Pickleball has officially escaped the court. At some point in the last two years, it stopped being ironic and became a lifestyle: parking lots of suburban rec centers filled up, TikTok feeds followed, then came the celebrity investors, the professional leagues, the branded paddle drops, and the kind of mainstream saturation that tells you a sport has officially graduated from niche to undeniable. Getting turned into a Wii-style digital pastime is, at this point, a rite of passage for any sport that has truly made it. Tennis got there. Golf got there. Boxing, baseball, bowling. MegaShot Pickl+ is the moment pickleball collects that particular badge, and it does so with an actual sensor-embedded pickleball racket for authentic gameplay, not some generic rectangular controller.

The smart paddle pairs with your phone, tablet, or laptop over Bluetooth and sends the game to your TV (via an included cable) for big-screen play, mimicking your real swing movements on screen and firing haptic feedback through the handle on every hit. A split-screen mode lets you play multiplayer on the same screen too, making it a great family entertainer. No court reservation, no weather to negotiate with. The Wii taught an entire generation that swinging something in your living room could feel surprisingly real. Pickl+ is betting that a generation raised on that premise is ready to do it again, this time for the sport that has genuinely taken over the world, and without an extra console to add to the mix. The Starter Edition is on Kickstarter now for $175, down from a planned retail price of $249 and the campaign has been backed 500% in just 24 hours! Pickl+ will be compatible with sports like tennis, ping pong, and badminton with more racket sports planned for the same smart-paddle platform.

Designer: MegaShot

Click Here to Buy Now: $175 $249 (30% off). Hurry, only a few left!

Under the hood, Pickl+ is built around a 9-axis sensor that reads the angle, speed, and arc of every swing for precise motion tracking. The haptic feedback responds distinctly to different kinds of hits, making the on-screen action feel genuinely tied to what your arm is actually doing. The paddle weighs around 300 grams, carries a 2000 mAh battery rated for up to five hours of continuous play, and charges over USB-C. Bluetooth 5.2 handles the wireless pairing, while an MHL cable connects your phone to the TV when the living room demands a proper screen. The app runs on Android 14+, iOS 18+, Windows, and macOS. Setup is as minimal as it sounds: download, charge, pair, connect, play. Unlike the Wii, Switch, or the Meta Quest, no extra console or hardware needed.

Most gaming hardware asks you to adapt to the machine: learn the buttons, the gestures, the control scheme. Pickl+ goes the other direction. You know how to hold a paddle, and you know what a swing feels like. Rather than turning a conventional controller into a sports accessory, Pickl+ turns the sports object itself into the controller. The technology is essentially trying to disappear into the physical experience, which is part of what makes it a more interesting object than just a clever game controller.

Ten-plus game modes ship at launch, including Streak, Practice, Split Mode, Career, Local Multiplayer, Target, and Beach Mode, with more already in the pipeline. VIP unlocks exclusive virtual courts, daily bonus challenges, glowing paddle effects, custom ball trails, and profile cosmetics.

Before the Kickstarter campaign went live, the beta version of the paddle was showcased at New York Toy Fair, where people across different age groups, including gaming enthusiasts and industry experts, got hands-on time with the motion tracking, gameplay, etc. It gave MegaShot an early real-world read on how quickly people understood and enjoyed the experience. Motion gaming can look impressive in a controlled demo; the real test is whether someone can pick up the paddle, understand what to do, and immediately have fun. New York Toy Fair gave MegaShot that read before asking anyone to back the campaign.

MegaShot arrived at this with receipts. Before Pickl+, the company built a smart bat, which sounds hyperlocal until the numbers land: 100,000+ units sold worldwide, 2,700+ Amazon reviews, and ratings above 4.5 across Google, Amazon, the Play Store, and iOS. The Smart Bat earned the team a spot on Shark Tank India, coverage across major publications, and placement on Walmart shelves. Cricket was a demanding proving ground, the kind of sport where precision hardware lives or dies by real player feedback. That foundation gave MegaShot a validated tech stack, a battle-tested supply chain, and the track record that earns trust going into a bigger, more globally ambitious launch.

