The Sci-Fi Hand Terminal Prop That Keeps Selling

I didn't expect this one to take off the way it did. The hand terminal started as a personal project — I wanted to make something that captured the feel of the personal communicators in The Expanse, the Amazon sci-fi series based on the James S.A. Corey novels. Clean lines, near-future pragmatism, the kind of object that exists in a world where technology has become completely mundane infrastructure.

I made it from laser-cut acrylic, layered to give it depth and a tactile presence you don't get from a flat piece. And then I listed it, and people found it.

What Is The Expanse Hand Terminal?

If you haven't watched The Expanse, the hand terminal is one of the show's most consistently present props. It's a slim, rectangular personal device — somewhere between a smartphone and a tablet — that characters use for communication, data access, and ship interface. It shows up in almost every episode, carried by everyone from dockworkers on Ceres to crew on the Rocinante.

What makes it distinctive is its restraint. It doesn't look like a futuristic gadget trying too hard. It looks like the mundane result of 200 more years of hardware design — a tool, not a statement. That aesthetic is genuinely hard to capture in a prop, and it's what I was going for.

How It's Made

The prop is made from a single piece of acrylic — cut to shape and engraved with all surface details in one operation on the laser cutter. There's no assembly, no bonding, no layering.

The surface details — the panel lines, the interface hints, the form language — are engraved directly into the acrylic rather than painted on. That means they read cleanly at any distance and hold up under actual handling rather than chipping off the way decals or painted details would.

Who's Buying It

The buyers break into a few clear groups:

• Expanse cosplayers who want an accurate-feeling prop for conventions and photo shoots
• General sci-fi cosplayers who want a near-future communicator that reads as believable across many fictional universes
• Fans of the show who want a piece of it on a shelf or desk
• Star Trek and general sci-fi fans who appreciate the design language even without a specific show attachment
• Prop collectors who want handcrafted, not mass-produced

The cosplay use case drives the most volume. The hand terminal is sized to be worn and handled, and it's durable enough to survive a convention floor without babying it.

Where to Get One

The listing is on Etsy here. It's also available through the New Janky Workshop Shopify store if that's a more convenient checkout for you.

If you want something custom — a specific color combination, an engraved name or insignia, a modified form factor for a specific costume — reach out through the contact page. I've done custom work on these and it's usually doable with enough lead time.