Airstream Atlas 25RT

Airstream has a long history of making things feel more refined than their footprint has any right to suggest, and the Atlas 25RT applies that instinct to the Class B+ motorhome. At 25 feet, riding on a Mercedes-Benz platform, this is a touring coach designed for two people who want everything in one compact form: a proper galley, a split dry bath with a separate shower and toilet area, a twin bed layout in the rear, and a pass-through garage for outdoor gear.

What makes the Atlas 25RT feel genuinely suited to longer trips is the Garmin multiplex system, which centralizes lighting, climate, and onboard functions into a single interface. For you, that means less time managing controls and more time at the destination. The JBL stereo system with four speakers and a subwoofer makes evenings inside feel considered rather than compromised. At $290,000, it sits at the top of the Class B+ segment, but the Mercedes running gear and Airstream build quality justify the positioning.

What we like:

The induction cooktop that stores in a drawer is a genuinely smart use of limited surface area
The Garmin multiplex system simplifies onboard living in a way that makes a real difference over extended trips

What we dislike:

A single floor plan with no alternatives limits flexibility for buyers with different space requirements
Designed strictly for two, meaning families or groups looking for adaptability will need to look elsewhere

4. HYTTE by RE:BURO

HYTTE is still a concept, but it is the kind of concept that asks better questions than most production vehicles bother to answer. Designed by RE:BURO, a studio describing itself as a bureau of technical aesthetics, the name draws from the Scandinavian tradition of the hytte, a simple countryside cabin. The exterior is dark, barrel-shaped, and compact, with a signature octagonal face framed by a red LED ring. It reads less like a motorhome and more like a piece of land architecture that happens to move.

What makes HYTTE worth taking seriously is the interior logic. An electric heater styled as a modern fireplace anchors the space psychologically, signaling rest in a way that no storage solution ever could. The modular chassis uses clamp-like grippers to bind the living compartment, allowing adaptation across different configurations. There are dedicated spaces for houseplants and pets, small details that reveal a design team thinking about how people actually inhabit a space. For you, HYTTE represents what the motorhome could look like with genuine architectural ambition applied from scratch.

What we like:

The fireplace-style electric heater is an original way to define the emotional character of a mobile interior
The modular chassis concept suggests a platform that could adapt to multiple configurations beyond a single fixed layout

What we dislike:

HYTTE remains a concept with no confirmed production timeline or pricing, making it an inspiration rather than an actual purchase
The compact barrel form may limit interior volume compared to more conventional motorhome layouts of similar overall length

5. Airstream World Traveler 17RB

At $64,400, the World Traveler 17RB is the most accessible Airstream the brand has ever produced, undercutting the previous entry-level Bambi by $4,500. At 17 feet, it is lightweight enough to be towed by an SUV or a compact truck like the Toyota Tacoma or Ford Maverick, which immediately broadens who can realistically own one. The signature riveted aluminum shell is preserved on the outside, maintaining the Airstream identity even as the interior reflects the decisions made to hit the price point.

For you, the 17RB is a genuine entry point to a style of travel that usually costs considerably more. The Scandinavian-inspired interior keeps things clean with white aluminum walls and a choice of upholstery, while the extendable countertop and convertible dinette make the space work above its size. A 24-inch Smart TV, JBL audio, and Truma heating are included as standard. An optional 200W solar panel and 2.5 kWh lithium battery extend its capability into off-grid territory without needing a full electrical overhaul.

What we like:

The most affordable Airstream ever made, without sacrificing the brand’s signature exterior design language
A 3,500 lb GVWR makes it compatible with a wide range of tow vehicles most buyers already own

What we dislike:

Smaller rectangular windows replace the wrap-around glass found on pricier models, which is the most visible cost-saving trade-off on the exterior
The 2.1 cubic foot refrigerator is genuinely limited for anything beyond a short weekend trip

The Best RVs Ask More of Themselves

What the strongest RV designs of 2026 share is a refusal to treat the motorhome as a compromise. The Leisure Travel Vans and Airstream flagships push toward a level of finish that genuinely challenges what a home on wheels can offer. The Bürstner takes modularity seriously. The World Traveler 17RB makes the lifestyle reachable. HYTTE imagines what becomes possible when someone applies real architectural thinking to the category from the ground up.

