Hi-Tech Accessories

For the techies or business travelers who must be in cyberspace at all times wherever they are, here are portable high tech gadgets and accessories that may come in handy. These cool, fun and user-friendly gadgets are no longer for the geeky but a must-have for many modern travelers today including backpackers. Many backpackers are young and tech savvy. There is no escaping high tech travel if we want to stay connected. Fortunately many high tech gadgets, kit and accessories are compact and handy.
An IT travel kits organizer or electronic travel bag. Now you can put all your tech gadgets and accessories in one place and not wonder where you put that cable, USB thumb drives or connectors or SD and memory flash cards. Electronic kits and gadgets are now getting tinier and tinier and they can easily be misplaced. They call them thumb drives because they are really that small. Flash cards and thumb drives are very small portable devices that can keep important information such as travel photos so an organizer can keep these tiny gadgets in place.

A hand-held electronic tablet or iPad. A high tech travel gadget that you cannot live or leave without. Get you connected where ever you are. Though you will usually need Wi-Fi to get connected. Well you can get Wi-Fi just about anywhere these days even in the Amazon jungle. But if you do end up in the Amazon jungle the most important thing is insect repellent and not Wi-Fi! The lighter the tablet or iPad, the better. If there is no Wi-Fi there is always the good old internet cafes somewhere round the corner. But we have to be careful when buying air tickets or book our next hostels or hotels online and use our credits cards to make the purchase as internet cafes are open and connections are usually unsecured and personal data might just get phished.

If your tablet or iPad has SIM card slot you may be able to purchase pre-paid data sim card if the places you are visiting sell them. The hand-held tablet or iPad goes beyond just surfing the internet. We can take photos and videos with it. And watch movies and listen to the music or downloadable play games with it. Some do not recommend carrying around this high tech gadget as it may attract unwanted attention from thieves at some dodgy places. Most people will put the tablet or iPad in a cover or folio cases for protection. These gadgets are costly afterall.

Books are heavy to lug around. E-readers are light and can store books and many information at your fingertip. But of course you must purchase and download them first. Though some books may be available for free for a limited time. E-readers such as Kindle is indeed a high tech and convenient travel gadget for avid readers.

Touchscreen gloves for your smartphones! Taking off gloves in the freezing weather is not necessary. Or wear gloves similar to biker gloves that have the fingertips exposed though this may not be practical in extreme cold condition. Alternatively we can get a stylus.

If you are into mountaineering or hiking at a high altitude area, you can get a wrist watch that not only shows the time but also the altimeter, barometer, temperature and GPS. Useful kit that can show the altitude, atmospheric pressure and directions at the same time. And of course the time.

There is a watchphone, a watch that not only comes with a (unlocked) GSM phone but may also comes with a camera, video, FM radio and MP3 player and complete with bluetooth function.  And the gadget will always be strapped to your wrist just like any other watch. A very convenient hi-tech watch.

And there are also wearable devices such as smartwatch that can let you send email, check facebook or tweet and listen to music on the go. A mobile on your wrist. You can also download apps in it. Though with such small screen the usefulness of apps may not match that of smartphone. The gadget has phone function that you can connect via blue-tooth connection with your smartphone. However it has distance limitation. A digital watch has become smartphone watch. It is strange that Apple and Samsung will be soon be launching smartwatches when they have been in the market for a while now! Update: the smartphone watches are already here.

7. Needless to say most of us carry smartphones and tablets or ipads. A portable backup battery charger or pack or power bank or power juice as some may call it is handy when device battery runs low. The size varies but they are typically smaller than the smartphone for portability. There is also juice pack or battery case that doubles up as smartphone case. These handy backup battery chargers are available with various capacities. The lower 2200mAh battery pack typically is only for a single charge. The higher rated one will last longer but also a bit heavier and more costly but they tend to be more robust and can charge several cycles. You will never be without power during that long road or plane ride or when stuck in the middle of nowhere. Make sure the backup battery is pre-charged.

A solar powered charger will come in handy if you are really worried your smartphone or other electronic gadgets will be without power for a long time. Solar charger uses sun power instead of electricity so it may come in handy for camping and outdoors. It is also a cool gadget to carry during long bus or train ride and you let the sun from the window charge up your electronic devices. The gadget comes in sizes similar to a smartphone or a smart looking foldable novel size, smart enough to power-up your smartphone, readers, tablets or iPads just about anywhere.

