We are entering a Surrealist signifier of idiosyncratic technology. Any instrumentality you mightiness ideate tin beryllium recovered online courtesy of an obscure Chinese factory, acceptable to beryllium shipped retired for a loved one’s vacation enjoyment: pocket-size artificial-intelligence gizmos (Rabbit r1, $199), in-home hologram machines (Code 27 Character Livehouse, $558), human-size robot servants (1X NEO, $20,000). The components of tech person go amended and cheaper, from microchips to speakers and screens (have you seen however inexpensive a bully TV is these days?), enabling out-there innovation. On the user side, we are bored of rote instrumentality designs; we’ve seen a twelve models of iPhone and crave thing refreshingly different. Hence the proliferation of gadgets with nonsensical names, promising the aforesaid horsepower arsenic major-brand equivalents but with caller hardware twists and laughably debased prices. We unrecorded successful the property of the Swype ($18), a “rechargeable disposable” vape with an integrated interaction surface connected which 1 tin cheque the upwind and get notifications via Bluetooth, mingling nicotine and dopamine hits. Who doesn’t privation to find that successful the bottommost of their stocking? The apps and devices collected present fulfill that aged committedness of technology: making your beingness better, oregon astatine slightest much interesting, adjacent if conscionable by encouraging you to log off.
Have More Fun
This past summer, immoderate friends and I rented a location connected Fire Island that was bohemian capable to person nary television. But determination was a toddler successful our radical who wanted surface time, and the remainder of america needed the enactment to crook our brains disconnected aft a agelong time successful the sun. So I bought this mini projector ($50) connected Amazon. It’s from a marque called Enuosuma, but that doesn’t matter; determination are dozens of alternatives, and they’re each efficaciously the same. It turned retired to beryllium perfect for some Ms Rachel connected YouTube and “Michael Clayton” connected Apple TV, the representation agleam and crisp, with capable adjustability to enactment connected wonky walls. You don’t adjacent person to provender a root into the projector; it connects to Wi-Fi and runs its ain apps onboard. What a world!
You could besides usage the projector to play a caller profusion of portable video games. Nintendo’s precocious released Switch 2 ($450) became a deed connected apical of a deed aft the archetypal Switch pioneered the conception that a console tin beryllium mobile. The caller exemplary upgrades the screen, memory, power, and artillery life, and the inaugural games are takes connected the classics: Donkey Kong Bananza ($70), Mario Kart World ($80), and Pokémon Legends: Z-A ($70). Nintendo’s not conscionable for kids, but the harder-core gamer mightiness bask an updated Steam Deck ($400) for playing PC games connected the go. If you don’t cognize what kinds of games your giftee likes, conscionable bargain thing similar the RetroSnap Play ($70) oregon the Anbernic RG 40XXV ($53), 2 successful a sketchy scope of gadgets that emulate thousands of classical games astatine once. All of these machines volition request power, and batteries person besides improved of late. The comparatively tiny Anker Prime Power Bank ($80) volition alteration charging anxiousness for the full family.
Healthier Handhelds
Of course, video games aren’t the healthiest forms of content, and who needs much surface time? E-ink is easier connected the eyes, not to notation connected the brain. The exertion has evolved since the archetypal Kindle—no much shuddering surface refreshes. The Daylight DC-1 ($729) is simply a high-powered, smooth, full-touch-screen machine with its ain e-ink-like show and entree to apps including Spotify, Slack, and Notion. It’s designed to interruption tech addictions, and it tin beryllium utilized successful agleam sunlight, truthful you tin work connected a parkland seat if you privation to. The BOOX Palma has consolidated its presumption arsenic the go-to pocket-size e-ink screen; its latest iteration, the Palma 2 Pro ($400), has afloat colour (think newsprint-level saturation) and runs the Android 15 operating strategy to regenerate astir of the functions of your smartphone. Even Kindle has a colour mentation now, the Colorsoft ($250), which is perfect for fans of comics and graphic novels. Bibliophiles whitethorn inactive prize print, but there’s thing astir carrying dozens of books astatine once, and enjoying a self-illuminating speechmaking experience, that tends to person adjacent the astir committed Luddites.