Whether you are working with a $64,000 budget or closer to $290,000, the common thread running through all five is that design decisions make the difference. The cleverest storage, the most considered material choices, the layouts that genuinely account for how people move and rest in a small space: those are the things that separate a motorhome you simply tolerate from one you actually want to be inside.

The post The 5 Best RVs & Motorhomes of July 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

A 3-Part Titanium Rescue Whistle That Combines Into a 120dB Siren

Most emergency gear has a problem that rarely gets discussed: people don’t actually carry it. A multi-tool left in a drawer or a whistle packed inside a bag at home might as well not exist. Rescue whistles, in particular, haven’t changed much over the years. They’re usually afterthoughts, built to make noise rather than to be trusted or carried without a second thought.

TriReso is Spark Cube’s answer to that problem. Rather than building a louder whistle, the team spent nearly two years designing a three-module system that borrows from the acoustic logic of emergency sirens: irregular, shifting frequencies that are harder for the human brain to ignore. Volume matters, of course, but the real focus is a signal that people actually hear, recognize, and can locate under pressure.

Designer: Spark Cube

Click Here to Buy Now: $64 $99 (35% off). Hurry, 63/200 left! Raised over $45,000.

Each of TriReso’s three modules is a fully functional whistle tuned to a different frequency. The Power Chamber sits at 3,600 Hz and 110 dB, built for open terrain and heavy wind. The Alert Chamber pushes up to 4,800 Hz at 105 dB, sharp enough to cut through crowd noise. The Echo Chamber runs at 3,800 Hz and 100 dB, adding a layered resonance to the combined signal.

What makes the system interesting is what happens when those modules combine. Snap any two together, and you get one of three dual-chamber configurations, each with its own blended sound profile. Snap all three and TriReso reaches up to 120 dB, producing an irregular, multi-frequency output that shifts the way a siren does, spanning a range from 3,600 to 4,800 Hz.

The assembly is just as considered as the acoustic concept. The modules connect through a triple-lock structure using hidden multi-point magnets and guided alignment grooves that snap them into position quickly and securely. When threaded together on a chain or cord, the lanyard holes also merge, adding another layer of physical retention. It’s a satisfying mechanism that makes switching between modes feel deliberate rather than fussy.

That modularity opens up something a standard whistle simply can’t do. Since each piece works independently, one TriReso system can be split among up to three people, which is particularly handy for group hikes, trail-running teams, or outdoor families. Instead of everyone carrying a separate whistle, one compact system distributes the coverage without adding meaningful weight or bulk to anyone’s kit.

Reliability was clearly a priority in the build. TriReso uses a pealess design, so there’s no moving ball inside that could freeze, corrode, jam with sand, or swell from moisture. Whether you’re hiking in wet weather, scrambling through dusty terrain, or digging it out of a cold jacket pocket in winter, it doesn’t need warming up. Pick it up, blow, and it works.

The material options are titanium and aluminum, and neither feels like a compromise. Titanium delivers strength, corrosion resistance, and a premium, machined feel, available in sandblasted gray or an optional PVD black finish. Aluminum keeps things lighter, coming in orange by default, with blue and green as options. Both bring the kind of build quality that makes a small tool feel worth keeping for years.

Each module has a dedicated tritium slot, which means the full system can hold up to three tritium tubes. Tritium produces its own glow for up to 25 years without a battery or charge, which keeps TriReso easy to spot in the dark. It’s a handy feature for something small enough to clip to a keychain, slide onto a backpack strap, or wear as a necklace.

There’s also an optional custom engraving, which turns it into a thoughtful safety gift for a partner, a child, or a friend. It’s a subtle touch that says something about what TriReso is going for: a tool personal enough to keep close, reliable enough to trust when things go wrong, and well-designed enough to actually want to carry every single day.

Click Here to Buy Now: $64 $99 (35% off). Hurry, 63/200 left! Raised over $45,000.

The post A 3-Part Titanium Rescue Whistle That Combines Into a 120dB Siren first appeared on Yanko Design.

