Apple went budget with the MacBook Neo. Now reportedly the company is preparing to go high end, and high price.

Apple is gearing up to launch a MacBook “Ultra” in the fall, outfitted with the first OLED display in MacBook history, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Gurman says the new laptop will have a touchscreen and new M6 chips. Last month, Bloomberg reported that Apple could be launching its first touchscreen MacBook — with a Dynamic Island. The Dynamic Island is a feature on more recent iPhone models — iPhone 14 and later — that’s shaped like a long horizontal pill atop the screen and shows alerts, notifications, timers and music.

It if happens, the Ultra would be at the opposite end of the cost spectrum from the Neo, which Apple launched earlier this month for $599 as a rival to Chromebooks and Windows laptops in the same price range. Gurman says the MacBook Ultra could cost 20 percent more than the new MacBook Pro (M5 series), which Apple lists at $1,699.

If you want to read more about the new Neo, CNET has been all over it: Here’s why students might love it, the colors we liked and didn’t like and why the Neo is a really is a game-changer.

Gurman suggested that Apple might keep selling the M5 series MacBook Pro even after the Ultra launches. That would give the company a wider range of MacBooks at various costs — the Neo ($599), the Air (starting at $1,099), the Pro ($1,699) and the Ultra. 

Tech analyst Paolo Pescatore said adding the premium MacBook Ultra would “signal a clear shift in strategy” for Apple.

“If this turns out to be the case, then Apple appears to be stretching the Mac further upmarket,” Pescatore told CNET. “The opportunity is to drive higher spending and keep premium users firmly within Apple’s ecosystem. The challenge will be avoiding confusion, especially if the lines between MacBook Pro and iPad Pro become even more blurred.”

Gurman also said that Apple’s first foldable iPhone, rumored to be launched later this year, might be called the “iPhone Ultra.”

Apple’s long-rumoured HomePad smart display could include a magnetic wall-mounting system similar to MagSafe, according to a new leak.

The feature would allow the device to snap securely onto a wall-mounted fixture. As a result, it may be easier to position the display in different areas of the home.

The detail comes from prototype collector and leaker Kosutami, who claims to have seen a version of the device in person. In a post on X, they said one HomePad prototype includes a MagSafe-style snap-to-wall mechanism. Additionally, it has built-in doorbell integration, suggesting the device could double as a central hub for smart home alerts and video feeds.

from the can’t-trust-this-doj dept

When companies sued to block Trump’s IEEPA tariffs last year, one of the key arguments they made was obvious: if these tariffs turn out to be illegal, we’ll never get our money back. We need an injunction now. The government had an equally confident response: relax, if the tariffs are struck down, we’ll just issue refunds. No big deal. No injunction needed.

Multiple courts bought it. And now, with the Supreme Court having ruled the tariffs unlawful and a judge ordering the refunds, CBP is telling the court that it actually can’t comply with the order. The promises that defeated all those injunctions? Turns out nobody bothered to check whether they were actually true.

Once again, courts trusted what the government told them. Once again, it turns out they were wrong.

Let’s rewind to see how we got here.

Back in April 2025, when importers like V.O.S. Selections were seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the tariffs from being collected, the Department of Justice told the Court of International Trade there was simply no need for such drastic relief. In its brief opposing the injunction, the DOJ was explicit:

And, even if future entries are liquidated, defendants do not intend to oppose the Court’s authority to order reliquidation of entries of merchandise subject to the challenged tariffs if the tariffs are found in a final and unappealable decision to have been unlawfully collected. Such reliquidation would result in a refund of all duties determined to be unlawfully assessed, with interest.

No injunction needed! Refunds would flow. With interest, even. The government repeated this refund promise in case after case after case. In the Learning Resources stay motion, the government told the D.C. district court that there was no risk at all that the government wouldn’t repay:

For any plaintiff who is an importer, even if a stay is entered and defendants do not prevail on appeal, plaintiffs will assuredly receive payment on their refund with interest. “[T]here is virtually no risk” to any importer that they “would not be made whole” should they prevail on appeal. See Sunpreme v. United States, 2017 WL 65421, at *5 (Ct. Int’l Trade Jan. 5, 2017). The most “harm” that could incur would be a delay in collecting on deposits. This harm is, by definition, not irreparable.

