Paul’s tech gift guide (few of my favorite things)
With a very hungry baby today and actually have to venture out into the madness to pick up a package that was supposed to have been here a week ago, so here’s a quick badly formatted guide to things Paul thinks your tech inclined special someone will like.
This will be updated throughout the day, I’m chasing a 2yo today who’s intent on attempting to destroy anything I’m writing about.
Unless otherwise noted, these are things I constantly use. While I review a lot of products, most end up being shipped back or given to friends. The following are always in use.
Nixplay Iris, Seed, Edge photo frames. You take hundreds of amazing photos, so why frame just one?
Seriously though, I’ve been using all of these nonstop since I got them. I even have my dad a frame that I push family photos to and they automatically play for him.
Portal WiFi – while it needs some more firmware work, it’s been hands down the best ranged WiFi I’ve ever worked with. You can read about one of these managing to cover most of a 35,000 sq foot office building here.
I now use two at that office building to fill in the gaps now.
The Amazon Fire Kids Edition Tablets – while underpowered for better games, and stuck in the Amazon Ecoverse, they’ve got a pretty good launcher and things for smaller children. Worried about YouTube Kids? No worries, they won’t let it run without forcibly installing Play Services.
Google Home. I’m not on Google’s radar for anything, I bought this, then I bought another. I don’t even have a way to make money off of selling Google products as they’re banned from Amazon. You’ll probably love Google Home.
The EVOVACS DEEBOT M80 Pro – it’s a robot vacuum cleaner/mop that does the job more or less. Price is generally pretty reasonable. I use it for the vacuum. It did an OK job at mopping but it was taking as much time to prep the house as I would have spent mopping myself.
It’s supposed to be on sale today for the same price as the coupon codes we have in that review.
ZUS Locator and Tire Safety Monitor. The only real complaint I have about these is that the Locator could be done with the software and the Tire Safety Monitor. Knowing when your car is losing pressure before the TPMS kicks in, and knowing which tire is going, are great. Being able to share your vehicle’s location with a loved one is useful. Being able to remember where you parked is also great.
Ditto – a smart notification device. While my Ditto has become misplaced, I really loved being able to get notifications as unique codes. It made it so I could be in a meeting without looking at my phone constantly, and I could walk the streets without my phone sounding like a casino. Unfortunately, my belief is the ditto got laundered.
Toast Made covers. Real wood skins with your own design. For phones, gaming systems, Google Home (see picture above,) and many more.
Portable Power banks with car jump starters built in. We’ve reviewed a lot of these. This is the last one we did, this is the next one we’re reviewing this week. Get yourself out of a dead phone jam, or jump start you car. Only thing I would mention with these is you don’t actually need a lot of mAh capacity to jump start a large vehicle. So if you can get a 6000mAh jumper for a third the price of a 10,000, go for it.
20,000mAh should jump start a large vehicle 40+ times before needing charged, so figure 500mAh per jump maybe.
Charging station. The more USB powered devices we have the more outlets get consumed. Well, I managed to consolidate most of my ridiculousness using the Alxum 10-port USB charging station, although maybe I’m the only person who has this level of charging needs (phones, tablets, biometric monitors, recorders, friends)
Sadly 10 ports is not enough.
Tinitell GPS watch for kids. No screens, no flare, just a watch that can call one of 10 predefined numbers and can locate your kid within a couple of houses radius. One of the few that didn’t fail security testing.
VIZIO Smart Displays. I received a unit for testing a long time ago, it was great but it lacked some on the smart side. They remedied that recently. Beautiful device. Very impressed that they updated already sold units and gave out new remotes for free.
Enchroma Colorblind Glasses. You may not have heard the story, but the short of it is I purchased a pair of these. I then purchased another that was aimed at inside use.
Both were stolen.
I purchased another. No media discount, no affiliation, these are something that improved my life outside. I will note they do nothing for me looking at screens, although that evidently has to do with how color is produced by monitors.