Peckham House Balances Brutalism, Warmth, and Garden Living

Designing your own home gives you a kind of freedom most architects rarely get. There is no outside client shaping the brief, no fixed set of expectations, and far more room to experiment. But that freedom comes with its own pressure. For Surman Weston directors Tom Surman and Percy Weston, it meant setting the rules themselves and making sure the project lived up to the opportunity.

Peckham House, now occupied by Weston and his family, grew out of that unusual setup. The pair wanted to make the most of a small site without overbuilding it, while also using the project to test ideas that may have been harder to pursue with a conventional client and contractor. More than anything, they wanted the house to feel personal, not overly styled or tied to a single theme, but like a real family home with character, texture, and room to evolve.

Designer: Surman Weston

The site sits between three very different architectural settings in southeast London: a large Brutalist multi-storey car park opposite, a row of Victorian terraces to the south, and a local-authority housing estate to the east. Rather than choosing one of these as the main reference, Surman Weston designed the house to sit somewhere between all three. Its blocky, monolithic form takes cues from the car park, but the facade gradually becomes lighter as it rises, helping reduce the building’s visual impact beside the smaller Victorian homes nearby.

At street level, the brickwork is flat and solid. Above roughly 1.2 metres, the header bricks in the Flemish bond begin stepping back by five millimetres every five courses. The change is subtle at first, but becomes more visible toward the top of the house. By the time the wall reaches the roof terrace, the headers disappear completely, leaving behind an open hit-and-miss brick screen.

The house begins with the weight of a brick block and ends almost like a lattice, making the upper part of the building feel as though it is breaking apart into the sky. The same open brickwork forms the handrail around the roof terrace, allowing plants to grow through it and spill down the facade. Over time, the greenery will soften the house’s strong geometry and make the exterior feel less static.

Inside, Peckham House is arranged around an open-plan kitchen, dining, and living area, with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Despite the tight site, the architects included three gardens: one at the front, one at the back, and another on the roof. The rooftop garden is hidden from the street and reached through a sliding cork hatch. It includes a greenhouse that can be used for coffee, dining, growing fruit and vegetables, or drying clothes.

The greenhouse also plays a practical role in the way the house is ventilated. During warmer months, it draws hot air upward through the building, supporting passive airflow through the spaces below. What looks like a simple rooftop retreat therefore doubles as part of the home’s environmental strategy.

Developed with engineering studio Structure Workshop, the house is built mainly from timber and Lignacite, a type of blockwork made with recycled aggregate. The choice was partly practical, since it was a familiar construction method that Surman and Weston felt comfortable working with themselves. It also helped reduce the embodied carbon of the building while making use of the thermal mass provided by the blockwork.

Instead of covering these materials up, the architects left much of the structure exposed and allowed it to shape the atmosphere of the interior. The main living area brings together rough blockwork walls, lime plaster, exposed timber joists, and end-grain wood flooring. The floor was made using offcuts from the timber structure above, turning leftover material into one of the most distinctive features of the room.

Elsewhere, a bespoke shelving system made from aluminium profiles adds a lighter, more industrial element, while arched doorways crafted by joiner Tim Gaudin soften the otherwise rectilinear spaces. The same shape appears in reverse in the entrance gate on the front elevation, creating a small visual link between the inside and outside of the house.

Peckham House also includes photovoltaic panels, an air-source heat pump, and a mechanical ventilation heat recovery system. These technologies sit alongside passive strategies already built into the architecture, including the rooftop greenhouse and the thermal mass of the blockwork.

Although Peckham House is not Surman Weston’s first self-build project, it is the studio’s largest. Building it themselves meant they could continue adjusting the design as construction progressed. Details were refined on site, materials were reconsidered, and spaces changed as the pair spent more time inside them.

The process was slower and more stressful than a typical client-led project, but it also gave them a much closer understanding of how the house was coming together. That hands-on quality is visible throughout the finished building. The brickwork is structural, decorative, and responsive to the site. Timber offcuts become flooring, while the greenhouse serves as both a garden room and a ventilation tool.

Peckham House is carefully designed, but it does not feel overly controlled. It is solid without being severe, experimental without trying too hard, and personal without losing touch with its surroundings.

