Why are almost all the new HF ham radios so ugly? HF Ham radios use
to be a thing of beauty, but now most of them are butt ugly!

Icom Radios all look like oversized Palm Pilots

Kenwood HF Radios - What where they thinking?
TS-480? - Yuck! I would not want that thing on my desk.
TS-2000 - Deaf, poor selectivity, and ugly.

Ok. The Yaesu FT-2000 is nice looking, but according to EHam.net
reviews there are issues with the AGC popping, and the 3 kHz roofing
filter actually being wider than the 6 kHz roofing filter. I'm
holding out for future fixes on this one.

Yaesu FT-950 -mildly ugly
Yaesu FT-897D - really ugly
Yaesu FT-857D - compact and ugly
Yaesu FT-817ND - Looks like it has warts on it's face
Yaseu FT-450 - Pretty ugly

TenTecOrion II and Omni VII - Oversized Palm Pilots.

Now the Kenwood TS-940 was a good looking radio.
The Drake TR-7 was nice looking.
The Yaesu FT-980 was sharp looking.
The Yaesu FT-1000d was nice looking
The TenTec Omni VI was nice looking.

The same thing happened to component stereo systems. In the 1970s and
1980s they were gorgeous, but now they are ugly black metal boxes.
What happened to the radio equipment that you could display proudly
for everyone to see instead of something so ugly even the owner does
not want to look at it?