Polaris
We’re kicking off the year with the Polaris – a design that encapsulates fluid power.
SPECS
Diameter 54.9mm
Width 46.0mm
Weight 67.5g
Material titanium
Atmos’ roots lie in organic design, but working on various performance-oriented, high function designs has been such a joy.
While this segment in the market has been saturated, particularly over the past couple of years, we’ve found gaps and niches that make the space a welcome challenger to tinker in. That’s been the raison d’etre of the Weatherman Line – a product line dedicated to experimentation and fresh expression in the high performance yoyo space.
The Weatherman Line currently comprises the Khuno, Ari, Aria, and other designs that are still in the works. The Aria evolved from the Ari, a titanium, Side-Effects and cap-enabled iteration of the Khuno. The Khuno was the first-ever bimetal in history to accept Side Effects, and the Ari remains one of our most beloved designs to date.
In the Aria we tunneled into a performance focus; we kept the general form factor, but removed the Side Effects components of design for players who treasured play and performance over customizability and modularity. What emerged was a performance-optimized, 57mm-diametqer beast. It had a big frame, and was technically “heavier” than average at 68g – but the Aria was one project where we learned an enormous amount about how to make powerful designs in the high 60+g range feel fluid and nimble, breaking conventions and expectations of how heavy yoyos generally feel sluggish and reluctant.
The Aria turned out feeling like a muscle car that hummed silently with torque – it had a low-center-of-gravity smoothness of movement, immense stability, and gave players superb control over pace, with the play experience never coming close to being overbearing, or bricky.
We’ve had questions regarding the width of our designs, and why they’re always as wide as they are. Our slimmest design clocks in at 45.6mm, but the rest mostly hang around the 48mm-range. In terms of ergonomics, we make sure they feel nice and full in the hand, though it can feel large for some. Our decisions about the width of our designs are intentional – they allow us the space to do creative things with weight distribution that produces a signature litheness with surprising power. The Aria is a specimen of that formula.
For our first release of the year, the Polaris is a fresh reimagination of the Aria concept that dials up performance, power and control, but packed into a smaller form factor. We were incredibly inspired by the Chopsticks Gorilla and Toru 0.99 by Yoyorecreation, as well as the Cetus by Turning Point, which we regard as industry-leading examples of designs that have compact frames, but are outsized in performance.
In conversations with Yuji, Coleman and Vladimir, we got excited to work on a model that embodied that fluidity and power, without a “min-max” approach to weight distribution, or bombastic physical frames.
Going small while increasing power requires some tinkering, as the two aims are not instinctively compatible. Generally, all things held constant, a larger diameter leads to more rotational power. Reducing overall size while stepping up power required a structural overhaul, as well as a shift towards a more extreme diameter-to-width ratio.
We scrapped the rim design in the Aria, and redesigned it to further optimize it for power. The Aria’s rim was a simple, even extrusion, whereas the Polaris sports an angled, dipped rim that packs a deceptive amount of mass. The Polaris also features a gradual domed hub – which, alongside the heftier rim design, provides a distribution of weight that perfectly balances power with fluidity.
On the surface of the Polaris, we kept the signature cuts and lines that call back to the Khuno, and have been present in the Weatherman Line. It’s extremely comfortable in hand, and it doesn’t feel like you have a traditionally performant model in hand. It’s elegant and minimalist, but extremely functional.
Playwise, it weaves in and out of technical mounts without sacrificing stability and power, and even improving upon the agility and maneuverability of the Aria. It’s just as stable, but has a degree of fluidity that its predecessor lacks.
Polaris is Latin for pole star, which is beautifully evocative of the celestial, and etymologically it also draws from polus, which translates to “end of an axis” – which is an interesting play on design terminology.
Polaris also pays homage to the Weatherman Line in that ari is embedded in its name.
The turn of the year represents many new things – including a refreshed direction in our product design philosophy.
The Polaris typifies that, and we’re incredibly excited to share that with you.
The Polaris is equipped with premier kit in Stratos Pads by Atmos, Type II Concave Bearings by Atmos, and First Class XL String by Kitty. We’re also excited to announce that Atmos pouches come included with every Polaris.
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january 2024
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