Pickleball is the entry point for something larger. The same paddle hardware is designed to eventually support tennis, badminton, table tennis, and squash, with the VIP Pass carrying across sports as they are added. That roadmap turns Pickl+ from a single-sport product into a platform for multiple racket-sport experiences, which changes the value calculation considerably. The most globally accessible racket sport of this decade is also, as it turns out, the perfect vehicle for a company that built its credibility in one market and is now ready to find out how far a smart paddle can travel.

The Starter Edition, one smart paddle and an MHL cable, is available at its $175 Kickstarter launch price, versus a planned $249 retail price. Duo packs start at $275 for two paddles with a cable, while the Starter VIP Duo Pack, which throws in a VIP Pass, runs $315.

The Signature Edition, the premium single-paddle option, comes in at $349. The Signature Duo Edition bundles two premium paddles with cables, a VIP Pass, and protective sleeves for $499. Worldwide shipping begins in early 2027, covering the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, UAE, and India.

Click Here to Buy Now: $175 $249 (30% off). Hurry, only a few left!

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Apple has a long habit of handing last year’s brain to this year’s regular iPhone. The iPhone 15 shipped with the A16 chip while the 15 Pro got the shiny new A17 Pro, and nobody stormed Cupertino with pitchforks. It works because people shop for cameras and battery life, and nobody has ever asked a store clerk about die size. The iPhone 18 is about to run the same play with a twist. This time the regular model gets a brand new A20 chip, except it arrives months after everyone else’s.

The chip is the A20, and a leaked solder ball map analyzed on Weibo by user 白饭炒白米饭 (reported by Notebookcheck on October 1) suggests it is a slimmed down sibling of the A20 Pro. That Pro chip already powers the iPhone 18 Pro, starting at $1,199, and the iPhone Duo, starting at $1,999. Both reportedly use TSMC’s 2nm process, but the standard version supposedly keeps the AI hardware and trims the GPU, cache, and clock speeds. The base iPhone 18 is expected in spring 2027, and Apple has announced no price or date. So what does Apple cut when it wants a cheaper 2nm chip, and what does it refuse to touch?

Designer: Demon’s Tech

A Smaller Die Than Last Year’s Chip, on a Pricier 2nm Node

The standard A20’s bare die is estimated at 70 to 80 mm², which would make it smaller than the A19 at 82.8 mm² and well under the A20 Pro’s 98.8 mm². A die is the actual slab of silicon, and every square millimeter you shave off means more chips per wafer and a lower bill. On 2nm the savings count for more, since Notebookcheck’s report notes those wafers cost significantly more than earlier nodes. Our own look at the base iPhone 18 pegged its body as basically an iPhone 17 in disguise, so there is no fresh industrial design to pay for either. Apple looks to be spending the budget on silicon instead.

Apple reportedly gets there by halving the cache. The standard A20 is expected to carry 8 MB of L2 cache for its two super cores and 4 MB for its four efficiency cores, which is 50% less than the A20 Pro. Cache is the small, ultra fast memory sitting right next to the processor cores, so a smaller helping can mean slightly more trips out to slower memory under heavy load. It is also one of the most direct ways to shrink a die, because SRAM, the circuitry cache is built from, has scaled poorly on recent chip nodes. Honestly, it is the smartest corner to trim, since you will never see a cache spec on a phone box.

Why the A20 Pro Gets Fancy Packaging and the A20 Skips It

The A20 Pro reportedly uses WMCM, short for wafer-level multi-chip module, which places the processor and its memory side by side instead of stacking one on the other. That layout lets the chip connect straight to the vapor chamber, the cooling plate Apple introduced with the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple says the new Pro design delivers up to 40% better sustained performance than the 17 Pro. The standard A20 is expected to stay with traditional package-on-package, where the memory sits on top of the chip like a hat. A hat is cheap and compact, but it also traps heat right where you do not want it.

