A $520K Speaker and Other Gadgets You Missed

The last couple of weeks in gadgets weren’t loud. No Apple keynotes, no Samsung Unpacked, no trade show floors packed with press badges. And yet the stuff that actually shipped or got announced during that quiet stretch is wilder than most of the products fighting for stage time at CES. A desktop PC shaped like a hockey puck. A speaker covered in 1,734 metal spheres that costs more than a house. A kids’ watch that teaches Python while real astronauts orbit the Moon. If you blinked, you missed a genuinely strange stretch of product launches.

Here’s what landed while most of the tech world was looking somewhere else.

A Desktop PC That Weighs Less Than an iPad

The Lenovo Yoga Mini i Gen 11 is a circular aluminum puck that measures 130 x 130 x 48.6 mm, weighs 600 grams, and drives four displays simultaneously. Inside sits Intel’s Panther Lake platform on the 18A process node, with the top configuration running a Core Ultra X7 358H (16 cores, 4.8 GHz boost) alongside up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X and 2 TB of NVMe storage.

Price: $699.99
Where to Buy: Lenovo

The port spread includes dual Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, 2.5 GbE Ethernet, and Wi-Fi 7. Lenovo built touch controls into the top surface, added an accelerometer for gesture inputs, and packed in Wi-Fi Sensing that auto-wakes the PC when you sit down and locks it when you walk away. It launched in China ahead of schedule at roughly $799, with a US starting price of $699.99 expected before mid-2026.

Cherry Ditched Hall Effect Sensors for Something New

The Cherry Xtrfy K5 Pro TMR Compact Keyboard swaps Hall effect sensing for Tunnel Magnetoresistance, a technology that reads keystrokes by tracking shifts in magnetic resistance rather than magnetic field strength. Cherry says the result is 0.01 mm precision on every keystroke.

Price: $149.99
Where to Buy: Cherry Xtrfy

The 65% layout keyboard pairs CHERRY MK Crystal Magnetic switches with an 8000 Hz polling rate, per-key actuation point adjustment, Rapid Trigger, and hot-swappable magnetic switch sockets. MagCrate software handles customization, and settings save directly to onboard storage. It’s available now for $149.99.

LG Built a 115-Inch Mini LED TV With 330Hz Gaming

Price: TBD
Where to Buy: LG, Amazon (Older models)

LG’s 2026 QNED evo lineup is topped by a 115-inch QNED90 that runs Dynamic QNED Color Pro for 100 percent DCI-P3 color volume, Precision Dimming Ultra across thousands of local dimming zones, and an Alpha 8 AI Processor Gen 3 that LG says brings its OLED light control skills to Mini LED. Gaming features include 165Hz VRR, AMD FreeSync Premium, and a 330Hz motion rate via Motion Booster for reduced blur in fast scenes. AI Super Upscaling sharpens lower-resolution content for that massive panel, while Sports Portal and webOS 26 handle the smart TV side. Pricing hasn’t been confirmed for the 115-inch flagship.

Samsung Stuffed Dolby Atmos Into a Single Speaker

The Samsung Music Studio 7 houses a true 3.1.1-channel speaker array inside one compact enclosure, with left, right, center, woofer, and up-firing Atmos drivers. Samsung says it’s the world’s first Wi-Fi speaker with a 3D acoustic sound structure supporting both Eclipsa Audio and Dolby Atmos, a claim that earned a CES 2026 Innovation Award.

Price: $299.99 | $499.99
Where to Buy: Samsung

French designer Erwan Bouroullec created the sculptural Dot Design exterior, and Pattern Control technology handles even sound dispersion throughout the room. The Samsung Music Studio 7 runs $499.99 and the smaller Music Studio 5 sits at $299.99. Both support Q-Symphony for linking up to five Samsung audio devices.

Samsung built its speaker for the living room. SOUNDBOKS built one for everything outside it.

A 21-Pound Speaker That Hits 121 Decibels

Danish brand SOUNDBOKS launched the Soundboks Mix, a Bluetooth party speaker that pushes 121 dB of distortion-free output from a pair of Texas Instruments Class-D amplifiers driving a single 10-inch woofer and 1.2-inch dome tweeter. At 21.4 pounds with IP65 weather resistance and a removable lithium iron phosphate battery that lasts up to 8 hours at max volume (40 hours at moderate levels), it’s built for outdoor events where most portable speakers run out of headroom. TeamUp links up to five SOUNDBOKS speakers for stereo, and the volume dial goes to 11. It’s $799 and available now.

Price: $799
Where to buy: SOUNDBOKS | Sweetwater

And then there’s the other end of the speaker market.