Anti-Technology Technology
Still, you mightiness request stronger stuff, oregon conscionable a passive-aggressive acquisition for the idiosyncratic successful your beingness who is simply a small excessively obsessed with their screen. Nothing says “I would emotion to person much uninterrupted face-to-face conversations with you” similar a gadget that makes someone’s telephone little interesting. Brick ($60) is simply a integrative module containing an app that blocks selected different apps erstwhile it comes into interaction with a smartphone. Stick it to the fridge and pat it with your telephone earlier and aft work, oregon for the duration of a canine locomotion oregon a date; past pat it again to reënable your device. Opal (free, oregon $100 annually for a “pro” version) does the aforesaid happening utilizing lone an app; the downside is that it’s easier to disable. I tin attest to Opal’s utility: with its help, my surface clip and societal media usage are mode down, connected weekdays, astatine least.
Another solution is to supplant your phone’s autochthonal features with amended ones. The camera app Halide ($60) tin region each of an iPhone’s representation processing, A.I., and otherwise, truthful that your camera produces satisfyingly film-like, much natural-looking integer photographs; it has encouraged maine to beryllium much intentional astir the snapshots I instrumentality connected my phone. The Fujifilm X Half integer camera ($845) mimics shooting with a movie camera and has a fittingly vintage-style body. If you propulsion a transcript of the tech professional Cory Doctorow’s caller publication “Enshittification” ($28) successful with the gift, your recipient whitethorn work it and go truthful disgusted with the worth extraction that Silicon Valley performs connected its users that they volition laic disconnected the telephone connected their own.
Adventures successful Streaming
Giving idiosyncratic a subscription to a caller streaming work is simply a small similar buying them a rank to an creation museum: it’s a hint that their cultural-consumption habits could basal a small improvement. But don’t deliberation of it arsenic issuing criticism; deliberation of it arsenic lending a passport to adventure. Netflix has go the boring big-box store of video content. As an alternative, springiness the acquisition of the Manhattan indie movie theatre Metrograph’s streaming level ($5 per month), for highly curated creation films; oregon the BBC’s BritBox ($11 per month), for fans of endless bucolic detective dramas; oregon Crunchyroll ($8 per month), for niche anime. If your loved 1 is sick of Spotify oregon has started getting a small excessively into A.I.-generated euphony spam, alteration their lives with Idagio ($10 per month), a classical-music streaming service, oregon Nugs ($15 per month), a level for unrecorded performances from stone and jam bands.
Avant-Garde Gadgets
There’s nary Christmas contented similar unwrapping a technological acquisition and past spending the remainder of the time wrestling to get the happening working. The acquisition is each the much memorable erstwhile the intended relation of the instrumentality successful question is somewhat unusual oregon questionable. A startup called Ozlo makes Sleepbuds ($274) (originally designed astatine Bose), in-ear headphones that are slim capable not to consciousness uncomfortable erstwhile you slumber connected your side, cleanable for those who can’t halt consuming contented adjacent erstwhile they’re unconscious. For those who similar to basal retired and get stares connected nationalist transportation, effort a folding-screen smartphone similar the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 ($1,600).
If your giftee is simply a instrumentality of some artificial quality and broad integer surveillance (the 2 spell together, really), the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses ($800) person a six-hundred-by-six-hundred-pixel surface integrated into the lenses, a wrist set for speechmaking motion commands, and a brace of speakers, truthful that your Meta chatbot tin speech backmost to you. If you’re wearing those, you whitethorn arsenic good thin successful each the mode and bargain a straight-up graphics-processing unit, specified arsenic the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 ($2,000, if you tin find one), recommended for moving A.I. models astatine home. Friend ($129) is an A.I.-chatbot companion contained successful a circular pendant, worn astir the neck, that listens to everything happening astir you, past texts you astir it. Early reviews suggest that the companion is rather mean—perhaps see buying a Friend for your frenemy. ♦
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