Jackery’s new Explorer 100D looks like it should play AM radio. The squat little cube has a framed front panel, orange slatted vents down its sides, and a webbing strap you’d expect on a vintage transistor set. Instead of tuning into ballgames, it stores 96Wh of energy and delivers up to 158W across two USB-C ports and one USB-A port. It measures 4.67 by 3.25 by 3.37 inches (11.9 x 8.3 x 8.6cm), making it roughly softball-sized, and weighs 1.87 pounds (850g). It’s the smallest power station Jackery has ever built.

Jackery’s D-series models skip the AC outlet entirely, and that decision explains much of the design. They don’t need an inverter, a bulky component that generates heat and often requires a cooling fan. Leaving it out lets the box shrink to desk-friendly proportions, while the 96Wh battery sits just below the FAA’s 100Wh threshold for batteries carried without airline approval. Jackery estimates more than four charges for an iPhone 17 or Galaxy S26, or roughly one full recharge for a 14-inch MacBook Pro. That’s a useful reserve in something that weighs less than the laptop it’s charging.

Designer: Jackery

One Button Runs the Whole Show

A TFT display on the front tracks input and output wattage, battery level, and estimated runtime, with additional screens for battery health, cycle count, and internal temperature. One DISPLAY button handles it all. Tap once to flip between status screens, double-tap to keep the screen on or switch it off, and hold for three seconds to enter Low-Power Charging Mode. That last trick is for smartwatches and earbuds. Some power banks stop supplying power when a device draws too little current, leaving you with AirPods stuck at 40%. Jackery’s dedicated mode is designed to keep power flowing to those smaller gadgets.

The screen resembles a car’s instrument cluster, with a circular battery gauge in the middle and input and output readouts flanking it. A glossy, framed front panel groups the display and ports into a single face, which is where the transistor-radio vibe comes from. Port labels are printed directly on the panel, and a small bracket under the two USB-C ports marks their 140W maximum. The horizontal vent slats carry Jackery’s signature orange. Four rubber feet help keep it steady on a café table, and the strap fastens to round studs on either side.

140 Watts That Fit in a Tote Bag

The USB-C ports offer up to 140W and support three fast-charging protocols: USB Power Delivery (PD), Programmable Power Supply (PPS), and Adjustable Voltage Supply (AVS). PD serves modern laptops, PPS fine-tunes voltage for compatible devices, including Samsung phones, and AVS is the newer addition Jackery highlights for Apple gear. Jackery claims the 100D can charge an iPhone 17 to 50% in 21 minutes. Total output across all three ports reaches 158W, allowing a laptop, phone, and pair of earbuds to share it. The 18W USB-A port handles whatever legacy cable is still living in your bag.

Recharging options include a 140W USB-C wall charger, a 100W car charger, or a 100W solar panel. Jackery quotes 1.7 hours from zero to 80% on solar. Car charging supports both 12V and 24V sockets, covering semi-truck cabs as well as hatchbacks. Car and solar charging use a USB-C to DC8020 adapter connected to C1, the only port that accepts input. When charging the battery and powering devices simultaneously, input and output are capped at 100W each, worth knowing if you plan to use it as a desk hub. Jackery rates the LFP cells for 3,000 cycles before capacity drops to 80%, equivalent to more than eight years of daily cycles.

The Pocket-Size Panic Buy

The 100D replaces the Explorer 100 Plus, Jackery’s previous smallest station, with several improvements. Weight drops from 2.13 pounds to 1.87, output climbs from 128W to 158W, and rated cycles rise from 2,000 to 3,000, with a 3Wh reduction in capacity. The one step back: only one USB-C port accepts input, whereas the 100 Plus could charge through either. Anker’s Solix C200 DC is an obvious rival, offering 192Wh for $149. That doubles the energy but exceeds the FAA’s 160Wh upper limit for spare lithium-ion batteries in passenger baggage, ruling it out for air travel.

Walmart is scheduled to start selling the 100D for $99 on November 15, Costco already offers a two-pack for $179.99, and Jackery lists it at $119 on its own site, with sign-ups for preorder alerts. It’s a compact entry into 2026’s power-station panic buy. Large home-backup stations are built to keep appliances running during an outage. The 100D is for the laptop deadline at an airport gate where every outlet is taken, or the campsite with no plug for miles. It’s a power station you might actually use on a Tuesday.