In the Axle case, same thing.

In any event, were Axle to ultimately prevail, it could receive a refund of duties paid that would otherwise be eligible for duty-free treatment under the de minimis exemption on any unliquidated entries. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2643-44. To the extent any future entries are liquidated, the Court may order reliquidation of entries subject to the challenged de minimis exemption if the duties paid by Axle are, in a final and unappealable decision, found to have been unlawfully collected. Such reliquidation would result in a refund of all duties determined to be unlawfully assessed, with interest.

In the Princess Awesome joint stipulation, the government formally agreed that there was nothing to fear about getting repaid:

Defendants stipulate that they will not oppose the Court’s authority to order reliquidation of entries of merchandise subject to the challenged IEEPA duties and that they will refund any IEEPA duties found to have been unlawfully collected, after a final and unappealable decision has been issued finding the duties to have been unlawfully collected

And the courts relied on these representations. In December 2025, when AGS Company Automotive Solutions sought a preliminary injunction to stay the liquidation of its entries, the three-judge panel denied the motion specifically because of the government’s refund promises:

For the reasons stated above, we conclude that the Government has taken the “unequivocal position” that “liquidation will not affect the availability of refunds after a final decision” in V.O.S. Gov’t Resp. at 2–3. The Government would be judicially estopped from “assum[ing] a contrary position” in the future.

Note the court’s foresight here. The panel explicitly invoked judicial estoppel—basically saying “okay, now that you’ve said this to a court, you’re bound by it going forward.” You get the sense that the court had a sense of where all this was going.

Then the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that the IEEPA tariffs were unlawful. Judge Eaton at the Court of International Trade—designated as the sole judge to handle IEEPA refund cases—last week ordered CBP basically pay back everyone who paid an IEEPA tariff. Everyone. Not just those who sued.

In court, when the DOJ pushed back a bit, Eaton was blunt:

“Customs knows how to do this,” Eaton said during a court hearing on Wednesday. “They do it every day. They liquidate entries and make refunds.”

Enter the declaration of Brandon Lord, CBP’s Executive Director of the Trade Programs Directorate, filed the day after Judge Eaton’s order. He points out that, actually, there are a TON of tariffs to repay.

As of March 4, 2026, over 330,000 importers have made a total of over 53 million entries in which they have deposited or paid duties imposed pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”), 50 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq. (the “subject entries”). As of March 4, 2026, the total amount of IEEPA duties and estimated duty deposits collected pursuant to IEEPA is approximately $166 billion. Approximately 20.1 million entries remain unliquidated as of March 4, 2026.

And, apparently, it turns out that CBP is not at all prepared to repay what it owes:

In light of the Court’s March 5, 2026 amended order, CBP is now facing an unprecedented volume of refunds. Its existing administrative procedures and technology are not well suited to a task of this scale and will require manual work that will prevent personnel from fully carrying out the agency’s trade enforcement mission. Personnel would be redirected from responsibilities that serve to mitigate imminent threats to national security and economic security.

Lord’s declaration lays out a big list of technical and logistical obstacles. CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system can apparently only batch-process 10,000 entry summary lines at a time, and there are over 1.6 billion entry summary lines that need updating. Importers frequently lumped their IEEPA duties together with other duties on the same line, meaning CBP personnel would have to manually untangle the amounts. Processing each individual refund takes about 5 minutes, which across 53 million entries works out to over 4.4 million hours.

There’s also a mess involving different entry types and automatic liquidation timelines—Lord’s declaration goes into a bunch of technical details about “formal” vs. “informal” entries, claiming that 4 million entries will automatically process next week and “CBP does not have a process to prevent” it. Even if the legal details are deep in the weeds, the message is clear: even with the Supreme Court ruling in hand, CBP claims parts of this train are still moving and they can’t stop it.

CBP says it can build new ACE functionality in 45 days that would streamline the process. The proposed system actually sounds reasonable. Which makes it worse: if you spent the better part of a year telling every court that would listen that refunds were totally manageable, that there was “virtually no risk” importers wouldn’t be made whole, that “such reliquidation would result in a refund of all duties determined to be unlawfully assessed, with interest”—then maybe, just maybe, you should have spent some of that year building the system to actually do it? Send over a DOGE bro or two to vibe code up a solution?