Packaging is how Apple reportedly gets the A20 Pro to 4.93 GHz, a figure from the leak analysis that Apple has never confirmed. The standard A20 is expected to clock considerably lower, so it likely does not need the same cooling tricks. Pair that with an expected 5-core GPU against the Pro’s 7 cores, and the gap could show up in a long gaming session. Past base chips trailed their Pro siblings by one GPU core, so a two-core deficit would be wider than usual. The vapor chamber stole the show in the iPhone 17 Pro teardown we covered, and the leak says nothing about the base model getting similar cooling.

The AI Hardware Apple Keeps, and What Spring 2027 Looks Like

The AI side of the chip reportedly survives the cuts largely intact. The leak says the A20 keeps the same dual 16-core Neural Engine as the Pro, the dedicated block that handles on-device AI tasks, along with its own 4 MB cache. The system-level cache, a shared pool of memory every part of the chip can tap, may grow from the A19’s 12 MB to 16 MB. The memory bus is also expected to widen to 96 bits, matching the Pro, which means more data can flow to the chip per second. In real life that means live translation and photo cleanup running on the phone instead of waiting on a server.

The iPhone Duo (the one with the open and close animation we gushed over) runs the same A20 Pro, so Apple’s fall lineup now shares one chip. The base model is expected to follow in spring 2027 with a lighter version of that platform. Apple has confirmed no date, price, or chip for it, so every number here is a leak. The iPhone 17 started at $799 and the Pros just rose $100, so the base model’s price is the number to watch. Back in the A16 days the hand-me-down chip was a consolation prize, but this time the regular iPhone gets a fresh 2nm brain with a little muscle trimmed, a deal I would happily take.

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Elgato unveiled a little box of 15 LCD buttons in 2017, priced at $149.95, and it quietly rearranged how streamers sat at their desks. The Stream Deck got so popular that Corsair bought Elgato’s gaming business in 2018. Then the obvious question hung around for years: what if the buttons were just a screen? A screen can be any button, any dial, any chart, or any chat window, and it never runs out of room for one more shortcut. Anyone who has maxed out a 15-key pad knows that pain. Corsair eventually got around to answering.

The answer is the Xeneon Edge, a 14.5-inch touchscreen with a 2560 x 720 panel and a 32:9 shape that sits under your main monitor like a very ambitious soundbar. It runs Elgato’s Stream Deck software, so your old button grid gets a much bigger canvas. Fourteen magnets, a detachable stand, and two ¼-20 threads let it live on a desk, a steel panel, or inside your PC case. It lists at $249.99 and is currently $199.99 at Corsair in the US, in all five colors.

Designer: Corsair

A 32:9 strip built for the stuff you only glance at

Think of 32:9 as two 16:9 monitors glued side by side, then shrunk until they fit beneath your main screen. The body measures about 14.6 by 4.7 by 0.8 inches (372 x 120 x 20mm) and weighs roughly 2.2 pounds (1 kg). That works out to about 183 pixels per inch, tighter than the 163 you get on a 27-inch 4K monitor, so small text stays crisp. At 720 pixels tall, the screen is shallow enough to tuck under a monitor without crowding your view. It also rotates to portrait, which turns it into a tall column beside your main display.

On a typical Tuesday, Spotify, Discord, a calendar, and your GPU temps all want a window, and your main screen is busy with actual work. Park them on the Edge and they stay put, one glance away, while you do your thing above. Video calls can live there too, so a meeting you only half-care about stays visible without eating your spreadsheet. Nothing needs alt-tabbing, and nothing gets lost behind a browser with 40 tabs. It’s the same idea as a phone propped next to your keyboard, except it’s wider, brighter, and plugged into your PC.

Fourteen magnets, two threads, and a 360mm radiator slot

Fourteen magnets sit under the plastic shell, so the Edge sticks to any steel surface without scratching it. That includes a steel desk, a PC side panel, a monitor stand, and yes, a fridge, if the cable is long enough. Inside a case, it takes the place of a 360mm radiator, a slot built for three 120mm fans, and it’s thinner than a regular case fan, so clearance is rarely an issue. Corsair also sells an LCD kit that mounts it into the side panel of the Frame 4000D and 5000D cases. Your build’s best view just got a clock and a temperature gauge.