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Every crisis has its panic buy. In 2020 it was toilet paper and N95 masks, in 2021 it was graphics cards, in 2025 it was RAM chips, and in 2026 my money is on lithium iron phosphate. With Iran attacking tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, gas sitting at a record-for-October $4.36 a gallon, and heating oil bills forecast to climb 21% this winter, the case for keeping your own stash of electrons has never been stronger. A portable power station from Anker, EcoFlow, or Jackery keeps your fridge cold and your lights on when the grid gives up. It also runs indoors without trying to poison you, and it never needs a trip to the gas station.

Stockpiling toilet paper made you look a little unhinged. Owning a power station makes you the neighbor everyone suddenly wants to befriend during an outage. Black Friday could knock a few more dollars off, sure, but fall sale prices are already the best we’ve seen this season, and winter storms rarely wait for a coupon code. I’ve narrowed the field to one value pick from each brand, all hovering around the 2kWh mark, enough to keep a fridge humming for well over a day. Anker gets first crack, because its S2000 squeezes 2,010Wh into a 35.7-pound body that costs less than a decent espresso machine.

[Editor’s Pick] Anker S2000 2,010Wh Portable Power Station: $699.99

Anker announced at IFA 2026 that its SOLIX power station brand is folding into the Anker name, so you’ll still spot “SOLIX” on boxes and Amazon listings while the switch plays out over the next couple of years. Same company, same warranty, simpler logo. The S2000 makes a great poster child for the new identity, because it looks like it wandered over from the home appliance aisle. At 8.2 x 11.1 x 12.7 inches (208 x 282 x 323mm) and 35.7 pounds (16.2kg), it takes up roughly the counter space of a coffee maker. That makes it nearly 4 pounds lighter than Jackery’s Explorer 2000 v2 and 9 pounds lighter than EcoFlow’s DELTA 3 Max.

Inside are 314Ah lithium iron phosphate cells rated for 6,000 cycles to 80% capacity and 10,000 to 60%, the same chunky format used in grid-scale storage. Anker estimates a 15-year design life, so this thing could easily outlast your fridge. Output tops out at 1,500W continuous with a 3,000W surge, plenty for a fridge, router, lights, laptops, and a CPAP. The real magic is efficiency, with idle draw of just 6W, which helped it keep a fridge running for 34 hours and 15 minutes in GearJunkie’s testing. At $599.99 for subscribers, that works out to roughly $300 per kilowatt-hour, the cheapest of our three picks by a wide margin.

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What we like

• At 35.7 pounds, it’s the lightest 2kWh station you can buy right now, and compact enough to live on a kitchen counter.
• A UPS switchover of 10ms or less keeps your router and desktop online the moment the grid drops.
• Long-life cells and roughly $300 per kWh make it the best value of the three.

What we dislike

• Solar input caps at 400W, which means about five hours of ideal sunshine to refill, and winter rarely delivers ideal.
• It isn’t expandable, so 2kWh is your ceiling.
• 1,500W of output rules out running a space heater alongside much of anything else.

Jackery Explorer 2000 v2 2,042Wh Portable Power Station: $899

Jackery’s orange-trimmed Explorers were the default power station for years, long before Anker, EcoFlow, and Bluetti started crowding the category. The Explorer 2000 v2 keeps that familiar look but trims the bulk, measuring 13.2 x 10.4 x 11.5 inches (335 x 264 x 292mm) and weighing 39.5 pounds (17.9kg). Its proportions are squatter and more cube-like than the Anker’s, which makes it easier to tuck under a desk or beside a fridge. Jackery marketed it as the lightest and most compact 2kWh LiFePO4 station around, a crown the S2000 snatched this year by shedding nearly four more pounds. The two brands are basically locked in a very nerdy weight-loss competition.

Output is where the Jackery pulls ahead of the Anker, with 2,200W continuous and a 4,400W peak spread across three AC outlets. That’s enough headroom for a sump pump, a fridge compressor, or a microwave without the station breaking a sweat. Jackery’s ChargeShield 2.0 system layers in 62 protection mechanisms, and Silent Charging Mode keeps noise under 30dB, roughly a whisper, which is handy if it ends up in your bedroom during an outage. The cells are rated for 4,000 cycles and a 10-year lifespan, fewer than Anker promises but still plenty for daily use well into the 2030s. At $899, you’re paying about $440 per kilowatt-hour, dropping to $416 when it dips to $849.