The Supreme Court case wasn’t a surprise. The government was a party to it. They knew the ruling was coming. They knew that if they lost, refunds would be necessary on a massive scale. And even just based on how the oral arguments went, they should have known how this would turn out.

Instead, CBP appears to have done absolutely nothing to prepare. The government used the promise of easy refunds as a sword to defeat injunction after injunction, convincing courts that importers would suffer no irreparable harm because the money could always be returned. Having successfully avoided those injunctions—allowing the tariffs to keep being collected for months on end, swelling that $166 billion pot—the government now tells the court that returning the money is an operational nightmare that requires new technology it hasn’t built yet.

This is exactly the scenario the AGS panel warned about. And if the government tries to argue that it can’t provide refunds—rather than that it just needs more time—it will run headlong into the judicial estoppel doctrine that the court already set up like a tripwire. As the AGS panel put it, quoting the Supreme Court: “where a party assumes a certain position in a legal proceeding, and succeeds in maintaining that position, he may not thereafter, simply because his interests have changed, assume a contrary position.”

Every month the government successfully avoided an injunction was another month it kept collecting tariffs. That $166 billion didn’t accumulate by accident. The government had every incentive to promise easy refunds and zero incentive to actually prepare for them. The longer importers waited for relief, the bigger the pot grew.

And now, with the Supreme Court having ruled those tariffs illegal, and with courts having explicitly warned that the government would be judicially estopped from changing its position, CBP says it needs 45 days to build new software before it can start writing checks.

“Customs knows how to do this,” Judge Eaton said. “They do it every day.”

Maybe. But apparently nobody in the entire federal government thought to ask whether CBP could actually deliver on the promises DOJ was making to court after court after court. Either that, or they just didn’t care what the answer was.

Filed Under: brandon lord, cbp, court of international trade, ieepa, refunds, tariffs, trump admin

On February 4, 2026, a bright glow appeared in the sky over Florida that morning, and people were literally “stopped in their tracks” as they gazed upwards in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the gigantic and almost unearthly apparition hovering in the sky. These long tendrils were connected to a massive dome-shaped head, and they were all surrounded by a delicate cloud of pastel pink, blue, and gold colors.

At 5:52 am local time, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, transporting 29 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit on its 25th mission. The rocket was part of Operation Starlink 10-40, the 28th mission for SpaceX in 2026. It was no surprise that the vast majority of the previous missions had been focused on enhancing their broadband network, which was just shy of having 10,000 satellites in orbit.

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Just over one minute after launch, the rocket was at an altitude at which it was possible for sunlight to illuminate the exhaust plume, yet the dark surface was invisible. The engines of the upper stage burned a gas that was mostly composed of water vapor and CO2. As the rocket soared into the upper atmosphere, the gas expanded into a massive cloud in an instant. As sunlight passed through the crystals, the whole exhaust plume was illuminated from behind, looking like a blazing bell with long streamers of smoke behind it. This was visible for a few minutes, as the gas expanded to catch the early rays of sunlight.

There were numerous photographers in the Space Coast area, and they captured some truly breathtaking shots. Time-lapse videos showed the rocket traveling along with a massive trail of light that transformed into the jellyfish shape. Close-up images revealed that the colors persisted throughout the shop as the trail faded. One of the best photographs was obtained near the Titusville region, with the full phenomenon captured against a dark background.

When a Falcon 9 rocket launches from Florida at dawn or early morning, when darkness is just beginning to give way to light, you get a rather consistent spectacle. The timing of the launch is critical because the sun catches up with the rocket’s exhaust high in the sky, but not low enough to pose problems for those on the ground. As the sunlight reaches the plume at precisely the perfect angle, it blooms outwards unevenly, resulting in this magnificent spherical top with wispy tendrils hanging out to the side that resemble tentacles. Because this show takes place up in the atmosphere, where the air is extremely thin, it can be seen for hundreds of kilometers.

After the launch, B1080 safely returned to Earth, landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic, thanks to some excellent piloting, and, as we’ve seen before, all 29 satellites launched as planned, bringing SpaceX closer to its goal of providing global internet coverage to even more people.
[Source]

Microsoft says Teams will soon automatically tag third-party bots in lobbies, allowing organizers to control whether they can join meetings.