Some solar power chargers may come with built-in flashlight and lantern, a 3-in-1 gadget convenient to find your way or stuffs in the dark. We can also use our smartphone as flashlight but we know the cell or phone battery will drain off pretty quickly. So backup chargers with flashlight will come in handy. A practical high tech travel gadget.

Hand-held GPS navigator. It works even when there is no cell phone coverage. In some navigators you can create free-form text messages with it. Great gadget to have when you are lost or going fishing somewhere in the jungle. There are also hiking GPS navigators with digital camera. A high tech travel gadget that can let you take some photos while finding your way back.

A solar powered backpack that can charge your mobile devices on the go! No worries about your cell phone, GPS, tablets or readers going flat while you are out and about. There are also the sling bag and brief case versions but they are not as robust as the backpack type. A high tech and environmentally friendly travel gear.

For water enthusiasts. A multipurpose cheap waterproof plastic pouch that you can put your camera or smartphone in and take underwater photos with. You no longer need to buy that expensive underwater camera. You can also answer your phone through the clear plastic panel (but not while underwater!). Great for water activities such as snorkelling, rafting or amusement park water rides. This multi-purpose plastic pouch can also be used to store cash and credit cards. The pouch comes in various sizes.

Instead of getting a phrasebook or downloading language translation apps in your smartphone which usually will require Wi-Fi connection to be useful (although there are translation apps where Wi-Fi connection may not be necessary), get the pocket-size electronic language translator and dictionary packed with thousands of phrases, words and translations at your fingertips. You will never be lost without words again. There are translators that come with speech recognition capability. Simply speak the phrase in English and the hand-held translation gadget will pronounce the foreign language. A useful high tech travel gadget.

A mobile or smartphone. A high tech travel gadget that we cannot live or leave home without it. We just love to fidget with our smartphone that are full of apps and games. And we can listen to music with it. But if you plan to listen to music all day long it is better to get a dedicated MP3 player or iPod, if not your smart gadget will run out of battery pretty fast, unless you have a backup battery charger or power juice on stand-by. Apart from making that important phone call and text messaging, we can surf the internet, send emails, update facebook status, tweet, etc., with the smartphone, though an iPod works equally well and in fact sometimes better than using our smartphone as losing an iPod is not as bad as losing a smartphone! Of course it is not nice thinking about it, but unfortunately this sort of things sometimes happened. We can make free long distance phone calls and text message with some free text messaging apps such as Viber and Whatsapp, though this will usually require Wi-Fi availability for these free apps to work. iMessage and Facetime are free too provided both parties use iPhone and subscribed to some sort of data plans or using Wi-Fi.

Many downloadable apps such as currency converter and foreign language translation and phrasebooks can be useful during our travels. I find Duolingo an excellent app for learning a foreign language such as Spanish. We can also check the local weather or flight status using our smartphone or iPod and find our bearings using the in-built GPS or compass. We can also download flashlight app and use our smartphone to find our way in the dark. But the batteries will run out very fast. And we can take photos and videos using these electronic gadgets and upload them in Facebook. We love to let the world know where we are when we travel (though from security point of view may not be a good idea as unwittingly we may be inviting potential uninvited guests to our empty house) and we can do this at many cafes or restaurants that have Wi-Fi.

If we need to be online at all times or if we are going to be there long enough we can buy pre-paid data SIM card if one is available at the places we are visiting as most apps and internet will require Wi-Fi for the smartphone or tablet to function properly. But try not to turn-on our home data roaming function or get the data capped by our data providers if we do not wish to be shocked by our cell or mobile phone bills when we get home! We certainly have heard of horror stories of people getting thousands of dollars in their phone bills. If you carry iPod or iPhone, some hotels have gone high-tech and provide docking stations on top of the more important wireless connections that many techies just cannot leave without these days. Some hotels provide conventional wired cable internet connections though this is more useful for those who carry laptops.

Card readers and flash drives are useful to bring along so that you can download your photos to your ipad or tablet or to the thumb drive. These gadgets come in mini sizes in single or multi-slots and are so handy to carry, but can easily be lost too.

Fold-up travel stand for tablets, ipads and readers. It is a small, compact and portable kit that you can easily carry and place on the airplane seat tray to enjoy watching movies or listening to music or to read. Ideal too for net surfing in the hotel or hostels. Though your folio tablet case may also double up as reading stand.

