
Amazon still sells an 8-inch tablet you can toss in a backpack or a carry-on and not treat like jewelry. Fire HD 8 in its 12th-generation line, priced at $84.99 (was $130), updated again in 2024, keeps the same 7.94 by 5.40 by 0.37-inch polycarbonate body and 11.88-ounce weight that made earlier versions easy to forget until you needed a screen. Black, Emerald, and Hibiscus covers have a light texture that hides smudges. USB-C sits on the edge next to a 3.5mm headphone jack that most newer tablets have already abandoned, plus a microSD slot that accepts cards up to 1TB, while dual speakers fire from the bottom in landscape.

Photo credit: MKBHD
Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro keeps last year’s aluminum frame, 8.75 mm thickness, and camera plateau almost unchanged, so first glance will fool most people into thinking nothing moved. Engineers did color-match the rear glass to the frame, killing the two-tone look that marked the 17 Pro. Burgundy shifts between deep red and purple with the light and has become the color most reviewers mention first. Glacier is a quieter light blue, Silver finally looks clean, and Black is the darkest Pro finish Apple has offered.

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works just decided one flying prototype is not enough. This week at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, the company said it will build four more Vectis collaborative combat aircraft on top of the airframe already taking shape, for a planned test fleet of five. First flight remains aimed at the end of 2027, and the extra jets are already in work.

BYD parked a new 4×2 semi-truck at IAA Transportation in Hannover last week and named it the ETT 44. Fleet buyers across Europe now have a long-haul electric option rated for 44-metric-ton combinations, or about 97,000 pounds gross. First customer trucks are scheduled for the second quarter of 2027.

Agility Robotics spent three years watching Digit 4 haul totes for paying customers. On September 15, 2026, the Salem, Oregon company showed what that work bought: Digit 5, a 5-foot-11, 284-pound humanoid built to lift 50 pounds, charge in nine minutes, and share aisles with people instead of living behind a fence.