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What we like

• 2,200W of continuous output handles bigger appliances than the Anker can.
• Silent Charging Mode stays under 30dB, so it won’t keep you up at night.
• A 3-year standard warranty plus a 2-year extension covers you for five years total.

What we dislike

• Only three AC outlets, so a power strip becomes part of the kit.
• It isn’t expandable, and solar input maxes out at 400W.
• It won’t charge below 32°F (0°C), so an unheated garage in January is a bad home for it.

EcoFlow DELTA 3 Max 2,048Wh Portable Power Station: $899

EcoFlow’s DELTA family is the brand’s bread and butter, and the DELTA 3 Max is the 2kWh sweet spot of the current lineup. It’s also the chunkiest of our three picks, measuring 19.45 x 9.41 x 12.01 inches (494 x 239 x 305mm) and weighing 44.8 pounds (20.3kg). That long, low, suitcase-like shape belongs on the floor next to the fridge, and you’ll want two hands whenever you move it. EcoFlow spends that extra bulk on muscle, and the trade feels fair once you see the output numbers. The Halloween sale has it at $899, down from $1,199, which puts it neck and neck with the Jackery on price.

You get 2,400W continuous across four AC outlets, the most of our three picks, plus EcoFlow’s X-Boost mode for resistive appliances up to 3,400W. X-Boost works by dropping the voltage, so a kettle or hair dryer runs a little slower instead of tripping the station. That’s enough headroom to run a 1,500W space heater with the fridge and router still plugged in. EcoFlow also rates it at 25dB or less when charging or discharging at 600W, which is quieter than a library. At $899, it lands at about $439 per kilowatt-hour, essentially tied with the Jackery, so the choice comes down to extra watts versus a lighter box.

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What we like

• 2,400W continuous output, with X-Boost up to 3,400W, makes it the most powerful of the trio.
• Four AC outlets, one more than the Jackery.
• It stays under 25dB at moderate loads, so it’s easy to live with indoors.

What we dislike

• At 44.8 pounds, it’s the heaviest of the three, roughly 9 pounds more than the Anker.
• The long footprint eats more floor space than its boxier rivals.

The post Do yourself a favor and buy a power station now, before the energy crisis gets worse first appeared on Yanko Design.

Anyone who has tried to furnish a studio apartment knows the specific defeat of running out of surfaces before you run out of gadgets. The speaker needs an outlet and a shelf. The lamp needs its own corner. The mini fridge for wine wants counter space that doesn’t exist. Each object is fine on its own, but stacked together on a single console table, they start to look like a garage sale that lost an argument with a design magazine. That is the exact problem South Korean designer Jung Hyun Kim set out to solve with Babel, a concept he built for people who live in small rooms but refuse to shrink their idea of what home should feel like.

Kim designed Babel for a very specific and very real slice of the population, twenty somethings through mid thirties starting their independent lives in modest apartments, often around 500 to 550 square feet, the kind of footprint that is common from Seoul to Brooklyn to any first apartment in a city with real rent. His answer wasn’t to make each device smaller. It was to stop thinking about furniture and electronics as separate categories entirely, and instead build a single vertical column where every function gets its own segment, stacked like a totem instead of scattered like clutter.

Designer: Jung Hyun Kim

The tower reads almost like a figure standing in the room. At the top sits an eye shaped ambient lamp, its lens glowing warm and soft, the kind of light you’d want next to a couch at eleven at night. Below that, a red, fabric wrapped module houses the main speaker drivers, angled like a face with two eyes looking back at you, which is a genuinely clever piece of anthropomorphism for an object meant to live in your peripheral vision all day. The tapered midsection functions as the control hub, complete with a discreet volume display, and the whole thing terminates in a rounded black base that turns out to be a hidden drawer, a small cooling compartment for a couple of wine bottles. Four completely different jobs, one silhouette.

What makes this more than a novelty is the modularity built into the stacking logic. Nothing about Babel demands you use all four segments in one order. You can pull pieces apart, rearrange them, or run just the parts you need that week. A studio dweller might want the lamp and speaker without the bar module. Someone hosting more often might stack the drawer higher for easier reach. The design treats a small home the way a good capsule wardrobe treats a small closet, fewer pieces, each one doing more, none of them wasted.