As detailed in a new Microsoft 365 roadmap entry, the feature is currently in development and scheduled to roll out in May 2026. When it reaches general availability, it will be available across Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS platforms for worldwide standard multi-tenant and GCC cloud environments.

After the rollout, external third-party bots attempting to join a Teams meeting will be distinctly labeled in the lobby rather than blending in with human participants.

Organizers will then have to explicitly allow the bot to join the meeting, ensuring it cannot be accidentally accepted alongside a group of human attendees.

“During Teams meetings, if there is an external 3P bot trying to join the meeting, organizers will be able to see a clear representation of the bots while they wait in the lobby. Organizers will be required to explicitly and separately admit these bots into the meeting, if really required,” Microsoft said.

“This approach will ensure that no one inadvertently accepts the external bots into the meeting ensuring that the organizers have full control over the presence of these bots.”

The change ensures that malicious apps controlled by threat actors or third-party bots (used for note-taking, transcription, or other automated tasks) cannot join Teams meetings without attendees realizing that a non-human participant has been added.

In January, Microsoft announced that Teams will get a call reporting feature by mid-March, allowing users to flag suspicious or unwanted calls as potential scams or phishing attempts.

Teams has also added new fraud-protection features for calls, warning users about external callers impersonating trusted organizations in social-engineering attacks.

Starting in December, admins can block external Teams users via the Defender portal to thwart cybercrime gangs(including ransomware groups) that attempt to abuse the video conferencing and collaboration platform in social engineering attacks targeting victims’ employees.

Malware is getting smarter. The Red Report 2026 reveals how new threats use math to detect sandboxes and hide in plain sight.

Download our analysis of 1.1 million malicious samples to uncover the top 10 techniques and see if your security stack is blinded.

Download The Report

When the Trump administration last year sought to freeze construction of offshore wind farms by citing concerns about interference with military radar and sonar, the implication was that these were new issues. But for more than a decade, the United States, Taiwan, and many European countries have successfully mitigated wind turbines’ security impacts. Some European countries are even integrating wind farms with national defense schemes.

“It’s not a choice of whether we go for wind farms or security. We need both,” says Ben Bekkering, a retired vice admiral in the Netherlands and current partner of the International Military Council on Climate and Security.

It’s a fact that offshore wind farms can degrade radar surveillance systems and subsea sensors designed to detect military incursions. But it’s a problem with real-world solutions, say Bekkering and other defense experts contacted by IEEE Spectrum. Those solutions include next-generation radar technology, radar-absorbing coatings for wind turbine blades and multi-mode sensor suites that turn offshore wind farm security equipment into forward eyes and ears for defense agencies.

How Do Wind Farms Interfere With Radar?

Wind turbines interfere with radar because they’re large objects that reflect radar signals. Their spinning blades can introduce false positives on radar screens by inducing a wavelength-shifting Doppler effect that gets flagged as a flying object. Turbines can also obscure aircraft, missiles and drones by scattering radar signals or by blinding older line-of-sight radars to objects behind them, according to a 2024 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report.

“Real-world examples from NATO and EU Member States show measurable degradation in radar performance, communication clarity, and situational awareness,” states a 2025 presentation from the €2-million (US$2.3-million) offshore wind Symbiosis Project, led by the Brussels-based European Defence Agency.

However, “measurable” doesn’t always mean major. U.S. agencies that monitor radar have continued to operate “without significant impacts” from wind turbines thanks to field tests, technology development, and mitigation measures taken by U.S. agencies since 2012, according to the DOE. “It is true that they have an impact, but it’s not that big,” says Tue Lippert, a former Danish special forces commander and CEO of Copenhagen-based security consultancy Heimdal Critical Infrastructure.

To date, impacts have been managed through upgrades to radar systems, such as software algorithms that identify a turbine’s radar signature and thus reduce false positives. Careful wind farm siting helps too. During the most recent designation of Atlantic wind zones in the U.S., for example, the Biden administration reduced the geographic area for a proposed zone off the Maryland coast by 79 percent to minimize defense impacts.

