Now at version 2026, KeyShot is stronger than ever with a slew of new features to improve the user experience and elevate its capabilities. These include more realistic AI output through AI Shots with the ability to now edit and upscale, an upgraded Move Tool + Custom Pivot, and an all-new gallery feature.

It wouldn't be a software upgrade without some mention of AI, would it? In fact, KeyShot has been using AI for many years, specifically to deliver progressive denoising. But as for AI features, the primary one is AI Shots, which was introduced partway through the 2025 software cycle. KeyShot has determined this is the way to go, devoting a significant amount of development time to improving it.

If you're looking for help on where to start, then you could follow my KeyShot and Photoshop advice for perfect renders every time as well as find out how to create cinematic cameras in KeyShot. To complement KeyShot, you will also need one of the best 3D software packages.

KeyShot 2026: plans and pricing

• KeyShot Professional for $108.25 per month (billed annually)⁣
• KeyShot Business provides seat management features

Most Creative Bloq readers will need a KeyShot Professional subscription. This provides the complete 3D visualisation toolkit for individual designers, freelancers, and small studios. This costs $108.25 per month, although it's billed annually at $1,299.

If you do happen to be a larger team requiring centralised seat management, then you'll have to upgrade to KeyShot Business. For the privilege, this costs $133.25 per month, which equates to $1,599 billed annually.

Value score: 4/5

KeyShot 2026: features

• AI Shots brings generative AI into the heart of the rendering workflow
• A new Gallery window makes it easier to find and organise renderings

The single biggest feature improvement in 2026 is AI Shots. This is KeyShot's generative AI workflow, and it was introduced in KeyShot 2025.2. With it you can either generate images from a CAD model or edit an existing image. Either way, it means artists can utilise generative AI in a dedicated 3D rendering tool rather than relying on alternative tools that were not designed with 3D in mind.

The AI Shots tool is particularly useful for artists wanting to create multiple images with small variations. They can do that easily using the generate multiple images feature when entering the prompt. KeyShot has also improved the overall AI model so it now works with much shorter prompts compared to version 2025.

One of the best improvements of AI Shots is the upscaling feature that enables artists to double or quadruple the resolution of both traditional 3D renderings and AI Shots in a "fraction of the time". This proves more effective than generating an AI shot at a lower resolution and then upscaling.

Beyond AI shots, KeyShot includes a more powerful Custom Pivot + Move Tool. With it users can "give parts or groups multiple custom pivots in addition to origin and centre. These custom pivots can be named for organisational purposes and are stored in your scene."

The move tool gizmo has now also been synchronised between realtime and geometry views, which makes it much more straight forward to work in both views at the same time. It was previously a little confusing, and even though this is only a user experience improvement, it's still a meaningful one.

The final feature to mention is called Gallery, and I love it. It's a new window, and it lets you quickly and easily find your render output once your renderings are complete. It's much more than just a viewer, though. With it you can search, sort, and organise all your rendered output.

Features score: 4.5/5

KeyShot 2026: user interface and experience

• Creating product visualisations in KeyShot is an absolute breeze
• The new AI shots feature provides a generative tool for customising the results

KeyShot is a wonderful piece of visualisation software that takes hardly any time at all to get your head around. Materials, lighting, camera, and environment tools are clearly laid out and easily accessible through various panels and menus. I had no issues finding settings quickly, and with results instantly displayed in the real-time view, it's easy to tweak settings until you get a result you're happy with.

I love how easy it is to cycle through lighting setups and see immediately whether your model catches the reflections nicely or not. With plenty of lighting and material options in the local and cloud libraries artists can quickly translate their 3D model into a beautiful photorealistic visual. Beyond setting up the scene it's also effortless to add post-effects including denoising, sharpening, and bloom, amongst many others.

AI Shots offers a basic interface for adjusting your output using a short prompt. Before doing so, though, you'll have to download near 20GB of AI data, so make sure you've got the necessary storage space before deciding whether KeyShot along with its AI tool is the right visualisation product for you.

I tested AI Shots on my MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM. This is less than the recommended 32GB RAM, but with RAM prices showing no signs of slowing down, I think my laptop is a fair representation of what a lot of users will have access to.

During my tests I found that all elements of the tool, including image generation, upscaling, and element replacement, worked without a hitch. It never crashed, and the progress bar kept moving in the right direction. My only issue with it is that it is quite slow, with some prompts taking upwards of five minutes to process. I found it to be a helpful tool, but it was subject to misinterpreting some of my prompts and couldn't therefore be relied upon for perfect recreation of prompts.

User Experience score: 4.5/5

KeyShot 2026: who is it for?

• KeyShot is designed almost exclusively for product visualisation

KeyShot was built with product visualisation in mind. It offers a simple workflow for 3D artists who regularly find themselves visualising products or product designers who want an in-house solution for creating their own images. KeyShot will work for other types of scenes, but if you're working in film, games, or architecture, then you'll need a dedicated rendering engine such as V-Ray or Cycles (Blender).

Buy it if...

• You create visualisations from CAD
• You need to do this quickly and accurately
• You want a simple rendering solution for small to medium 3D scenes

Don't buy it if...