I like that Babel doesn’t pretend the solution to small space living is owning less. It assumes you still want a good lamp, a good speaker, and a cold bottle of wine within reach, and it simply refuses to let those wants cost you three separate footprints. That feels more honest than most minimalist design advice, which tends to ask people to want less rather than design better. The name is a nice touch too, a nod to the biblical tower where many languages tried to reach the same point, which tracks neatly onto a product where lighting, sound, cooling, and control all speak different technical languages but rise from the same base.

Whether Babel ever becomes a shippable product is beside the point right now. It exists as a Behance concept, a portfolio piece from a designer who clearly thinks in systems rather than single objects, and that thinking is worth paying attention to regardless of manufacturing timelines. Apartment living isn’t getting more spacious anywhere, and the appetite for objects that look intentional rather than accumulated is only growing, especially among people who grew up curating every shelf for how it photographs. A stacked, sculptural answer to gadget clutter fits that mood perfectly.

Babel won’t fit every home, and a four function tower is a commitment, not an impulse buy. But as a piece of thinking about how to live well in less square footage, it’s one of the more clear headed ideas I’ve seen come out of a design program in a while. Sometimes the fix for too many objects isn’t fewer objects. It’s better posture.

The post Finally, One Tower Replaces Your Speaker, Lamp, and Wine Fridge first appeared on Yanko Design.

Miele’s new G8 Diamond snaps a photo of your dirty dishes before it washes them. The moment the door swings toward shut, a light inside blinks on, a camera grabs one frame, the light dies, and the AutoVision system studies what it caught. If it sees a bottle, it calls up BottleClean and drives the spray harder. If it sees a pot, the cleaning intensity climbs. If it sees plastics, it runs the new hot air drying harder, because plastic containers are famously terrible at drying themselves. Miele showed it for the first time at IFA 2026 in Berlin, and it lands in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in April 2027.

A camera in a dishwasher makes the headline, but the memory is what makes the design. The G8 holds onto that bottle it clocked at breakfast, so stacking dinner plates on top of it by eight in the evening changes nothing. Layer in AutoDos and its PowerDisk granulate, measuring out its own detergent since 2018, then set an app rule that says wait until 80 percent full and never before 10pm, and the machine stops consulting you altogether. Miele has spent decades selling dishwashers on the promise that they scrub so you do not have to. This one wants to think so you do not have to.

Designer: Miele

Here’s the part that actually impressed me. AutoVision doesn’t run a video feed you can scrub through in the app. It fires once, right as the door clicks shut, and the machine works from that single image for the entire cycle. Load a wine bottle at breakfast, stack it under a mountain of lunch plates by evening, and the G8 still treats it as a bottle, because it saw it once and that was enough. The only real caveat came from Miele’s own team at IFA: keep bottles roughly central and pots in the lower basket, since the spray arm still struggles to reach the far corners. Vision only helps if the water can follow it there.

What makes this genuinely new isn’t the word AI, which every appliance brand at IFA 2026 was throwing around like confetti. Most of those claims are turbidity sensors, the kind that read how murky the wash water has become and adjust accordingly. LG’s SenseClean works that way, and Samsung has filed similarly around soil detection. A turbidity sensor knows the water is dirty. It has no idea why. Miele’s camera identifies the actual object sitting in the rack, a considerably harder computer vision problem, and one that both LG and Bosch have patented around for years without shipping a consumer dishwasher built on it. Miele is putting an object-recognition camera inside a box you can buy next spring, not just inside a patent filing.

Around that camera sits a decade of quieter automation finally clicking into place. AutoDos, with its PowerDisk granulate, has been dosing detergent on its own since 2018, and Miele still claims nobody else in the category offers true automatic dispensing. ExcellentDry adds a hot air system with three fixed levels, chosen once and then applied forever, aimed squarely at the plastic containers that usually come out of a cycle still damp at the base. The cutlery drawer becomes a genuine third tier, one side droppable for coffee cups, and a new touch display replaces the old dial logic. Set the app to run only past 10pm and only above 80 percent full, or tie it to your solar output, and the dishwasher stops asking permission for anything.