Two ¼-20 threads on the back, the same screw size camera gear uses, let you hang the Edge from Elgato Multi-Mount hardware or any standard AV arm. That mount-anywhere thinking echoes the Elgato accessory support on Corsair’s Platform:6 desk, which we covered at its Gamescom reveal. Corsair also posts free 3D-printable accessories on Printables, including a taller stand that raises the screen behind a keyboard. The community has jumped in too, and Corsair has spotlighted a modular adapter mount from a creator named Naaackers. If you can think of a place for a screen, someone has either printed a bracket for it or soon will.

Widgets in iCUE and the Elgato Marketplace

Plug it in and Windows treats the Edge as an ordinary second monitor, touch included. Corsair’s iCUE software for Windows adds widgets on top: a clock, a calendar, weather, news headlines, a task list, and system sensors showing CPU and GPU temps. Each widget lands on a grid you arrange yourself, so your layout can look as busy or as clean as you like. Since May 2026, widgets live on the Elgato Marketplace, where anyone can download or build one. Corsair’s developer docs even point to AI coding tools as a shortcut, which means a custom widget can start as a plain-English wish.

The widget that matters most for old Stream Deck fans is the native Stream Deck widget in iCUE. It drops a full grid of tappable keys onto the Edge, and you add actions in Elgato’s Stream Deck software exactly as you would for a physical deck. Resize the grid and you get more keys than any 15-button pad ever offered. Launch a game, mute your mic, switch an OBS scene, or toggle your desk lights, each with one tap. Because the screen is still a screen, the same strip can show your calendar or GPU temps right next to the keys.

A bright 2560 x 720 panel and touch that behaves like a phone

The panel is AHVA, Corsair’s version of IPS, so colors and viewing angles hold up even when you’re looking at it from the side. It runs 2560 x 720 at 60Hz with 350 nits of peak brightness, plenty for a desk lit by a window and a lamp. Touch is 5-point capacitive, the same technology as your phone, so tapping, swiping, and pinching all feel familiar. A single USB-C cable with DP Alt Mode (video over USB-C) can carry picture and power when your PC supports it. HDMI 2.0 covers everything else, and Corsair includes cables for both in the box.

Not every shell is black, either. Colors include black, white, and the translucent Atomic Purple, Crystal, and Smoke, which channel the see-through plastic of late-90s gadgets. We’ve seen that look return in a fully transparent Game Boy Color mod and Analogue’s Game Boy Color-inspired Pocket, and it suits a desk accessory just as well. Translucent plastic also makes the stand look like part of the design, not an afterthought. Pick whichever matches your keyboard, or your mood, or your last impulse buy.

Price, rivals, and where the Edge fits on your desk

The Xeneon Edge lists at $249.99 and is currently $199.99 at Corsair in the US, across all five colors, with a three-year warranty and a zero-dead-pixel guarantee. For comparison, Elgato’s 15-key Stream Deck MK.2 lists at $149.99, and the 32-key Stream Deck XL lists at $249.99. The Edge costs the same as the XL and brings an actual display to the party. ASUS makes the closest rival, the ProArt PA147CDV, a 14-inch 32:9 touchscreen with a physical dial and pen support, but it runs a lower 1920 x 550 resolution and sells for roughly twice the Edge’s list price. Cheap no-name touchscreens exist too, but most skip the magnets, the threads, and the Stream Deck tie-in.

The Stream Deck taught desks that a small control room beside the keyboard beats hunting through menus. The Edge keeps that lesson and swaps the plastic keys for pixels that can become anything. It mounts where you want it, shows what you need, and gets better as the widget library grows. It’s available now at Corsair’s site for $199.99 in the US while the current sale runs, with $249.99 as the regular price. Fifteen buttons were a good start. A 14.5-inch strip of pixels is a much better sequel.

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