• You work in film, games, or architecture
• You're regularly rendering large scenes
• You need a rendering engine plugin for your favourite 3D software

And it's the latter that apparently inspired a solo developer to recreate several of Adobe's most popular tools, including Photoshop, Premiere and Illustrator. These were rebuilt using Claude and Rust.

Writing on Hacker News, software developer Brandon Thomas said he was inspired to create the clones after he "got bit by the dark pattern "cancellation fee" one too many times."

"I'm not just some casual vibe coder. I'm a 15-year industry veteran who has written everything from six-nines payment rails that move billions of dollars of transaction volume a day to advanced robotics and optics automation," Thomas announced on Reddit. "I've used Rust extensively for about a decade, and I know how to build and maintain large-scale Rust projects."

"Software is over," he added in a comment on Hacker News.

Is it? Really? It looks to me like Thomas used software to create a clone of some software. And while copying Adobe might sound exciting in a stick-it-to-the-man sort of way, I'm not sure it's a positive omen for the future of software or creativity. Is using AI to create a carbon copy of something as exciting as, say, creating something new?

And it's hard to imagine professional creatives feeling confident enough to place their files, and their livelihoods, in the hands of AI-generated software.

As one Redditor puts it, "There is a pretty fricking huge difference between an unproven software that vaguely looks like Photoshop and probably can do some of the things that Photoshop can do and a dependable, robust productivity software that you can count on working right and being maintained long-term."

More in line with the best horror film posters, the new You Can See Everything poster has all the makings of a spine-chilling scare fest, with suffocating visuals and minimalist design. Bold and frighteningly captivating, I find it impossible to look away, despite how much I want to.

The poster stars the documentary's subject, Elizabeth Holmes, in a claustrophobia-inducing close-up. Spotlighting only half her face, the design forces our gaze to Holmes' almost inhumanly bright blue eye, which appears almost strained in its wideness. Her half-concealed smile only adds to the poster's quasi-uncanny feel, creating palpable discomfort.

In the background, the blurred image of a straight-faced Fielder adds extra tension, while minimalist sans serif font bears the film's title. Slightly cut off on the sides, the title reinforces the subtly suffocating effect, making for a wildly disconcerting design.

"The reflection in the eye is doing more acting than most lead performances this year," one X user wrote in response to the strange poster. "You could tell me this was a horror movie and I'd believe you," another added.

For more poster design, take a look at the new Clayface poster that gets creepier the more you look at it, or check out why horror movie poster design has a problem.

Content warning: this article discusses graphic violence, disturbing imagery, and mature themes in an 18+ game.

I expected a game about pleasure and pain to lean towards the pain. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival leans the other way, and not only because it gets under the skin of the themes and imagery of Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart (and the first two films). It hides those very adult ideas inside something accessible and familiar, a bit BioShock in its core mechanics, and a bit Condemned in its brutal melee combat and love of leather-bound mannequins, so somewhere around the second hour I stopped noticing the dildos (everywhere) and body parts strewn across the scenery and started enjoying how the systems work.

It's a trick, and a clever one. By the time I realised what I'd been wading through, what I'd just seen as our hero's girlfriend was opened up, torn apart and remade vein by muscle in graphic detail, I was already hooked.

Love in the time of Cenobites

Revival's story is original but inspired by Barker's original book. Set 20 years after the first film in the town of Clairport, north of Detroit. Sunny opens the Genesis Configuration, summons the Cenobites and meets her sticky end. To paraphrase Patrick Stewart, her lover Aidan Lynch sees everything, because they were Netflix and chilling at the time. He makes a deal with the Hell Priest (Pinhead, to most of us), enters the Labyrinth to free her soul, and sets about rebuilding her body.

It's a neat and very games-y setup that challenges Aidan to gather the hearts of three people marked by the box: Charlotte Strauss, an ex-dominatrix known as the Sister of Mercy, and Colin Marlowe, leader of the Scarlet Church, a cult of Leviathan worshippers who want to make Cenobites on Earth. It's a love story of obsession and bad bargains, and feels right at home beside Barker's novella.

So yes, it's very Hellraiser: unapologetically sexual, risqué, bloody and grotesque. Machete swings dissect bodies; past torsos lie on tables, hang like ghoulish wall art, and a late-game ability lets you tear enemies apart with Hellchains that hook and lash in from every direction. It's horrific, often inventively so, the kind of spectacle that demands to be seen and then you kind of want to unsee it, and then look again. So, yep, very Clive Barker (the included digital art book reveals how it was made).

Welcome to the Labyrinth

The game's 'real' world is bold, garish and caricatured, violent and more than a little perverse, but it never lets me forget I'm playing a video game. Then you step through a teasing, glowing crack in a wall into Leviathan's domain, and Unreal Engine 5 drops the cartoon for stark photorealism. That divergence never stopped jolting me and makes the Cenobites' world so much more terrifying: this is the space that looks real, and the real is the space that feels like a game.

