Christmas gift guide: The top tech gear for gadget lovers this festive season

What should you buy for the techy in your life?

Once again, “the most wonderful time of the year” is hoving into view and, with it, the mind-numbing conundrum of what to buy for tech-loving family and/or loved ones – or, indeed, yourself.

So, Computing has put together a Christmas list for you of gifts both grand and modest that ought to suit every pocket, for both work and leisure.

Computing does not receive money or other benefits from any of the brands mentioned here – it's a truly neutral list.

Read on for our recommendations.

Logitech Brio 500

£99.99

With so many executives (and non-execs) working from home and meeting over Zoom, Teams or Google Meet, it’s remarkable so few have a quality, dedicated webcam to make it both easy and professional. Why wear headphones, while a grainy laptop webcam makes it look like you’ve got a DSL connection, circa 2004 (or Forest Hill, London circa 2024)?

A dedicated webcam can provide 1080p resolutions and some feature built-in microphones that won’t drown out colleagues with feedback.

Logitech webcams are arguably the safest choice, and the Logitech 500 is the pick of the bunch in terms of both price and functionality, boasting 1080p at 30fps, or 720p at 60fps. It also features dual microphones, and a privacy shutter for those of a paranoid state of mind.

It provides solid auto-exposure and low-light performance, so you won’t look like you’re filming a hostage video, and a the built-in microphones mean no headphones are required. Unless you’re actually in the office, and it’s open plan.

Anker Solix C1000 Solar Generator + 100w solar panel

£599

Working from home is great: you can get your nose down on work that requires your undivided attention, uninterrupted by colleagues, and the commute is rarely delayed by a broken-down train at Nunhead or badgers on the line at Surbiton.

But what about working, quite literally, in the field? Obviously, that’s not such a great idea at this time of the year, but what about a summer day working somewhere genuinely inspirational with all the power you might need for laptop, phone and anything else?

Or, failing that, how about using it to provide power to that summer house at the end of the garden without having to go through the aggravation of hiring a tradesperson?

This solar generator is the real deal. It offers up to 2,400 watts across eight ports – four conventional power sockets and four USB, plus a car output – enabling it to power just about any appliance you care to mention. You can even use it as a UPS with a certified switchover time of less than 20ms.

The device’s “EV grade” batteries can be fully recharged in under two hours. Anker suggests the lithium iron phosphate batteries ought to be good for 3,000+ cycles and throws in a five-year warranty for good measure, with an estimated 10-year lifespan.

If the budget doesn’t quite stretch this far, have a look at some less costly mobile solar options, like the Goal Zero Nomad 20 (£158) or Forclaz SLR 500 v2 (£35).

Oura Gen3 Smart Ring

£249

Smart watches are old hat. Everyone’s got one.

The cool kids now have smart rings, discretely providing health and fitness tracking in a much more stylish wearable package. It will track your sleep, heart rate and stress levels, among other things, with data communicated straight to your smartphone via an app.

It has a seven-day battery life and is water resistant to up to 100 metres.

The downside? You’ll have to purchase a £10 sizing kit first – to make sure it fits perfectly – and Oura will demand £5.99 a month subscription for the app.

Asus ROG Ally

£799 / £399

The Nintendo Switch is for kids. Grown gamers idle away their time in the departure lounge on the Asus ROG Ally.

Unlike Valve’s highly rated Steamdeck, the Ally runs Windows 11 and can therefore play any PC game; not just those in your Steam library, but in GoG, Epic and any other game store.

Moreover, the specs are pretty impressive.

While the 2023 version has been reduced to clear at an enticing £399, the latest £799 2024 model boasts 24GB of LPDDR5 RAM, a 1TB NVMe 4.0 SSD and a 16:9 aspect ratio on its 1080p, 120Hz screen.

The four-cell Li-ion battery ought to provide several hours of play between charges with the device maxed out – much longer on less demanding games.

The device is powered by the latest AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme high-performance SoC, designed especially for handheld gaming.

If those specs don’t impress you, are you even a techy?

For a most cost-effective option, the 2023 model is still available - and at half the price.

Philips 5400 Series Bean-to-Cup Espresso Machine

£450

Who doesn’t need a piping hot cup of coffee or three to really get going in the morning, whether working in the office or from home? Well, with the price of a cup of disappointing milky coffee in the average coffee shop now nudging £4, that means this will have paid for itself in a couple of months, including coffee, milk, beans, electricity, the lot.

At least, that’s what you can tell sceptics who question the price.

However, there’s no messing about grinding beans and tea-spooning them into the shot basket. It’s quite simple: beans go in the top, milk goes in a jug on the side, and frothy coffee comes out the middle.