The post Peckham House Balances Brutalism, Warmth, and Garden Living first appeared on Yanko Design.

AirPods Max 2 Finally Get Custom EQ in iOS 27 Beta

Apple has a playbook for innovation that often involves letting a feature mature elsewhere before adopting it, gift-wrapped, as a profound breakthrough. Widgets appeared on the iPhone long after becoming an Android signature, presented not as a catch-up but as a thoughtful redesign. A calculator app on the iPad took nearly 15 years to become reality. Multitasking came years after Android got it, packaged as Stage Manager. Even the simple act of circling an item to search for it, a trick already familiar on other platforms, is being framed as a new kind of magic. That same playbook is now being run on the AirPods Max 2’s equalizer, a feature that was conspicuously absent when the $549 headphones launched four months ago but has now arrived with the July 14 public beta of iOS 27.

The implementation is classic Apple. The new Equalizer screen is lush and responsive, with an animated waveform that pulses to your music under three simple drag handles: Low, Mid, and High. It feels intuitive, and it looks alive on the screen. This is also a stark contrast to the multi-band or parametric controls that have been standard on flagship headphones from Sony and Bose for years. Just as with Widgets and Stage Manager, Apple has delivered the feature on its own terms and on its own timeline, handing users a beautifully designed tool that prioritizes aesthetic simplicity over the technical depth many owners of a $549 headphone were actually waiting for.

Designer: Apple

That polish, though, also reveals the limit of Apple’s ambition here. Three bands is enough to boost bass, pull back mids, or brighten the top end, but it is still a blunt instrument compared to the multi-band and parametric EQ controls that rivals like Sony and Bose have offered on flagship headphones for years. For casual listeners, that may be perfectly fine. Most people do not want to think in frequencies, Q values, or narrow corrective cuts. They want vocals clearer, bass deeper, and harshness reduced. Apple’s interface serves that audience beautifully.

The problem is that Apple has spent real effort positioning the AirPods Max 2 as a premium audio product for creators, podcasters, and Logic Pro adjacent workflows. In that context, a three-band EQ feels less like a full correction and more like the minimum viable answer to a very public complaint. Reviews at launch repeatedly called out the absence of manual EQ, and this update finally closes that gap. What it does not do is move the AirPods Max 2 into the same conversation as tools built for more serious sound shaping.

That leaves the update in a very Apple place: fashionably late, classically elegant, and strategically simplified. The custom EQ finally gives AirPods Max 2 owners control they should have had from day one, but it also reinforces the company’s longstanding instinct to decide how much control its users really need. For some buyers, this will feel like a thoughtful refinement. For others, especially anyone spending $549 on over-ear headphones with professional aspirations, it may feel like Apple arrived to the party with a beautifully wrapped gift everyone else opened years ago.

The post AirPods Max 2 Finally Get Custom EQ in iOS 27 Beta first appeared on Yanko Design.

Rezvani Dune is Lamborghini Huracan turned into a desert trail beast on steroids

What if your supercar didn’t have to stay on the freeway? That’s essentially the notion that Rezvani shatters with an unusual performance machine that adopts the mid-engine character of a Lamborghini Huracán and reimagines it as a vehicle built for desert trails and rough terrain. Instead of lowering a sports car closer to the asphalt, Rezvani has gone in the opposite direction, creating an 800-horsepower off-road machine with the heart of a V10 supercar.

This is the Dune, a trail beast powered by a naturally aspirated 5.2-liter engine mounted behind the cabin. With up to 800 horsepower on tap, it retains the high-revving personality associated with Lamborghini’s V10 powertrain while introducing a very different way to experience it. Rather than keeping all that power confined to smooth roads and racetracks, the Dune is designed to take it into places where a conventional supercar would struggle to go. Sure, there is the Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato, but this one is an altogether different beast.