Radar impacts can be managed even better by upgrading hardware, say experts. Newer solid-state, phased-array radars are better at distinguishing turbines from other objects than conventional mechanical radars. Phased arrays shift the timing of hundreds or thousands of individual radio waves, creating interference patterns to steer the radar beams. The result is a higher-resolution signal that offers better tracking of multiple objects and better visibility behind objects in its path. “Most modern radars can actually see through wind farms,” says Lippert.

One of the Trump administration’s first moves in its overhaul of civilian air traffic was a $438-million order for phased-array radar systems and other equipment from Collins Aerospace, which touts wind farm mitigation as one of its products’ key features.

Saab’s compact Giraffe 1X combined surface-and-air-defense radar was installed in 2021 on an offshore wind farm near England.Saab

Can Wind Farms Aid Military Surveillance?

Another radar mitigation option is “infill” radar, which fills in coverage gaps. This involves installing additional radar hardware on land to provide new angles of view through a wind farm or putting radar systems on the offshore turbines to extend the radar field of view.

In fact, wind farms are increasingly being tapped to extend military surveillance capabilities. “You’re changing the battlefield, but it’s a change to your advantage if you use it as a tactical lever,” says Lippert.

In 2021 Linköping, Sweden-based defense contractor Saab and Danish wind developer Ørsted demonstrated that air defense radar can be placed on a wind farm. Saab conducted a two-month test of its compact Giraffe 1X combined surface-and-air-defense radar on Ørsted’s Hornsea 1 wind farm, located 120 kilometers east of England’s Yorkshire coast. The installation extended situational awareness “beyond the radar horizon of the ground-based long-range radars,” claims Saab. The U.K. Ministry of Defence ordered 11 of Saab’s systems.

Putting surface radar on turbines is something many offshore wind operators do already to track their crew vessels and to detect unauthorized ships within their arrays. Sharing those signals, or even sharing the equipment, can give national defense forces an expanded view of ships moving within and around the turbines. It can also improve detection of low altitude cruises missiles, says Bekkering, which can evade air defense radars.

Sharing signals and equipment is part of a growing trend in Europe towards “dual use” of offshore infrastructure. Expanded dual-use sensing is already being implemented in Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland, and was among the recommendations from Europe’s Symbiosis Project.

In fact, Poland mandates inclusion of defense-relevant equipment on all offshore wind farms. Their first project carries radar and other sensors specified by Poland’s Ministry of Defense. The wind farm will start operating in the Baltic later this year, roughly 200 kilometers south of Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave.

The U.K. is experimenting too. Last year West Sussex-based LiveLink Aerospace demonstrated purpose-built, dual-use sensors atop wind turbines offshore from Aberdeen. The compact equipment combines a suite of sensors including electro-optical sensors, thermal and visible light cameras, and detectors for radio frequency and acoustic signals.

In the past, wind farm operators tended to resist cooperating with defense projects, fearing that would turn their installations into military targets. And militaries were also reluctant to share, because they are used to having full control over equipment.

But Russia’s increasingly aggressive posture has shifted thinking, say security experts. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power grid show that “everything is a target,” says Tobhias Wikström, CEO for Luleå, Sweden-based Parachute Consulting and a former lieutenant colonel in Sweden’s air force. Recent sabotage of offshore gas pipelines and power cables is also reinforcing the sense that offshore wind operators and defense agencies need to collaborate.

Why Is Sweden Restricting Offshore Wind?

Contrary to Poland and the U.K., Sweden is the one European country that, like the U.S. under Trump’s second administration, has used national security to justify a broad restriction on offshore wind development. In 2024 Sweden rejected 13 projects along its Baltic coast, which faces Kaliningrad, citing anticipated degradation in its ability to detect incoming missiles.

Saab’s CEO rejected the government’s argument, telling a Swedish newspaper that the firm’s radar “can handle” wind farms. Wikström at Parachute Consulting also questions the government’s claim, noting that Sweden’s entry into NATO in 2024 gives its military access to Finnish, German and Polish air defense radars, among others, that together provide an unobstructed view of the Baltic. “You will always have radars in other locations that will cross-monitor and see what’s behind those wind turbines,” says Wikström.