None of this works if you don’t trust the camera’s judgment, and Miele knows it. “Intelligence can be programmed. Trust has to be earned,” said Dr. Axel Kniehl, the company’s Executive Director of Marketing and Sales, at the IFA press conference, and it’s the one line from the whole reveal that actually admits the stakes. AutoVision only functions if enabled by the user, according to Miele’s own release, which suggests it ships switched off by default. Fair enough. Handing a machine the authority to decide how hard to scrub your grandmother’s pans is a bigger ask than letting it dose its own detergent, and Miele seems to know it needs to earn that permission slowly rather than assume it.

The G8 Diamond won’t reach a single kitchen before April 2027, and even then only in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, so everything here is still a promise rather than a lived-in product. But the promise is the interesting part. For a century, appliance makers competed on how much physical labor they could remove. Miele is the first one at this scale betting the next fight is over who you trust to make the fifty tiny decisions labor never touched in the first place.

The post Miele’s G8 Dishwasher Photographs Your Dirty Dishes Before Auto-Selecting The Cycle: Hands-on at IFA 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

If you have ever charged a Xiaomi phone with the bundled brick, there is a decent chance CUKTECH’s engineers had a hand in it, even though the name never made it onto the packaging. The company started in 2016 as a straight up OEM, building chargers behind the scenes for Xiaomi and other big players, before merging with ZMI in 2022 and finally launching products under its own name. It is the classic story of a supplier deciding it was tired of being invisible.

That decision has paid off. The CUKTECH 30 Charging Station Ultra just picked up two wins at the European Product Design Award, one for computer accessories and one for office appliances, thanks to a 300W GaN powered design from Chong Wang and Ziyao Wang. We have followed the brand’s climb as its power banks and chargers kept getting screens, better materials, and sharper industrial design with every release. This latest charging station, with its five ports and a live readout of exactly what your gear is pulling, is the moment the sleeper brand stops sleeping.

Designers: Chong Wang & Ziyao Wang

Three USB-C ports, one USB-A port, and a dedicated DC output share the front face, and together they can push out up to 300W total. The two primary USB-C ports handle up to 140W each under PD 3.1, which covers most modern laptops without breaking a sweat, but the real number only shows up when you route power through the DC port. That single line is built to talk directly to compatible laptops and can hit the full 300W ceiling on its own, essentially replacing the oversized proprietary brick that usually ships in the box. I have three of those bricks sitting in a drawer right now doing absolutely nothing, and a single box that can outmuscle all of them at once is exactly the kind of consolidation I did not know I needed.

Third generation GaN sits at the core of the whole system, paired with what CUKTECH calls a PFC plus LLC dual architecture, a combination chosen specifically to keep five simultaneous charging sessions stable without the unit turning into a space heater. Gallium nitride has become the default material for anyone chasing high wattage in a small footprint, since it switches more efficiently than older silicon designs and sheds heat faster under sustained load. Thirteen fast charging protocols are baked in, including PD 3.1, PPS, Xiaomi’s own 120W standard, UFCS, Huawei SCP, and both QC and AFC, which is a genuinely broad net for a single charger to cast. Intelligent power allocation reads what is plugged in and redistributes wattage on the fly, with specific tuning for handhelds like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally that tend to confuse less sophisticated multi port chargers.

A 1.83 inch IPS display sits front and center, color coded per port, tracking wattage, voltage, and current across all five connections in real time, with a small running graph of total load underneath. Most chargers ask you to trust a single LED and hope for the best. This one just tells you, continuously, which is a small shift that changes how the object feels to live with on a desk. Nine layers of protection cover temperature, over-voltage, and over-current scenarios, which matters more than usual given how much power is moving through a chassis this size.

The form itself leans minimal, angled slightly on a magnetic tilting base so the screen stays readable without craning your neck, and finished in a two tone silver and black that reads more like studio monitor than power strip. A right angle DC cable keeps the desk tidier than the usual straight jack, and the grounded three pin AC cable is a small nod to safety that a lot of competitors skip to save a few cents.

None of this would matter much if the pricing did not make sense, and at $159.99 it lands right where a serious desk upgrade should, undercutting rivals capped at 140W or 200W while offering meaningfully more headroom. CUKTECH spent a decade building other companies’ chargers before it ever put its own name on a box. Two design award wins later, it is clear that decade taught them exactly which details actually matter.

The post CUKTECH’s 300W Desktop Charger Wants to Replace Your Entire Drawer of Power Bricks first appeared on Yanko Design.