Designer: Rezvani

The biggest visual change here is the body, as Rezvani replaces the sleek proportions of the Huracán with custom carbon-fiber bodywork that gives the vehicle a much more aggressive, rugged personality. The sculpted panels, raised stance, and wide proportions make it look less like a supercar that has been modified for off-road driving and more like an entirely new species of performance vehicle. The increased ride height of 4.5 inches is matched by a suspension setup designed to cope with uneven terrain, while 31-inch mud-terrain tires on 20-inch wheels add to its ability to venture away from paved surfaces. The chassis is fitted with long-travel shocks that soak up the kind of bumps that would leave a traditional supercar scraping its belly. With a 25-degree approach angle and 35-degree departure angle, it’s built to venture off-road without constantly worrying about what’s happening underneath. Skid plates shield the undercarriage, while a roof-mounted snorkel keeps the engine breathing clean air when the trail gets deep.

The usual formula for a supercar is essentially to be more aerodynamic, while off-road vehicles follow a very different philosophy, favoring ground clearance and suspension travel. Dune brings these contrasting ideas together, pairing the drama of a naturally aspirated V10 with the stance and capability expected from a vehicle designed to tackle rough ground. The carbon-fiber construction also helps distinguish the Dune from conventional off-road builds. It keeps the custom bodywork lightweight while giving Rezvani the freedom to dramatically reshape the vehicle’s appearance around the underlying supercar architecture. The result is a design that feels deliberately exaggerated, with the visual aggression to match its substantial power output. Rezvani has respected the Huracan’s interior and kept it the same as the donor car, which is a great compliment to Lamborghini’s design sense.

For the California-based automaker, this off-roading-capable supercar is yet another experiment in pushing familiar automotive formulas into unexpected territory. Only seven examples will ever be made, with each one built as a one-off, making this an ultra-exclusive supercar you’re unlikely to see twice. A refundable $1,500 deposit secures a place in the production queue, although deliveries aren’t expected until 2028. As for the price, Rezvani is keeping that under wraps for now. Previous models have started with donor vehicles and climbed into six-figure territory, so this one is unlikely to come cheap!

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Xero Cool Is the Anti-Fridge Fridge the Planet Badly Needs

The refrigerator hasn’t changed much since your grandmother got her first one. Same boxy shape. Same petroleum-based insulation. Same low mechanical hum in the kitchen corner. We’ve updated the handles and slapped smart screens on the doors. But the fundamental architecture of how we keep food cold? Basically frozen in time since the early twentieth century, when the appliance was first marketed as a symbol of status and food safety, pitched at what designers of the era apparently called anxious mothers. Then Audrey Levy went ahead and grew one from bacteria. Literally.

Levy’s Xero Cool, developed as part of her MA Biodesign degree at Central Saint Martins and completed in 2026, is one of those rare design objects that makes you genuinely stop and reconsider what a household appliance can look and feel like. The exterior is made from bacterial cellulose xerogel paired with felted wool, giving it this organic, cocoon-like form suspended within a structural frame. Below the main body, a fruit bowl extends storage downward, quietly nudging you toward keeping some things at room temperature rather than defaulting to refrigerating everything out of habit. It does not look like a fridge. It looks like something that belongs in a gallery, or possibly a forest. And I mean that as the highest compliment.

Designer: Audrey Levy

Levy made the xerogel herself in the CSM Grow Lab using non-toxic, largely food-safe ingredients, which is a stark contrast to the expanded plastic foams and synthetic refrigerants that line most conventional appliances. Inside, macrofluidic panels circulate cooled water to draw away heat while protecting the absorbent wool and xerogel from direct contact with food. The system has no moving parts, meaning it operates almost silently and with far less mechanical complexity than a standard compressor-based fridge. Based on recent scientific research, Levy believes it can ultimately be built entirely from bio-based ingredients, with activated carbon and ethanol serving as the absorbent and refrigerant.

If that all sounds niche, the bigger numbers are anything but. Levy told Dezeen that “researching refrigeration became a surprisingly radicalising experience,” and once you sit with why, it is genuinely hard to brush off. Refrigeration technology is currently responsible for eight percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, roughly three times the output of the entire aviation industry. The way we manufacture cold, in short, is actively making the planet hotter.

We talk constantly about electric vehicles, fast fashion, and food waste. The refrigerator almost never comes up, probably because it is so embedded in domestic life that it has become effectively invisible. It sits there humming in the kitchen and nobody questions it. Levy did, and the result is a graduate project that earns the word radical without needing to be loud about it.