Politics are likely at play, says Wikström, noting that some of the coalition government’s parties are staunchly pro-nuclear. But he says a deeper problem is that the military experts who evaluate proposed wind projects, as he did before retiring in 2021, lack time and guidance.

By banning offshore wind projects instead of embracing them, Sweden and the U.S. may be missing out on opportunities for training in that environment, says Lippert, who regularly serves with U.S. forces as a reserves liaison officer with Denmark’s Greenland-based Joint Arctic Command. As he puts it: “The Chinese and Taiwanese coasts are plastered with offshore wind. If the U.S. Navy and Air Force are not used to fighting in littoral environments filled with wind farms, then they’re at a huge disadvantage when war comes.”

Founded in 2013, the Providore has scaled back its presence in recent years

Homegrown café, deli and grocer, The Providore Singapore, announced on Instagram that it will cease operations in Singapore with immediate effect on Monday (Mar 9).

OpenAI announced Monday it has acquired Promptfoo, an AI security startup founded in 2024 to protect LLMs from online adversaries.

The frontier lab said in a blog post that once the deal closes, Promptfoo’s technology will be integrated into OpenAI Frontier, its enterprise platform for AI agents.

The development of independent AI agents that perform digital tasks has generated excitement about productivity gains. But it’s also given bad actors fresh opportunities to access sensitive data or manipulate automated systems. This deal underscores how frontier labs are scrambling to prove their technology can be used safely in critical business operations.

Promptfoo was founded by Ian Webster and Michael D’Angelo to develop tools that companies can use to test security vulnerabilities in LLMs, including an open-source interface and library. The company reports that its products are used by more than 25% of Fortune 500 companies.

Promptfoo has raised just $23 million since its founding, and was valued at $86 million after its most recent round in July 2025, according to Pitchbook. OpenAI did not disclose the value of the transaction.

OpenAI’s post said Promptfoo’s technology will allow its agent platform to perform automated red-teaming, evaluate agentic workflows for security concerns, and monitor activities for risks and compliance needs. The company also said it expects to continue building out Promptfoo’s open-source offering.

When Audio-Technica announced the ATH-ADX7000, its new $3,500 flagship open back headphone, curiosity spread quickly across the audiophile world. The company brought the model to CanJam NYC 2026, giving enthusiasts and industry insiders a chance to hear what the Japanese manufacturer believes is its most advanced dynamic headphone to date.

My first exposure actually came months earlier. Back in November 2025, our UK Headphone Columnist James Fiorucci asked if he could review Audio-Technica’s new flagship. I’ll admit it. I was a little jealous. After editing his superb review and digging into the design details, the Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 became one of the headphones I most wanted to hear in person.

My relationship with Audio-Technica headphones goes back much further than that review. Years ago, when I worked in news radio, their headphones were everywhere in the studio. The slightly top end tilted tonal balance was never exactly my can of Vernors, but I understood why stations relied on them. They were reliable, mostly neutral, durable, lightweight, and reasonably priced in an environment where 40 different people might use the same pair in a single day.

And yes… the Jack Nicholson side of me from As Good as It Gets always wiped them down before and after. If you’ve ever worked in radio, you know why. If you haven’t… trust me. You never really know where the last person’s been.

So after reading Fiorucci’s take and seeing the buzz build around Audio-Technica’s new flagship, CanJam NYC 2026 was my first real opportunity to sit down with the ATH-ADX7000. I didn’t waste it.

Featherweight Design, Heavyweight Sound?

The Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 is remarkably light for a flagship open-back headphone. Slip them on and the first thing you notice is how little they seem to weigh on your head. Audio-Technica has long prioritized comfort and low mass in its reference designs, and the ADX7000 continues that tradition with a frame and suspension system that practically disappears during long listening sessions.

At just 275 grams, these things practically disappear the moment they land on your head. I’ve worn heavier baseball caps.

Putting them on the first time at CanJam NYC 2026, I actually paused for a second because it felt like something was missing. The clamping force is moderate, maybe a touch lighter than some listeners might prefer, but when you spend 60+ hours a week sitting in front of a computer listening, writing, and editing, comfort stops being a luxury and becomes survival strategy. In that context, Audio-Technica’s approach makes a lot of sense. They stay put without squeezing your skull like they’re trying to extract a confession. I deny everything. We’ve never met. Not even behind the 7-Eleven on Ocean Avenue in Long Branch at 2:17 a.m.