The Labyrinth itself is the kind of pain and pleasure Clive Barker would be proud of: puzzling, disorienting and, when the Chatterer (fans know him as the Child) is on my heels, properly terrifying. I found racing down narrow Brutalist concrete canyons, dodging spinning spiked traps and ducking sprouting chains among the best horror I've played this year. Here Aidan is vulnerable and afraid. These escape-meets-walking-sim sections add texture, make you think, and, when you're being hunted, make you feel something genuine.

Outside and back in the sex club, cult mansion and cemetery, Revival dresses up as a light immersive sim, and combat flows freely. A shotgun blast ignites a barrel, fire leaps from one enemy to the next, another steps on a carefully placed bear trap, and the group is dealt with until only body parts remain. The Genesis Configuration piles on top of that. Banishing an enemy with a finisher sends their soul back to the Labyrinth and earns Suffering, a currency you spend on the box's powers. Telekinesis lets you grab sawblades and steel pins from the environment and hurl them at leather-clad cultists, and pyrokinesis lets you pull fire from lamps and shoot it. A revolver, pistol, SMG, assault rifle and a mix of breakable melee knives and bats fill out the earthly arsenal, with upgrades, plus ammo and health you craft from scavenged junk.

It's solid and often a lot of fun, but it stops well short of reinvention. This isn't BioShock, Dishonored or Prey, and it never pretends to be. The Genesis Configuration, for example, never goes as deep as BioShock's Plasmids, though it could really have been developed further and even layered on obsession and pain debuffs and buffs. But no, it's a two-power cube that can occasionally be manipulated as a puzzle to open narrative-dependent gates.

What saves Hellraiser Revival is its structure. The game weaves in and out of Aiden's real world and the Labyrinth, merging the two elegantly in later stages, and the hunt for the three Marked Ones means lots of exploration, Resident Evil-style puzzling and maps that double back on themselves. They're elegantly rendered too, with ornate but grim paintings, statues and reflective surfaces to dwell upon.

It isn't flawless. Combat is at its best when it stays in immersive-sim mode, because boss fights can drag, and controlling Aidan under pressure can feel stiff and unresponsive. When the game asks for subtlety, it fumbles.

Never lets me settle

What lifts Hellraiser Revival is its refusal to sit still. A boss is teased in a stealth section that had me scurrying around a collapsing nightclub while the wraithlike Sister of Mercy hunted me, and then it never happened again. One Labyrinth sequence has you pushing and pulling the environment itself to line up stairs and paths. There's an actual cabin in the woods full of zombies – a fraught survival challenge. And a moment where you have to keep columns erect to hide from Leviathan's Gaze, the beam that exposes people to the darkest parts of their own psyche, is perfectly, gloriously Hellraiser and just on-the-nose enough to be appreciated.

These ideas arrive, get used once, and the game moves on, and that generosity is why the Hellraiser Revival never feels like a retread, even when its bones are familiar.

But those bones are familiar. Scrape away the meaty, fleshy shock value and impressively stylised Labyrinth and underneath is a streamlined immersive sim with very little original in what you do, even if what you experience in its world is refreshingly horrific. And what a world it supports. The Labyrinth is brilliant design, and the Cenobites are horrific and oddly seductive – each scene they're in just feels right. The game embraces its source with total commitment and isn't afraid to get filthy about it, too.

It's partly why the indie devs behind Limerence, a branching narrative thriller about an AI partner decided to explicitly declare on their Steam page that no gen AI has been used in the game's development, including a big bright badge reminiscent of Nintendo's Seal of Quality.

"We found that through Polygon Treehouse, indie dev friends of ours, and they had started this campaign of putting that badge on," Salix Games CEO Jessica Saunders tells me. "We didn't have it originally, and then we were having people messaging me going, 'I just heard about your game, but this has generative AI, so I can't support it.' And I'm like, 'No, it doesn't.' So, we're having to make a big deal out of that."

Yet while AI is being primarily pushed by tech companies, including Epic, which already plans to incorporate Gemini and Claude into Unreal Engine 6, one can see the appeal to create things faster when there are less resources.

Salix Games in particular has felt the pinch of budgets, following its 2019 debut, Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey, an adventure game with Arthurian characters in Victorian London, which hadn't been financially successful, while the industry post-COVID with layoffs and closures still a daily occurrence, means funding for larger projects has been next-to-non-existent.

But rather than opting for AI shortcuts, Saunders has taken a different approach when considering how to better adapt and survive the current turbulence: "It's like, what could we do for the minimum budget that maximises the skill sets that we have?"

Part of this involved partnering with another studio called Game in a Frame, run by Vincent Joyau, a former colleague of Saunders when she worked at Splash Damage. "He'd been building up his own set of tools for his game, so I asked if I could use them, and he goes, 'I'll do one better, I will use my tools with you and we'll work together to create this new game because we both need to start thinking smaller production-wise if we're going to survive in this industry.'"

Joyau's custom tools created in Unity hasn't just been important for handling Limerence's heavy branching dialogue but also for modelling the game's sole onscreen character, Kai, a 3D AI avatar, who also exists within a fake AI app that's been created with its own fully customisable character creator, outfits, and hairstyles.

This AI partner is only part of the bigger picture of Limerence, which explores how digital dependency can impact our real-world relationships, as the game explores how 30-something woman Claire's life and real-world relationships are impacted by her new-found obsession with a seemingly perfect partner.

This is all presented by the player essentially interacting with Claire's phone, with Saunders citing inspiration from indie games that have played with the premise of snooping on someone's phone, notably A Normal Lost Phone, which then naturally includes other apps that can be accessed, from social media posts, photos, or streamed music.

"It's interesting because these found phone games also use real actors, building up their own photo galleries, but our team lacked production experience, so we've had to pull in a lot of favours from a lot of people," Saunders explains. "We basically said, "Can we have access to your Tik Tok, your Instagram, your small business, and let us use your material, either as a donation or a small fee."

To her surprise, many people were happy to help. They include a friend who loves taking photos of lots of food from restaurants, and a couple of friends who are essentially 'playing' the lead couple in the game, with photos spanning years that show a consistent relationship history that the narrative is able to create a fictional life around.

"We expanded on that too," Saunders says. "We ended up hiring a couple of models through an agency and held a low-budget fake wedding shoot in London which was great fun just to get some of those extra background photos. Honestly, things like Adobe Stock and Unsplash have been great for filling in blanks. That's really allowed us to create a very voyeuristic experience of looking into a real person's phone and just opening up a gallery and seeing things you shouldn't really see."

With stretched resources, mostly going into recording the voice performances, with only Kai's lines being recorded in a sound booth so that the exceptionally clean audio adds to his artificiliaty, it would have been easy for the peripheral aspects of the game to be created with AI, be it arty social media posts or songs playing off a fake streaming app. But Limerence's approach to world-building shows you can make something more lived-in and authentic that also respects and credits artists - you just have to ask.

"The thing is I'm not actually very anti-AI, I think AI as a data tool is marvelous, and it can be very helpful for certain industries," Saunders concludes. "But when it comes to things like making video games, film, TV, and art, I don't see its purpose at the moment because it's just stealing."

Limerence is releasing on PC on 29 October, while Gen's Story, a free demo separate to the final game, is available now on Steam.

Inspired? See our guides to the best game development software and the best laptops for game development.

In the case of the Fanta Halloween ad, the fright was unwelcome and the practical effects conspicuously absent. Yep, the Coca-Cola Company is still trying to do AI ads.

Developed by AI studio GRAiL, Fanta’s Haunted Universe is intended to serve as a platform that will help the brand "claim Halloween". If Christmas belongs to Coke, Halloween should belong to Fanta, the company thinks.

The universe has several "original" character designs, including a cyborg Frankenstein and a werewolf DJ, while Ghostface from Scream makes a guest appearance in the ad above. The idea is to make this an annual occasion, with the universe and story to develop in future years.

That won't be what some readers wanted to hear. Many people strongly oppose the use of AI imagery on ethical grounds. On social media, the reactions to the video above are no less severe than they were with the AI Coca-Cola Christmas adverts. Almost all of the comments are negative, and there are many from people vowing to never buy Fanta again.

"I went to check if people were talking about this as soon as I left the theatre. Crazy they don't see how bad it looks and how it cheapens their brand," one person writes on X.

"I was watching a Tubi movie when this ad popped up and I cannot express to you how much more effort, creativity, and overall watchability went into that Tubi movie than this ad," someone else thinks.

"Makes you think what are they putting in their food to lower the production cost?" another person writes.

People who are strongly opposed to AI might be a lot louder on social media than the many more people who don't really care either way. But now the AI Coke trucks have been joined by Fanta ones, it's starting to feel like Coca-Cola's goading its critics.

"Look, we can do trucks with the right number of wheels now," it seems to be boasting, while serving up a mess of badly edited jump cuts in which the product itself looks like a toxic swill that no human should put into their body. Unlike Marmite or the new Jaguar. Coke and Fanta have traditionally been branded as universal in their appeal. So why is the world's biggest soft drinks brand now so unworried about upsetting a large portion of its customer base?

What took them so long? I hear you ask. Possibly a fear of the kind of comments the news has inevitably sparked on social media. Many Whovians aren't impressed by the first artwork from Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew. And there's one criticism that hard to unsee.

There have been animated Doctor Who shorts before, and the BBC has used animation to remake lost episodes' Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew is more ambitious. Announced by BBC Children's and Education and created for the kids' channel CBeebies, it will have an initial run of 52 eleven-minute episodes.

The series will follow a young blue-haired Doctor and his friends Hannah, Beastie and Toast-IE. Villains will include the daleks. Blue Zoo Animation Studio is producing and Dominic Minns, who directed CBeebies' Mojo Swoptops and Supertato, is series director.

"Bursting with imagination, humour and adventure, Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew brings the excitement of the Whoniverse to a new generation of fans. Through action-packed, preschool-friendly stories, the series celebrates curiosity, courage and kindness, encouraging young viewers to explore new ideas, solve problems and embrace the unexpected.," the BBC says.

The series is bound to take some liberties with Doctor Who lore (if there are any left to take). But as a lifetime Doctor Who fan myself, it makes me sad that a lot of the criticism of the animation on social media is a bit ridiculous, particularly since we have only a single piece of artwork to judge it on so far.

Most of the disparagement appears to come from middle-aged men who have mistaken themselves as the target audience for the pre-school friendly cartoon.Some are worried that the series might have a strong female character (shudder).

One perplexing comment on X even suggests the artwork above uses 'bisexual lighting', because cosmic-looking purple gradients are something new in science fiction (I always suspected that the Dumbbell Nebula swung both ways, to be honest).

There is one recurring observation that I can't argue with though. The daleks do look like one-eyed minions. Whether the resemblance is intentional or not, it was my first thought when I saw the art work.

The toddler-friendly daleks redesign is actually quite clever. It leans into the silliness of their existing design with their sink plunger arms and takes it further, adding more utensils to the mix. Giving them real eyes and making the grille more mouth-like is a logical step to make them appeal to smaller kids, but it's almost inevitable that they'll continually remind us of Gru's henchmen.

Another detail that's raised eyebrows is the character called Toast-IE. Could he be Talkie Toaster from Red Dwarf?

That's actually a crossover I would watch, but the reference is presumably unintended. That makes it feel like the character could have been suggested by AI as an appropriate comedy companion for a sci-fi series. Surely, K9 could have done the job?

In the meantime, check out how they made the animation for last year's Lux episode in the main Doctor Who series.

Anycubic bills the Kobra 3 Max Combo as the largest consumer-grade multicolour 3D printer, which is its own claim. On build volume, at least, it holds up against the obvious rivals. For more Prime Day 3D printer deals, see our live blog.

Not for you? See the other deals we've found below – and see our guide to the best 3D printers.

The Microsoft Surface Ultra is coming for the MacBook Pro with its power, performance and portability. It's aimed at creators running intensive workflows, apparently it can run heavy code, render a film in Da Vinci at the same time as running a AAA title game. The Microsoft showcase told a story of one creator creating a scene in Blender, passing it to Unreal Engine and then into Photoshop. The process took hours rather than the usual days but, of course, we haven't tested it yet. This may be heading to the top of our best laptop for 3D modelling guide.

The important feature for creatives is how the Ultra uses memory. Its RTX Spark chip lets the processor and graphics share a single pool of up to 128GB, rather than splitting resources between the two. In practice, that could mean complex 3D scenes and long video timelines that would overwhelm the graphics memory of a typical laptop. We'll need to put it through our testing to see how it plays out in a heavy Blender scene or Premiere Pro timeline.

Nvidia says the platform can run large AI models directly on the machine, up to 120 billion parameters. For artists experimenting with AI tools, that means more of that work happens on your own laptop instead of through cloud services. Microsoft quotes up to 1 petaflop of AI performance.

What you can expect:

• A 15-inch PixelSense Ultra touchscreen, which Microsoft says has the brightest peak HDR of any laptop.
• A chassis under 18mm thin and weight of under 4.5lbs.
• 2.5x the thermal capacity of existing Surface Laptops, with the machine retaining 99% of its power on battery. That's a big deal if you edit or render away from a desk.
• The most ports ever on a Surface Laptop, including the world's first built-in magnetic USB-C charger.

This is being pitched as a revolutionary laptop ecosystem, which draws on many huge players in creative tech to provide everything a creative needs. What do you think of the offer – and the price point?

You might recognise DJI more for its drone range, but actually, it makes exceptional (and affordable) products for content creators and vloggers alike. Its gimbal cameras have stolen the spotlight recently, and I'm in the process of testing the Osmo Pocket 4P as we speak.

• Browse all Amazon US DJI Prime Day Deals
• Browse all Amazon UK DJI Prime Day Deals

The first thing the company sent me for consideration was the DJI Mic Mini 2S, a wearable and super-compact mic set with a mobile USB-C receiver and charging case. This has immensely improved my audio when recording voiceovers for Creative Bloq's growing social platforms, and our TikTok videos are looking pretty sharp, if I do say so – thanks to the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P gimbal camera.

You can watch me unbox this camera in about 20 seconds in the video below.

*If you can't see the video above, please refresh the page.

DJI Prime Day deals

And now, one of the most striking examples yet has entered the fold. The New Matter Sudo, with its aluminium body and click wheel, is such a dead ringer for the iPod Classic that it's a wonder John Ternus isn't banging down the door with a cease-and-desist letter.

But Sudo isn't simply an old iPod Classic wearing a fresh coat of paint. For starters, it can stream music as well as play your own files (although at this point it's unclear which streaming services are actually supported). There's a microSD slot supporting cards up to a frankly ludicrous 1TB. You also get a 3.5mm headphone jack – remember those?

The nostalgia is baked into the controls, too. There's a proper tactile click wheel for flicking through your music, sitting beneath a 2.73-inch touchscreen. It's all powered by Sudo OS and squeezed into an aluminium body measuring just 103.5 x 58.6 x 8.5mm. In other words, it's the size of an iPod, not the IMAX display—sorry, iPhone—in your pocket.

And now for the catch. You can't actually buy it yet. A $50 deposit will get you a place on the list for the first batch, due to drop at the end of 2027. The total expected (and that word is doing a lot of heavy lifting) price is $249. And as we know from disasters like the Humane AI pin, investing in a product before it actually exists is risky business.

Still, if it all comes together, this could be the most compelling contemporary iPod we've seen – one that'll certainly look chic next to your favourite dumb phone.

So you don't miss out, I've rounded up the best IEM deals on Amazon in the US and UK, from a warm, beautifully balanced audiophile favourite to a gaming-friendly set with a swappable USB-C cable, a dual-tuning bargain and a pair of wireless earbuds with noise cancellation.

• Browse office chair Prime Day deals at Amazon

The discounts here aren't huge, but these IEMs were already outstanding value, so even a few dollars or pounds off makes them more tempting. Best of all, every set has been tested by our audio experts, so you can be sure you're getting genuine quality rather than just a flashy spec sheet.

Check out the offers below. And if you haven't already, be sure to sign up for Amazon Prime for the best savings.

The best IEM deals

Prime Day IEM deals: USA

Prime Day IEM deals: UK

So which should you choose? If you want the most refined sound for your money, the Truthear Pure is the one to beat in both the US and UK, with a warm, natural tuning that's easy to love. In the US, the Kiwi Ears KE4 is worth the extra if you want gorgeous mids with a hefty dose of bass, while gamers should look to the Juzear Defiant Gamefidelity Edition, with its exciting sound, mic and swappable USB-C cable.

UK buyers on a tight budget should check out the OoopusX Op.22, which gives you two very different sound profiles for little more than £30. And on both sides of the Atlantic, if you'd rather ditch the wires entirely, the Moondrop Space Travel 2 offers impressive sound and noise cancellation for less than a takeaway.

Whichever you go for, try a few different ear tips to get a good seal: it makes a bigger difference than you'd think.

The good news is that whichever you decide to go for as a digital artist, you can save big today. Amazon has big discounts on our top-rated pen tablet and pen display.

Our favourite pen tablet, Wacom Intuos Pro Medium is reduced by $80 from $379.95 $299.95.

And for a display the 4K beauty that is the XPPen Artist Pro 27 has $380 off, reduced from $1,899.99 to $1519.99

We ranked both of these as the best in their class in our comparison of the best drawing tablets in 2026, which we're updating regularly as we test new devices.

The best Prime Day drawing tablet deals

• Browse Prime Day drawing tablet deals at Amazon

Pen tablet or pen display?

If you're trying to choose between a pen tablet vs a pen display, budget will play a role, but so will how you want to work. Pen displays have the obvious advantage that you can draw directly on the device's display, which avoids the need to get used to the hand-eye coordination required with a pen tablet, with which you're not looking at your hand as you draw. That can also make a pen display better for details.

But pen displays tend to be larger and less portable. They're best used with a stand, otherwise they can be bad for your posture, and some artists find it difficult to find the perfect position that avoids neck, back or arm ache during long sessions. Since a pen tablet lies flat on your desk, you can always have arm and wrist support, and you can place your monitor at whatever height you want.

Note that both options require connection to a laptop or PC, which is what runs your software. If you want true portability for drawing away from a computer, you'll need a standalone drawing tablet like XPPen's Magic Drawing Pad, an iPad or the upcoming Huion Kamvas Pad 12.

Of course, with CDs you need a CD player, and luckily I've found the perfect one to match the retro pretentiousness of my newest collector's hobby. The Syitren R400 Retro CD Player is now $85.49 $72.66 at Amazon as part of October's Prime Day sale – a great statement piece that performs in both the style and function departments.

Don't forget you can sign up for a 30-day free Prime trial so you don't miss out on the last of these Prime Day deals.

Not quite your style? Check out the best CD player deals based on your region.

The 2-in-1 laser and CMYK inkjet printer offers colour printing, laser cutting, and engraving in one device. It also supports over 100 materials, catering to personalised crafts and small-business projects.

• Browse all Amazon US laser Prime Day Deals
• Browse all Amazon UK laser Prime Day Deals

xTool is making waves right now with its advanced all-in-one and multi-craft machines, saving makers from having to purchase multiple machines for different projects.

Take a look at the xTool WonderPress, as well as machines like the brand-new xTool Omni OM1 UV printer, to see how just one machine can transform your home studio into a mini merchandise factory.

Alternative xTool deals

In fact, even as late as Cyber Monday at the start of December 2025, you could still get the 4TB version of this drive for under $300. Now, you get half the storage for an extra $34, and sadly, this is actually a great deal these days: it's the best price since February, and Amazon thinks it's so special that it's got a timer running showing just hours left.

There's nothing we can do other than be grateful for the discount. For a photographer or videographer, a decent sized fast portable SSD isn't a choice: it's essential. If you've been waiting for the best moment to buy one, this is probably that moment. We might get a similar deal during Black Friday at the end of November, but there's no sign that SSD prices are going to return to "normal" in the near future: some analysts don't expect prices to stabilise again until at least 2028.

• Shop Portable SSD deals at Amazon

You can now get the Apple Watch SE 3 for $249.00 $199 at Amazon – a juicy 20% saving on the brand's latest affordable smartwatch. If you've been on the fence about investing in one, now's the time to make your move.

There's not long to go before the sale ends, but check out the best Apple deals we've already found. Don't forget you can get a 30-day free Prime trial so you don't miss out on any of the juicy discounts.

Not quite the deal you're looking for? Check out these other Apple Watch deals based on your region.

Launched in 2024, the Quest 3S is a more affordable version of the Meta Quest 3. It shares the same chip and the same 8GB RAM, which means it can run every game and app as the 3. That makes it the best value VR headset around.

• Check out the best Meta Quest deals over at Amazon

This deal makes it even cheaper, plunging it below the $300 mark, and that's not all. You'll also get an Amazon-exclusive Gorilla Tag bundle, including a Gorilla Space Program suit and helmet plus 2,000 Shiny Rocks, as well as a three-month trial of Meta Horizon+ for access to more than 100 games. It would be a great gift for anyone curious about VR.

Click on the link below to buy one now, plus you haven't already, sign up for Amazon Prime to get the best savings.

How it compares to the Quest 2

For Meta Quest 2 owners like me, the biggest draw here is performance. Meta says the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip delivers twice the graphical processing power of the Quest 2, while 8GB of RAM gives you 33% more memory. That means faster loading, smoother gameplay and access to newer titles that push the hardware harder.

You also get full-colour passthrough cameras, so mixed-reality experiences that blend virtual objects with your real room look far more convincing than the Quest 2's noticeablu grainy black-and-white view.

There are compromises, though. To keep costs down, the Quest 3S uses the same Fresnel lenses and three fixed IPD settings as the Quest 2, rather than the sharper pancake lenses of the Quest 3. The visuals are also less crisp than its pricier sibling, with a visible screen-door effect that's most obvious when you're watching films on a big virtual screen. On the plus side, storage shouldn't be a worry: VR games are fairly small, so 128GB will be plenty for most people.

Meta has done more than any other company to bring VR into the mainstream, and its Horizon OS software and huge library of exclusive games remain the best around. If you've never tried VR, or you're still on a Quest 2 like me, this Prime Day deal is a very tempting time to jump in.

And let's be clear: this is a laptop that comes highly recommended. The Acer Nitro V 16S AI currently sits at number two our guide to the best laptops for 3D modelling, and it's our overall pick for best value. Despite its gaming-first branding, our reviewer found it handled 3D character creation, motion and mo-cap in Reallusion's Character Creator without a hiccup.

• Check out the best Prime Day laptop deals over at Amazon

One important note: the model on offer here isn't the configuration we tested. Paul's review unit packed an RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of RAM and a 2560 x 1600 display, and costs $1,849.99. This version has an RTX 5060, 16GB of RAM and a 1920 x 1200 screen. That's a step down in power, but at more than $600 less, it's still a compelling option for anyone getting started in 3D.

Click on the offer below to take advantage, and if you haven't already, be sure to sign up for Amazon Prime for the best savings.

Packed with power

The headline feature is the RTX 5060, built on NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture with fourth-gen RT Cores and fifth-gen Tensor Cores. Those are exactly the technologies that speed up rendering and AI-assisted creative tools, as well as games. Alongside it, the Ryzen AI 7 350 includes an NPU rated at up to 50 TOPS, so you get the full set of Copilot+ PC features too.

The 16-inch, 16:10 display has a 180Hz refresh rate, 100% sRGB coverage and 400 nits of brightness. Elsewhere, you get a 1TB Gen 4 SSD, Wi-Fi 6E and Acer's quad-intake cooling system, which kept Paul's review unit running without any thermal throttling.

There are trade-offs. The design is functional rather than exciting, and the model we tested managed only just over six hours of battery life, so this is best suited to working near a plug. And while 16GB of RAM is enough to get started, more complex scenes and multi-app workflows will feel the squeeze.

Acer's Nitro line has always been aimed squarely at gamers, but as our reviewer discovered, the hardware that makes a great gaming laptop is exactly what 3D artists need too. If you can stretch to the RTX 5070 Ti model, that's still our pick. But if your budget is tight, this Prime Day deal is a very sensible way in.

Highlights include $300 off the Dell XPS 14, reduced from $1,999 to $1,699 at Amazon. This light, compact laptop is an option as a MacBook Air alternative for content creators on the move.

If you need stronger graphics capabilities for gaming, 3D work or video editing with higher-end effects, there are also big deals about on laptops with Nvidia RTX 5000 series GPUs, including $400 off the Lenovo 16 Pro 9i Aura at B&H Photo, a powerful laptop designed with filmmakers and digital artists in mind.

See our top recommendations in the US and UK below. We've not included Macs here. For Apple laptop deals, see our dedicated roundup of the best MacBook Prime Day deals.

Today's best laptop deals for creatives

US deals

UK deals

If you're looking for cheaper laptops, see our guide to the best budget laptops for graphic design students.

The top deal seems to be £130 off the Cricut Explore 5 Deluxe Bundle, which is currently down to just £212.99 in the UK from the usual £349.99 bundle price.

• Browse all Amazon US Cricut Prime Day Deals
• Browse all Amazon UK Cricut Prime Day Deals

You can also save £50 on the Cricut Joy 2 Ultimate Bundle (I have this machine and it's excellent), now only £149.99 on Amazon, as well as £45 off the EasyPress SE heat-pressing machine.

These are some of the best Cricut machines you can get, and I've got all the details you need below.

Cricut Prime Day deals

Which Cricut machine should you buy this Prime Day ?

With so many great options, it can be hard to know which Cricut machine to buy if you're new to the community. I personally own the Cricut Maker 4 and absolutely love it. You can see my review of the Cricut Maker 4 for all of the details, but it's an excellent cutting machine, though slightly on the heavier side.

For something more compact and travel-friendly, I also can't recommend the Cricut Joy 2 enough! It's wonderful for quick crafts and smaller projects without needing to clear a lot of space on your craft bench.

That's especially welcome because the new Mac mini arrived with a price hike. When Apple announced it in August, the M6 model started at $100 more than its M4 predecessor. With this deal, though, you're now paying less than the older M4 model was selling for, while getting Apple's newest M6 chip inside.

• Check out the best Prime Day Apple deals over at Amazon

And the M6 is a significant step up. It's Apple's first 2nm chip, and the first Apple silicon to feature a 12-core CPU, with Apple claiming up to 40% faster CPU performance than before. Add in the Mac mini's tiny five-inch-square footprint and generous selection of ports, and this is now one of the best-value ways to get a powerful Mac on your desk.

Click on the offer below to take advantage, or see our roundup of Apple Prime Day deals to find further savings on Macs, iPads and more. Finally, if you haven't already, be sure to sign up for Amazon Prime to get the best savings.

Small box, big performance

Need to use a lot of power-hungry creative software? The M6 will see you right. Its 12-core CPU combines two super cores, four performance cores and six efficiency cores, so it should feel snappy whether you're editing photos or juggling a dozen apps.

The 12-core GPU adds hardware-accelerated ray tracing and a Neural Accelerator in each core, which should help with 3D work and gaming, while a new dual 16-core Neural Engine handles AI tasks on device. Video editors get a dedicated media engine with hardware support for ProRes and ProRes RAW, as well as H.264, HEVC and AV1 decoding.

Connectivity, too, is excellent for such a small machine. Around the back you'll find three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI and 2.5Gb Ethernet, with two USB-C ports and a headphone jack on the front for easy access. Apple's own N1 chip brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and you can run up to three external displays at once.

The main compromise is storage. 256GB won't go far if you work with large video or 3D files. In this case you'll need to budget for an external SSD, which the Thunderbolt 4 ports will make easy to use.

The Mac mini has long been the cheapest way into Apple's desktop range, and since its 2024 redesign it's become a favourite with creatives who want Mac performance without paying for a built-in screen. With the M6 on board and $119 off, this Prime Day deal makes it more tempting than ever.

Blurring the lines between reality and fiction, the jam-packed poster feels like a piece of Capitol propaganda straight out of Panem. Captivating and hypnotic with a looming threat beneath its floral facade, the new Sunrise on the Reaping sets high expectations for the upcoming film.

The new poster features a cascading collection of the Sunrise on the Reaping cast, with Ralph Fiennes as President Snow looming over the top. At a glance, the heavy purple visuals bursting with florals give the design a natural, serene feel, only to be juxtaposed by images of axes, blades and military propaganda.

"This poster is BEAUTIFUL and unsettling at the same time. The amount of detail is insane," one fan on X wrote. "Easily the best Hunger Games poster ever," another chimed in. "The Hunger Games still knows how to make every poster feel like a beautiful piece of Panem propaganda," one fan praised.

For more design inspiration, check out the Digger poster that struck graphic design gold or take a look at the new Clayface poster that gets creepier the more you look at it.

We've highlighted our pick of the best below, including beautiful machines from Nespresso, Lavazza, Keurig and more. These are the models that bring you the best combination of price, features, and positive customer reviews.

If you're already fully caffeinated, take a look at our wider coverage of this week's best Prime Day deals.

“I enjoy experimenting with colour and finding new ways to make colours more expressive,” she says. Here are four examples of her work.

If you need the tools to develop your own worlds, see our guides to the best drawing tablets and the best laptops for drawing and digital art.

Lain

“In this art, I used the lasso tool while still aiming to retain a painterly feel.”

Master Frog

“In this piece, I wanted the contrasting colours to almost glow on the screen. It was also my way of paying tribute to my D&D Dungeon Master.”

Elven Queen

“For this piece, I challenged myself to work with a limited, high-key palette. I wanted to preserve depth while using mostly light colours where I could.”

Mena

“This is my favourite character. I wanted to make a vertical composition, but it took me a long time to find the right pose and angle.”

You can see more of Polina's work on her ArtStation profile.

This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.

Today's drawing tablet deals

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