By Josh Teder
6. Meta Smart Glasses
While my own use and enthusiasm for the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses have somewhat waned since they’re heavier than normal glasses and you have to remember to charge their case, they still offer quite a bit of value over non-smart glasses, especially when you consider the Gen 1 glasses cost only around $100 more than a traditional pair. That changed with this year’s Gen 2 Ray-Ban glasses, which are almost double the price of a regular pair of Ray-Bans, making it harder to justify.
5. Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Wireless headphones have gotten much better, with improved noise cancellation, sound quality, battery life, and Bluetooth performance. From the new Nothing headphone (1) to traditional standouts from Bose, Apple, and Sony, there’s a lot to like in this year’s lineup.
4. A new Mac
Macs have just been running away with it in the computer market the past few years, ever since Apple switched to an ARM chip architecture. They have excellent build quality, reliability, battery life, and performance. About the only thing they don’t do really well is gaming (compared to their Windows and Linux competitors). If you’ve been holding onto an Intel-based Mac or are on Windows and want to switch over, there’s never been a better time to buy a Mac. Plus, they’re about the only Apple product that lets you download apps directly from websites. Huzzah!
3. Kindle Paperwhite
The Kindle Paperwhite still remains one of my all-time favorite tech products to use and gift to people (though you do need to know if the person well enough, as some might be insulted you didn’t give them a paper book). Why gift a Kindle? You can fit thousands of books onto a single device, it looks like paper, doesn’t have any distracting notifications or apps, and has better ergonomics than most books. Plus, with all the types of Kindles Amazon sells, they’re a great gift option for any member of the family.
Also, don’t be tempted by Kindle’s new Colorsoft; the text looks worse on it, and the ones I used were defective. Stick with the Paperwhite or regular Kindle.
2. Writing Tablets
I’ve continued to rely more and more on writing tablets for ideation, taking notes, and keeping track of my work and various projects. Not only can these mimic the feel of writing on paper, but they back up your notes to the cloud, can fit the equivalent of a thousand notebooks into a single device, and the color versions allow you to carry around different colored highlighters, pens, pencils, etc, all in a single device.
My favorite one right now is the reMarkable Paper Pro, which I’ve reviewed, but others from Kindle and other brands can also be good picks, depending on what you want to use them for. In an age of constant distractions from our devices, having a device that, by design, doesn’t send you notifications or try to get you to use it for as long as possible, is a breath of fresh air.
1. AirPods Pro 3
The AirPods Pro 3 might be one of the biggest leaps for an Apple product from one generation to the next that we’ve seen in a while. They have excellent noise cancellation, sound, fit, and battery life compared to the previous generation, plus a new heart-rate sensor. Even better, their price is right in gift territory, making them perfect to put in a stocking or under a tree for any Apple user this holiday.
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