Lifestyle
Review: Meze 11 Deco Designer Earphones
The attributes that Tesla owners are attracted to are known as the Tesla Lifestyle. But these things can be found in many places.
The hallmarks are simplicity in design and the desire to abandon the comprehensive and abbreviated and focus on the essential. I borrowed that last part from a 12th century Japanese philosopher. Seems to fit perfectly. Teslarati is always on the lookout for items that embody this approach. This week we ran across the Meze 11 Deco ear monitors.
Antonio Meze is a Romanian born industrial designer, creative thinker and musician with many awards in his portfolio. He founded Meze Headphones in 2012 in London because he was not happy with the spectrum of headphones on the market. He leveraged his design skills, ability to think beyond the “box” and passion for music to create a distinctive line of headphones and earbuds. Meze blends classic design with technology and encases them in wood, which brings out a richer, more natural sound. The line of headphones is absolutely beautiful. For this post I’ll focus on the Meze 11 Deco ear monitors.
DESIGN
The earbuds come in a round case that evokes a woman’s make-up compact. Pure white with a full zipper that’s well stitched on both the top and bottom. The only markings are the Meze logo, a custom designed element that seems to be a cross between a person, earbuds and a classic string instrument. The typeface is lowercase and cursive. Everything is a silver-gray. Subtle and compelling. Using white is a departure from the standard black we see from so many other manufacturers. My study workspace at home is always packed with technology and my wife ignores all of them. But when this case arrived and I left it on my desk, it attracted her like a moth to a flame.
Unzipping the clamshell reveals the earbuds, two sets of cushions in case you’ve got freakish-size ears and a silver hook allowing attachment to a backpack for fast access. Easy enough. Plug them in and spin up the tunes.
PERFORMANCE
When trying out speakers or headphones it’s important to mix up the sounds. Most people want to listen to familiar tracks to compare what they’re used to hearing. They will of course sound different, because it’s a different set-up. Do you hear something you’ve never heard before? That’s an indication. Don’t forget to try unfamiliar tracks and genres. Classical, jazz, soundtracks and even spoken word such as podcasts should be sampled. I also used the built-in mic and made some phone calls.
I was more than satisfied with the quality of the sound. Good highs and lows separation. I put them to the voice test by listening to the distinct vocal stylings of Peter Gabriel, Lana Del Rey, Agnes Obel, David Albarn and Goyte. The delivery was crisp and clean. The bass seemed to be a bit more pronounced than I normally listen to, but this is a minor complaint.
COMFORT
They also score well on the comfort level. I used them for over an hour while penning this post. At times I forgot I even had them in. The length of the cord is sufficient and the plug has a slight offset which serves as yet another design choice, but seems to allow for more material and perhaps more durable. Time will tell. As mentioned the built-in microphone was excellent for phone conversations, but lacks a volume control.
These are not meant for workout or sports. They remain in your ears under normal movements, but will not work well on your morning run. More quiet, calm spaces are perfect for these ear monitors. Obviously electing the correct ear cushion size makes a big difference. The R and L notations on the buds are difficult to find. I’m a stickler for following those directions as it aligns the music to how the artist intended to deliver it. Mr. Meze’s design sense likely pushed him to display these cues in a very subtle manner.
Meze calls these earbuds,
“An earphone for those who already have a musical identity.”
I’m used to noise canceling headphones, especially while traveling. That means lugging around a much larger case and remembering to have an extra battery. I’ve got a flight to NY tomorrow and I’m going to forego my usual headphones in favor of the Meze 11 Deco ear monitors. At $79.00, these earbuds are a bargain.
Photos taken with an Olympus E-510 SLR. Exploded view of the Meze 11 Deco ear monitors courtesy of Meze.
Elon Musk
How to use Grok Bot to block spam calls and texts
Musk told users to ask Grok Bot to scrub their phone numbers from spam lists.
Elon Musk has a new use case for Grok Bot, and it is the spam call. On Thursday he replied to an X user named Arash with a short instruction: “Ask your @Grok @Bot to remove your phone number from spam call & text lists!” Arash had said he got tired of the calls, had an AI bot find his number on listing sites and file removal requests, and packaged the process as a free skill for others.
The skill is called Spam-Call Scrubber, which is described to find a phone number on people search sites and data brokers, submits the opt outs, completes the confirmation emails those sites send back, and rechecks on a schedule the user picks. Using it requires the Grok Bot app. The pitch is time saved, since most broker opt outs sit behind separate forms on separate sites.
Ask your @Grok @Bot to remove your phone number from spam call & text lists!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2026
Musk said Grok Bot now gives each bot its own email address, and that it can detect scam emails. On Thursday he also said SpaceX would make users whole if the bot botches a purchase or leaks a card, then told users to shop away from Amazon after the retailer blocked the agent, as Teslarati reported. The terms of service we reviewed at the time put responsibility for what an agent does on the user.
For Tesla owners, Grok Bot is not just a phone app. Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles on September 22, and we argued earlier this week that the Cybercab’s real advantage may be the errands it runs during a ride. Every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet has it enabled. The more routine tasks like this one become, the more a rider has reason to hand over something personal in the back seat.
The new Spam-Call Scrubber skill can be downloaded for free and works on sites that honor removal requests, while noting that listings can reappear, and illegal robocallers do not check any registry. Whether Spam-Call Scrubber cuts anyone’s call volume is something the first wave of users will find out, and Musk’s endorsement guarantees that wave is coming.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
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