If you are traveling for business or need to get some serious work done during vacations, you may want to get a lighter weight ultrabook or mini laptop to shave off a bit of weight from your hand carrier. There are now available lighter and thinner laptops for ease of carrying around. Gone are the days when the laptops weigh five pounds. During those days and before tablets or iPads are popular, I have seen travelers dumped their heavy laptops into their checked-in luggage bag because they are just too heavy to lug around. Ultrabook or thin tablet style laptops are lighter because the CD Rom diskdrive is not built-in but can be connected externally if needed. But if you need to bring along all these extra components or gadgets then it is better to bring along a conventional laptop instead.

Power supply are not uniform worldwide. Some countries use 220V and some 110V. Power socket outlets are also not uniform worldwide. A country can even have different socket outlets depending which area you are visiting. So bring along interchangeable power pins or the universal power plug adapter to charge your electronic devices. We all know electronic devices and gadgets such as smartphones and tablets can’t work very long without recharging. And power will drain very fast if we play games or listen to music on our smartphones. These days most electronic devices incorporated dual voltages so carrying a bulky converter is no longer necessary unless you are carrying a hair dryer or straightener.

If you have to lug your important laptop during your travels you can get a recycled PET laptop backpack. Similar to recycled camera backpack, this laptop backpack is made from 100% recycled PET bottles. And 35 nos. of PET bottles! Those PET bottles certainly are put to good use. The backpack is super lightweight even though your laptop may not, and to manufacture one requires less energy than if using the traditional polyester. With padded back and generous interior space and plenty of compartments big enough to contain your 15″ laptop. Of course you can also get the PET backpack with solar power panel if you need to be power up all the time. So you can be a techie and eco-firendly or green at the same time! But if you prefer the conventional laptop bag get one that comes with wheels so that you can easily roll the trolley bag.

If u bring along a tablet or iPad for your travel, and most techies do, you may want to put them safely in a zippered recycled felted case made from 100% recycled water bottles and other food containers. The case may come with exterior zippered pocket that can hold chargers and cables so you can keep all your tech places in one place. Similarly depending on your preference there are folio cases made from recycled leather material so your tablets will look more like a diary.

A hands-free wireless bluetooth headphone that can be connected to any audio devices such as MP3 player and smartphones. It can also be used as a hands-free bluetooth phone headset.

Solar powered speaker system, with bluetooth and wireless capability. You can play your favorite songs all day long. In the park and in the hostel or hotel. And the wireless device can be connected to smartphone. But depending on where you are heading to, it may be a bit bulky to lug into your luggage, so perhaps find a smaller size speaker or leave it behind. Our smartphone and tablets have pretty good speaker system. But an external speaker can boost it to a stereo surround sound. Nowadays we can find speakers in small and cute sizes.

A camera is a must-have basic kit that most travelers will carry. If you do not like the idea of carrying heavy and bulky full-frame DSLR camera there are handy pocket size mirrorless digital cameras with DSLR grade capability and they come with interchangeable lens options for more zoom power. You can download apps in this compact camera and it also has a Wi-Fi function so you can transfer photos directly to your  smartphone or tablet. This high tech mirrorless digital camera is probably the travel gadget for 2013. Due to its compact size the mirrorless digital camera is less intrusive so more suitable for city shots as carrying bulky DSLR cameras are not recommended at some theft prone cities or towns. A camera will not be complete without memory card and it is good also to bring along a spare battery. We certainly want to take some stunning looking photos to remind us of our faraway adventures without the weight. And perhaps some videos too which most digital cameras have the function to do. Gone are the days when we need to carry a dedicated video camera. With google glass maybe in future we no longer have to carry digital cameras. But that will be a while yet.

Solar tablet case. Great to power up your tablet or iPad using solar power.  Especially useful if you are going to be outdoors and surfing and listening to music or watching movies at the same time. The solar panels are water-proofed and light-weight. One hour of sun will give you an hour of video playback. An eco-friendly high tech kit.

A retractable charger cable is a neat kit to charge your mobile devices. The wire can be easily pulled and retracted. No more messy wires in your bag or lying around somewhere. Unfortunately electronic gadgets need wires for them to work or be charged and the connectors are not universal so we may need to bring along adapters which fortunately are small and handy.