A fridge you find beautiful is a fridge you hold onto. That is not a trivial point. One of the most persistent drivers of material waste is the disposability that comes from indifference, and sustainable design struggles when it is joyless or punishing to live with. Xero Cool is neither. It is organic-looking, tactile, nearly silent, and genuinely striking. It treats the kitchen as a space worth caring about aesthetically, not just functionally.

The aesthetic argument Levy makes is also worth sitting with. She observed that the fridge’s “heavy, clunky” and “sterile” look has remained largely unchanged since those early days of marketing it to anxious mothers. Function was always placed above form, and the design simply never got questioned. Xero Cool proposes that both can coexist, and it does so convincingly.

Graduate design projects are often speculative gestures, beautiful ideas that never survive the leap from degree show to production. Whether Xero Cool makes that journey is still an open question. But a graduating student producing something this materially rigorous, this ecologically conscious, and this visually considered is a signal worth paying attention to. The fridge has been boring long enough. Time to let it grow.

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Sennheiser’s $200 Clip-On Buds Defeat Bose Ultra Open on Battery — And Skip the US

Clip-on earbuds were always going to go mainstream; the category just got there in the east first. Huawei’s FreeClip became roughly as ubiquitous as AirPods in Chinese cities, building an installed base for open-ear wearables that Western brands are only now beginning to seriously contest. The appeal is not complicated: a form factor that keeps the ear canal open, lets ambient sound in naturally, and eliminates the sealed pressure that makes conventional in-ears uncomfortable after long sessions. Asia ran that experiment at scale, and the results were settled long before the Western audio press started treating it as a breakthrough.

Sennheiser enters the conversation on July 23 with the Accentum Clip, a product priced at £149 that brings Bluetooth 6.0, LDAC support, IP54 protection, and 36-hour total battery life to a category where Bose has been setting the reference point at a higher price. The launch covers the UK, EU, and Canada. For US consumers, the Accentum Clip joins a lengthening list of globally significant products that simply will not be available at their local retailer, a pattern this publication has been tracking across categories as diverse as electric vehicles, smartphones, and now, apparently, open-ear audio.

Designer: Sennheiser

The Accentum Clip earbuds promise nine hours of playback on a single charge, with the case providing a total of 36 hours. This is a deliberate and significant advantage over the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, which offer around 7.5 hours per charge and a total of 27 hours with their case. In a category built for all-day wear, that extra nine hours is a direct appeal to users who want to leave the charging cable at home.

The Accentum Clip uses a 12mm dynamic driver, but the more interesting detail is its support for the LDAC codec. Including a high-bitrate codec like LDAC is a bold choice for an open-ear design, which by its nature lets sound escape and ambient noise in. It signals a confidence in the driver’s ability to deliver a detailed audio experience, even if it is not a closed, isolating one. Paired with Bluetooth 6.0, which promises more stable multipoint connections, the package is technically robust for commuters and office workers who need to switch between devices seamlessly.

Sennheiser opted for a flexible silicone bridge to connect the driver unit and the battery component, quite like Bose’s offering. At 6.8 grams per bud, the design focuses on a gentle, secure clamping force that distributes weight evenly around the ear’s cartilage. The goal is a “barely there” feeling that encourages leaving them on for hours, which aligns perfectly with the product’s impressive battery life. The IP54 rating for dust and splash resistance makes them durable enough for workouts, even if they are not explicitly marketed as fitness gear.

These engineering choices culminate in a fairly reasonable price tag. At £149 or €179 (around $200 USD), the Accentum Clip is positioned aggressively beneath the Bose Ultra Open, which launched at $299. Sennheiser is not trying to create a new category; it is trying to win the one Bose popularized by being a better value on paper. It is a classic challenger strategy: arrive a little late to the party, but bring a better spec sheet and a more accessible price. For European and Canadian buyers, the choice between the two just became much more interesting.

Which brings us back to that curious launch map. The decision to omit the United States, the world’s largest single market for high-end audio, feels a lot like a symptom of a broader shift in the tech industry. Whether due to the complexities of FCC certification, a desire to test the product in smaller markets first, or the simple fact that the US is becoming a harder place for global brands to operate, the absence is loud.

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