Above: Photo by SergeyNivens/DepositPhotos

BitDepth#1490 for December 23, 2024

Pretty much everything on this list falls in the category of stocking stuffer, the kind of small gift that’s considerate and thoughtful but not overwhelmingly expensive or likely to create guilt if the giver didn’t actually get a gift.

You might also find this list handy to get yourself something special.
In sifting through my wish lists, bookmarked product listings and annotated screen captures, I’ve left out the truly odd, very use-specific, and frankly expensive items.

Those include digital smart thermometers, robot vacuum units, and smart rings like the Oura, but they are expensive and oddball things.

Let’s consider the genuinely useful stuff that might be a good fit for you.
A portable speaker is public noise, and I thought I’d never need one.

But now I’m using a mid-sized (read: not pocketable) unit in my car because headphones are a terrible idea in that space and the auxiliary plug in the car sound system (old, no Bluetooth) is dead.

In considering a portable speaker, the balance is always between sound quality, size and battery life. Pick any two. Small units are only useful in personal space and have low battery life. Party units are loud, have big batteries and are usually water resistant, but are hefty things. Choose according to need.

Those considerations also apply to a portable battery. Powerful units capable of running a modern laptop are big and expensive, small battery sources won’t run modern smartphones for long and are best considered energy top-ups.

An interesting midpoint for smaller battery chargers are those that have a plug and can be used as a power adapter as well.

If your device came with a power adapter and charges using USB-C, it’s probably too big for what it does. Modern GaN (gallium nitride) charging technology has dramatically reduced the size of modern charge plugs and powerful units are both smaller and capable of charging multiple devices simultaneously.

If you travel regularly, replacing multiple chargers with one unit that can do double or triple duty makes sense, even more so if it has a foldable wall plug and replaceable plug options for the electrical outlets of different countries.

Also, never buy a straight extension cord again. There are many choices in extension power cables that include USB outlets that will charge everything from a basic smartphone to a laptop.

Units capable of doing power delivery of 65 watts are on the higher end of the price spectrum, but effectively replace multiple chargers while also offering up standard power sockets if you need them.

If you have a smartphone with inductive charging, ditch cables entirely. Inductive chargers have a power coil under their surface that connects to a receiving unit on your phone, charging it without having to fuss with plugs.

Unfortunately, while there is an international standard for inductive charging, most wireless chargers are designed for either iPhones or Android smartphones and smartwatches, so shop carefully.

If you’ve got a smartphone or tablet, it’s likely that eventually you’ll need to deal with storage issues, particularly if socially motivated photos and videos are part of your lifestyle.

You can try using cloud storage solutions to offload some of those files, but you might benefit more directly by using a dual-port flash drive.

These units have one standard USB-A port, the one that’s been on computers forever, and another that’s USB-C. A few offer Apple’s Lightning port as an option, but that’s a dying connection system and they are already becoming rare.

To use the device, you copy from the smartphone to the flash drive, then from the flash drive to the computer. Along the way, you also create a backup of your files on the flash drive with this workflow.

Most of the laptop users I know work at a desk at least part of the time, but those who work from home are most likely to end up putting the computer on the couch or on a pillow.

This is a spectacularly bad idea, because it creates insulation where the computer expects to be able to radiate the heat its processors generate.

As a stop-gap, use a coffee table book as an intermediary surface, but plan to get yourself a laptop tray of some kind. I favour the sort that feature a metal surface on top to capture heat and a padded surface underneath.

Shop carefully though. Many have plastic surfaces, which don’t conduct heat and trap it only a bit less efficiently than a pillow. Unfortunately metal surfaced laptop trays are becoming harder to find, The units that I’ve found that are available are described as chill mats and will normally also have a small fan built in that the laptop powers.

There are a few form factors to these trays, including units that are clearly influenced by bed service trays, but simple and efficient has always seemed to be the best solution to solving this problem.