After all, if you’re going to do the whole work from home thing on a regular basis, why not make the home office the kind of office that a company like Google has? Minus the ghastly beanbags, of course.

SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable SSD external drive

£88

There are few things more annoying than having to transfer documents or a presentation from one place to another and finding it’s too large to attach to an email, that your Box or Dropbox account is maxed out, or, when you get to the venue to give your presentation, the Wifi is too shonky to retrieve the artfully curated Powerpoint slides you’d hoped to wow the audience with.

In the past, portable disk drives were powered by mechanical hard disc drives with all the potential for catastrophic data loss on the move that implies. This 1TB SanDisk portable SSD not only doesn’t suffer from those potential mechanical failures, but offers IP65 protection against the elements.

If 1TB isn’t enough for you, there are also 2TB and 4TB versions available for £110 or £200.

BenQ e-Reading Desk Lamp

£180

Few modern inventions embody both brilliance and annoyance in one handy product as LED lighting.

On the one hand, LEDs are both energy efficient and cooler than traditional incandescent lights.

On the other, they have an annoying habit of fading, of not providing quite the right light – or enough light – and maybe flickering in a manner calculated to drive anyone mad.

That’s where good quality reading lamps come in, especially if you’ve reached a certain age having already knackered your eyes in your youth playing computer games on a bright, glowing CRT monitor.

The adjustable BenQ e-Reading Desk Lamp is available in three colours and is a smart piece of either home office or office-office furniture. It provides a range of hues and tones, can adjust its brightness to the ambient light and provides 150% wider lighting coverage than the average desk lamp.

If your eyes could talk, horrifying as the thought is, they’d thank you for it.

Stackers Weekend Garment Travel Holdall

£130

Travel is an inescapable part of many jobs these days, often driving or flying somewhere simply for a day or two. With airlines’ bag policies becoming ever-more stringent, a solution is required that can both ease busy people through check-in, and make sure the all-important business suit doesn’t come out the other end creased like it was stuffed into the bag at the last moment.

That’s where the Garment Travel Holdall comes in. Available in a variety of colours, it elegantly combines a suit-holder with a travel bag enabling not just suit, shirt, etcetera, to be comfortably conveyed but everything else you need at the same time, in one handy package.

Cheaper knockoffs are available from the usual places, but the Stackers Holdall is made from top quality leather and is highly rated by its owners.

Japanese Puzzle Box

£99

Everyone needs some downtime now and again, and what better way to spend that downtime than throwing the brain into sharp relief with an artful puzzle that challenges you to think inside, rather than outside, the box?

The challenge is to work out the 21 steps required to reach the centre chamber of this beautifully crafted box. No force is required: when the right pattern is discovered, the wooden panels will slide smoothly aside and the lid will open on the 21st step.

How hard can it be? Well, apparently, a lot harder than it looks.

For a more economical gift in a similar vein, why not try the £17 Infinity Puzzle, a smooth pocket-sized puzzle that also makes for a great work of art on your desktop?

The Prince – Niccolò Machiavelli

£5.99

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is often cited by aggressive up-and-coming tech executives as one of their inspirations, but what real business strategy can be gleaned from the advice to fight a battle from the high ground, rather than charging up a rain-sodden hill?

So, if you want to take business inspiration from history, why not read the leadership advice of someone who had to grapple politically with both the Borgias and Medicis in 16th century Italy?

Niccolò Machiavelli was a diplomat, philosopher and political theorist who served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic, working as secretary to the second chancery of the Republic of Florence between 1498 and 1512.

A tumultuous time in Italian history, with the country riven between the ambitions of wealthy, violently ruthless families, Machiavelli wrote The Prince based on his observations both of early 16th century Italy, and history.

It’s not just about history, however, but handling the most devious, darkest aspects of the human character – just the kind of people who somehow make it to the top of the greasy pole in business, as well as politics.

Of course, there’s only so far you can go in the modern business world with advice like, “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared,” but it’s arguably better than slaughtering the Emperor’s favourite concubines to make a point.

“This meeting is bollocks” mug

£7.99

Sometimes, people just don’t get a subtle hint. That’s when an unsubtle hint comes in handy. Who hasn’t sat through a dull meeting, meandering into tedious irrelevance, wishing that someone would say something to bring it to a merciful close, but suffering from that English disease of excessive reserve or politeness?

That’s where the suggestion of a nice, hot cup of tea, served in this mug will come in handy. Bring it down with a thump on the table and everyone – even the meeting bores who simply must have their say – will get the message.

This Christmas list is now adjourned for another year.