B&O’s $520,000 Speakers Close Out a Century

Price: From $211,800
Where to Buy: Bang & Olufsen

Bang & Olufsen unveiled the Beolab 90 Monarch and Zenith Editions as the final two releases in its five-part centennial series. Only 10 pairs of each will be produced. The Monarch wraps its aluminum cabinet in curved South American rosewood lamellas. The Zenith covers six panels in 1,734 anodized aluminium spheres finished in pearl-inspired colorways that shimmer as light shifts around them. Both share the same Beolab 90 platform: 8,200 watts of built-in amplification, 18 Scan-Speak drivers, frequency response from below 12 Hz to beyond 43,000 Hz, and a max output of 126 dB. Estimated pricing sits around $520,000 per pair.

From sound to sight, the wearables side of the week had its own surprises.

Smart Glasses That Win by Leaving the Camera Out

Price: $599
Where to Buy: Even Realities

Even Realities’ G2 smart glasses weigh 36 grams, carry no camera and no speakers for audio playback. Instead, they project information through a dual-plane floating spatial display with 75 percent more display area than the original G1. Conversate AI follows conversations in real time and surfaces relevant prompts silently in the lens. Even Hub, an open app store that launched in late March 2026, delivered roughly 50 apps at launch covering everything from Spotify integration to Tesla vehicle management. The optional R1 ceramic control ring adds gesture input without reaching up to your face. The G2 is $599, and the bundle with ring runs $848.

Adult wearables weren’t the only ones making moves.

A NASA Watch That Teaches Kids to Code for $129

Price: $129
Where to Buy: Amazon (DIY), CircuitMess

CircuitMess launched the NASA Artemis Watch 2.0 right as Artemis II carried four astronauts toward the Moon, and the timing gave this $129 STEM watch a second life in the spotlight. It ships ready to wear (no DIY assembly like the original), runs on a dual-core ESP32 chip with accelerometer, gyroscope, and Bluetooth connectivity, and supports three coding paths: visual blocks for beginners, Python for intermediate users, and the Arduino IDE for experienced tinkerers. Kids can design watch faces, build games, and write full apps that run directly on the device. The Mars Exploration Bundle pairs the watch with a Bluetooth-connected Perseverance Rover kit for $399.

Back on the ground, home infrastructure had its own quiet launch window.

BLUETTI’s Whole-Home Backup System Handles the AC and the Fridge

MSRP: ~$8,799
Launch Price: $7,919 (10% off through April 24)
Exclusive Code: GADGETEER8 (extra 8% off, exclusive for Gadgeteer readers)
Where to buy: BLUETTI Official Store

The BLUETTI EnergyPro 13K delivers 13.2kW of continuous 120V/240V output, enough to run a 5-ton central AC, a well pump, and the rest of the house simultaneously. The 150 LRA surge capacity handles the massive startup spikes that trip most battery systems, and a 10ms automatic transfer switch means your desktop won’t restart when the grid drops. The AT1 smart distribution panel manages intelligent load shedding, prioritizing critical systems automatically. Modular EnergyPack 500 battery packs scale from 9.6kWh to 19.2kWh, using LiFePO4 chemistry backed by a 10-year warranty. Solar input tops out at 22kW through four independent MPPT channels. Launch price is $7,919.

Xiaomi Made a PFAS-Free Rice Cooker With a Titanium Pot

Price: 1,099 yuan (About $159)
Where to Buy: JD.com

The Mijia Smart IH Rice Cooker P1 replaces fluorine-based non-stick coatings with a molten titanium infusion process layered over food-grade stainless steel. That titanium surface pairs with induction heating, 1.2x pressure cooking that pushes internal temps to 105 degrees Celsius, and a 10-stage intelligent cooking curve that adjusts heat, pressure, and timing automatically. The cooker connects to the Mijia app for remote start, 24-hour scheduling, and access to 100+ cloud recipes. It launched in China at 1,099 yuan (roughly $159), well below most IH competitors from Zojirushi and Cuckoo. Global availability hasn’t been confirmed.

And finally, the gadget nobody expected to care about.

A 4K Camera for Your Ear Canal

Price: $109.99
Where to buy: Bebird

The Bebird EarSight Ultra X is a handheld ear camera with a 3.6mm serpentine micro-tube that streams live 4K video to your phone while you clean. A 5G chipset keeps the feed responsive enough that tool movement matches screen movement without dangerous lag. The kit includes five color-coded pick sets for separate family members, disposable adhesive and sponge tips for different wax types, and a temperature control system that holds the tip at body temperature during use. There’s also a Sharing Mode that streams the feed to a second device for caregiver use. It runs $109.99.

The Quiet Weeks Hit Different

None of these products shared a stage. There was no keynote, no coordinated press blitz, no hashtag tying them together. They just shipped, one after another, into a news cycle that wasn’t paying attention. And that’s what makes this stretch worth cataloging. A 600-gram PC that drives four screens. A speaker system that costs more than most houses in America. A kids’ watch that runs Python while actual astronauts loop the Moon. A rice cooker that ditched an entire category of chemicals. When the spotlight moves somewhere else, the product launches get weirder, more ambitious, and harder to ignore. If the last two weeks proved anything, it’s that the most interesting gadgets don’t wait for permission to show up.