Black Friday is here — the biggest shopping day of the year, and also the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season. If you haven’t yet decided what to buy for the geek in your life — or perhaps you want some ideas of top tech to put on your own wishlist, or even buy for yourself! — the SitePoint team has put together a few suggestions. Here’s our gift guide with the tools, gadgets, and toys that we’d like to see wrapped up under our trees on Christmas Day!
Home Office
Mechanical Keyboard
Mechanical keyboards have risen in popularity in recent years, especially with the developer community. These keyboards use mechanical switches that inspire more confidence than typical squishy membrane keyboards. What’s more, they can be better for your health, especially if you’re a heavy typist. We like the Keychron V5 QMK Custom Mechanical Keyboard. It’s affordable, customizable, solid, super stable, and wireless. If the Keychron’s not for you, there are a range of great options available; check out our overview here.
Desk Decluttering
A combined monitor riser and smart storage system, Grovemade’s Desk Shelf System is available in three sizes. It looks great and provides handy storage for all the stuff that otherwise clutters up your desk.
Monitor
We love the Dell 27 4K UHD USB-C Monitor – S2722QC. It’s Wirecutter’s current choice of best 4K monitor, saying “it’s a quality, color-accurate display that can charge your laptop over USB-C, and it’s not terribly expensive.”
Smart Lighting
Great for providing funky, customizable decor, and also providing interesting backgrounds on Zoom calls, we like Nanoloeaf’s smart lights. They offer a way to customize the look of your office and add additional lighting on dreary days. Additionally, you can change the mood of your lights from a handy app.
Productivity
Notebook
We love the Moleskine Smart Notebook system. Made by the high-end notebook brand that’s graced the desks of countless designers over the years, the smart notebook system takes things up a notch. It allows notes that would have previously only existed on paper to seamlessly transition into the digital realm.
Headphones
If you need to concentrate at the office, or perhaps while working from a coffee shop or on public transport, effective noise canceling is a must. The top pick over-the-ear wireless headphone is the Sony WH-1000XM5, praised for top notch noise cancellation and excellent sound quality.
Gadgets and Toys
Steam Deck
The hot new gaming platform, Steam Deck provides access to your Steam library on the go. What’s more, with a dock, you can even use it for dev work, so it almost qualifies as a work expense!
Oura Ring
Of course there are many wearables that offer sleep and fitness tracking, but the Oura ring is sleek, discreet, and looks cool. It provides advanced sleep tracking, actionable recovery goals, and offers long battery life.
Flipper Zero
Possibly the ultimate hacker’s gadget, Flipper Zero is a neat open source portable multi-tool that can explore digital stuff. You can use it to interact with radio protocols, access control systems, hardware, and more. It offers plenty of connectivity, including a sub-1 GHz Transceiver, RFID, Bluetooth, and infrared.
Education and Career
SitePoint Premium
It’s a shameless bit of self-promotion of course, but we really do think that a SitePoint Premium membership is incredible value! We have books, courses, and tech talks covering a huge variety of topics, including JavaScript, PHP, Python, design, UX, DevOps, and much more. Right now, we’ve offering an incredible Black Friday deal on 12 months of membership, which you can gift to loved ones, colleagues, or even yourself via a voucher!
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