I had two listening sessions with them at the show, each around twenty minutes, and never experienced the dreaded headband hotspot that some listeners have mentioned. That said, twenty minutes at a show and three hours at home are two very different universes. Anyone who claims to know how a headphone feels long term after a quick demo is either lying or selling something. A few hours of real listening would be needed to make that call with confidence.

Because they’re so light, it would be easy to assume the ADX7000 is built from plastic. That assumption would be wrong. The frame uses magnesium, which is a far less common material in headphone construction but a clever one. It keeps the structure rigid while shaving off weight — a trick more manufacturers should probably steal.

And yes, each pair is made and hand assembled in Japan, which is exactly what you expect when a headphone costs $3,500. At that price, you want craftsmanship, not something that feels like it rolled off the same assembly line as a pair of airline earbuds.

Put it this way: the ATH-ADX7000 is lighter than a Cleveland pierogi before it hits the fryer — and a hell of a lot easier to live with after a long night.

The headline feature of the Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 is its new HXDT driver technology. Each earcup houses a 58 mm diaphragm formed through a precision moulding process designed to maintain a highly uniform circular shape. That level of consistency helps the diaphragm move more accurately, improving detail retrieval and overall clarity. Audio-Technica also aligns the circular components of the driver assembly with micrometre level precision, minimizing unwanted resonances and helping the driver behave exactly as intended.

Impedance is rated at 490 ohms with 100 dB/mW sensitivity, which is very much an Audio-Technica engineering choice. You can run the ATH-ADX7000 from a dongle DAC, but it probably shouldn’t be a bargain-bin one. These headphones clearly reward power and control. If it were my system, I’d lean toward a neutral to slightly warm source with strong bass control to keep the presentation balanced. A good desktop headphone amplifier or a high-powered DAP will get the most out of them.

The Audio-Technica AT-BHA100, now discontinued, was Audio Technica’s reference desktop headphone amplifier designed to drive headphones from 16 to 600 ohms. Its fully balanced design delivered up to 1.5 watts per channel into 16 ohms and 120 milliwatts per channel into 600 ohms, providing the headroom and control needed for high impedance flagship models. Unless my eyes were getting worse under the show lighting, this appears to be the amplifier Audio-Technica brought to power the ATH ADX7000 during its demonstrations.

Electrostatic Lite Without the Electrostatic Hassle?

On the train into Manhattan on Saturday morning, thanks to NJ Transit and its ongoing Portal Bridge construction circus, the ride stretched closer to two hours with the usual power hiccups and delays. Plenty of time to kill, so I reread James Fiorucci’s review and asked myself the obvious question. Was he right?

Turns out…yeah. He was.

The more I listened to the Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000, the more it became clear that these drift very close to electrostatic lite territory without requiring an energizer or dedicated electrostatic amplifier. Running through tracks from Massive Attack, The Orb, deadmau5, along with a few jazz selections, several things jumped out immediately. Transparency. Excellent detail retrieval that never feels forced. Speed. Dynamic snap. And a very satisfying punch from the mid bass into the lower mids.

And then there is the space. These things are undeniably spacious sounding. Not just wide. New York wide. Like standing on the East River looking across Manhattan, past the Hudson, and all the way into Hiram’s Roadstand parking lot in Bergen County before the soundstage finally taps out. If a headphone can pull that off in a noisy show environment, something serious is happening under those magnesium grills.

The Bottom Line

The Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 is not a casual purchase. At $3,500, it firmly sits in the flagship tier. The good news is that it’s still less expensive than the top offerings from Audeze, Abyss, and ZMF Headphones, while delivering a presentation that edges close to electrostatic territory without requiring an energizer.

The extremely high 490 ohm impedance means these headphones reward serious amplification. A good desktop amplifier or powerful DAP will unlock their speed, transparency, and expansive soundstage. But the real question lingering in my mind after CanJam NYC 2026 is this: what would they sound like paired with a dedicated OTL tube amplifier? My suspicion is that the answer could be very, very interesting.

Where to buy:

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