Popularised by Apple's product pages (iPhone, Mac launches) from 2023 onward. Under the hood it is plain CSS Grid — columns defined with grid-template-columns, and each item spans some of them via grid-column/grid-row.
What makes it "bento" rather than a plain grid is sizing cells by the weight of the content: the important card gets 2×2, a minor stat gets 1×1. That lets you mix images, numbers and text on one screen without it feeling cluttered, because size tells you what matters first.
Slice it too finely and the hierarchy collapses — nothing reads as "the" highlight anymore. One or two hero cells plus three to five supporting ones is a good rule of thumb.
When to use
Good for feature overviews or dashboard summaries mixing different kinds of content. If everything has equal weight (a product list), a plain uniform grid is simpler and better.