The LG InstaView Refrigerator
A fridge that proves the kitchen is a place for magic, not mystery
The blank expanse of the refrigerator door has long been a piece of real estate that gadgeteers—especially in South Korea—have wanted to colonize.
Twenty years ago, your columnist was in Seoul being shown Korea-only prototypes of LG fridges with Web-connected screens in the door. The purpose of getting Internet on your refrigerator door was mostly to see online recipes without needing either a book or a computer in the kitchen. But before long, smartphones and iPads had become a practical way of following recipes while cooking.
LG’s big rival, Samsung, has continued to pursue the fridge-door dream with a range of appliances incorporating an eye-level screen they call Family Hub. While this is clever and serves many functions—family whiteboard, a screen for your front-door video camera, and so forth—the sweat of learning how to use a complicated fridge-door computer will, we suspect, leave most people cold.
For instance, there’s a function that will allow you to check what food you have in the fridge from your phone while you’re in the grocery store. Most people, we think, would rather take a chance on buying a new box of blueberries than go through the rigmarole of finding a signal in the produce aisle, firing up the app, and scouring the fridge back home using its internal camera.
Of the Seoul brothers, it is LG, we believe, that has come up with a simpler way of penetrating the dark mystery of a closed fridge. LG has been developing a technology called InstaView, which enables you to see most of what you have by physically knocking twice on a large, opaque glass panel set into the door. The shelf contents appear clear and brightly lit. It’s the kind of kitchen tech you could easily imagine using several times a day for practical reasons, and a few times more because it’s weirdly entertaining. And more importantly, it’s at the right point of evolution to adopt.
The Philips Sleep Headphones with Kokoon
A knockout pair of earbuds that will leave you snoozing comfortably
Almost 10 years ago, a London start-up intent on helping solve the urban curse of sleeplessness began to develop a large, warm, squishy headphone called Kokoon.
Kickstarter-funded, it was designed to be comfortable enough to wear in bed and to play a variety of soothing, sleep-inducing sounds from a dedicated app, while measuring your sleep data. One of the many innovative twists was that the headphones would fade the sound to white noise when its sensors detected that the wearer was asleep.
Kokoon gained a lot of admirers but was still a large piece of equipment and rather ill-suited to side sleeping. In 2021, they released a mini version with the same principles and biosensors, but which was better suited to sleeping on your side. It had tiny, very thin earbuds connected by springy, concertina-ed leads on each side of the wearer’s head to a neat electronic hub compact enough to sit in the nape of the neck.
Now the mighty electronics-manufacturing company Philips has partnered with Kokoon Technology. Philips has slightly—but significantly—revised the product’s design and relaunched it globally as the Philips Sleep Headphones with Kokoon—the latter part of the name seemingly in recognition of the once humble start-up’s impact on the sleep-tech market.
The result is a slick, nicely made gadget that even a relatively fussy sleeper should find perfectly bearable, even comfortable. The Kokoon app can play 360-degree soundscapes, “storyscapes”—sleep-inducing imaginations—C.B.T. practices, and meditations. If you prefer your own content, they sound good with music, podcasts, or whatever turns you, um, off.
The Leica Sofort 2 Camera
At last, an instant-film camera with a high-quality lens
This column has previously noted the German camera brand Leica’s occasionally undignified “brand extension” products, from keychains to shopping bags.
Their latest, Chinese-made entry is no real Leica, but is most definitely in the spirit of Leica, with a Gen Z audience in mind.
It’s a Polaroid-style instant-print camera—very similar to Fujifilm’s cheaper Instax camera, and using the same film cartridges—but with sleek Leica looks and a genuine Leica Summar lens you’d be hard pushed not to fall for.
The Sofort 2 (German for “immediate”) is very desirable just as a stylish, fun gadget. Its on-screen user interface is exactly like that of a “real” Leica, though the resulting prints are not Leica quality. But they’re fine for what they are. There’s even a defiantly analog selfie window for those who would like to take expensive Polaroids of themselves posing.
Another fun feature is that you can take as many photos as you like, as on a regular digital camera, until the correct level of exposure, look, pout (or whatever) is achieved, and then you can print them from the Sofort 2. Prints emerge from the slit in the side in 20 seconds or so, and the photos look their best after a couple of minutes’ exposure to light. There are 10 prints per $15 film pack. The camera comes in three colors—black, white, and red.
The Cloudnola Flipping Out Text Clock
A clock that evokes destination boards, but with less noise (and better colors)
Browsing in the MoMA Design Store, on West 53rd Street, this writer fell for—and bought—the Cloudnola Flipping Out Text Clock, from Dutch company Cloudnola, for a new kitchen.
Its appeal is not that it’s the quickest clock to read, but its evocation of station and airport destination boards, minus the intrusive clicking sound (although you can just about hear the Cloudnola’s quiet version of that sound).
The battery-powered clock can be wall-hung or can sit on a surface. Its green and yellow colors are exclusive to MoMA, but black and white are available from Cloudnola’s own site.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer for the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology