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Engadget Roundup Spotlights Japanese Gadgets Rarely Sold in the U.S.

Engadget lists Japanese gadgets rarely sold in the U.S., including Sharp's Poketomo, AQUOS R11 and a fan umbrella.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-19 22:09

Among the products featured is Sharp's Poketomo, a palm-sized, meerkat-inspired AI companion robot. According to Engadget, Poketomo remembers conversations and experiences, recognizes faces and its surroundings, responds with movement and light, and can occasionally start a conversation on its own. The robot can turn daily conversations into a record of the day written from its own perspective through an app. It launched in Japan, and Taiwan became its first market outside Japan on July 1, 2026. It costs roughly $400 before a monthly subscription. Engadget said it remains a gadget far more likely to be seen in Japan than on an American store shelf.

Sharp's AQUOS R11 is another device in the roundup. Engadget described it as having hardware expected from a 2026 flagship, including a 6.5-inch Pro IGZO OLED display with a variable 1Hz to 240Hz refresh rate and up to 3,600 nits of peak brightness. Its Leica-supervised camera system includes 50.3-megapixel standard and ultrawide cameras, plus a 38.5-megapixel telephoto camera with 2.9x optical zoom. The phone also has Acharium, a feature that combines light and sound to change the atmosphere around the user, and AI-based Smart Fit Zoom, which recognizes people or pets and automatically adjusts the zoom to help frame a shot. It is priced at roughly $1,100.

Thanko's Fanbrella POLE PLUS combines an umbrella and a portable fan. A small fan is built into the umbrella's shaft, blowing air upward toward the user's face and head while the canopy provides shade and UV protection, Engadget reported. The latest model has three fan speeds and an airflow system the company says is 20 percent more powerful than the previous version. Its rechargeable battery can run for up to about 4.5 hours depending on the setting, and the umbrella weighs roughly 350 grams. It sells for about $47 in Japan.

Engadget said Japan has a long tradition of creating wonderfully strange, hyper-specific inventions, some high-tech and some simple, that tend to stay within its borders. The roundup focuses on products that are almost exclusively sold in Japan and usually unavailable on American store shelves.