Best tech for the Holidays Gift Guide: Amazon deals edition

Best tech for the Holidays is not an easy category to navigate, especially if you’re not a tech-savvy person who would like to find a neat piece of tech for the crazy tech enthusiast in their family. Even though my Mom calls best tech the new battery chargers she got with her new camera, she still asks me what I would like her to buy me. I jokingly say an external HDD with USB 2.0 and she agrees that that should be one of the best tech of the year, but naturally, she doesn’t know that they stopped manufacturing those and USB 3.0 is king when it comes to external HDDs. Anyway, sidetracking aside, best tech is a hard category to navigate, because there are just so many choices out there.

If you’ve got a tech savvy or enthusiastic family member, a gift guide for the best tech you could buy for them is not easy to come across. The best tech also costs a lot if you think about it, so rarely would one abide by the gift guides you would usually find. Now our goal here is to merge affordable with innovative in order to give you a best tech for the Holidays gift guide that you might actually find useful. This Gift Guide is an Amazon Deals edition, so that no matter where you live, you can make use of our suggestions.

1. Amazon Fire HD 7 tablet $114 

This is on our best tech for the Holidays lists because it is a cheap, yet powerful tablet which would be great for any tech savvy person who would like a media consumption device that can do it all in a small form factor. This gift would be best for younger or senior people, who would like a multimedia device that suits their musical, photo, video, movie and social media needs. The Amazon Fire HD 7 tablet would be the best choice for a parent to buy for their teenage kids, because you can always get a joint carrier plan and parental control.

2. Misfit Flash Fitness and Sleep Monitor$25

When it comes to best tech for the holidays, most people don’t think about fitness tracking equipment or the like because they tend to be very expensive. Unless you try the Misfit Flash, which is a simple multifunctional little device that one can wear as a watch or clipped to their clothes and it offers the basic fitness tracking features like pedometer, calorie counter and sleep monitoring. The Misfit Flash is on our best tech for the Holidays list because it is a cheap and functional gift that can become a fun accessory even for those who aren’t really into high-tech things but would like to experience what it would be like to know how much exercise they get each day. I would get this for my Mom, because she always complains about how she doesn’t know how much she’s slept or walked in a day, since she’s got a hectic life.

3. Panasonic Arc3 Electric Shaver$80

This one might be an odd one out on the best tech for the Holidays list because it’s a grooming device, but it’s a great thing to have for men. I know my boyfriend always complains about shaving, so I think this would be a perfect gift for any guy over 15 years old. It’s a wet/dry shaver which means it can cater to any types of men with any types of grooming habits. Even though grooming tools might not be the best tech idea for the Holidays, they are handy things and anybody who doesn’t have one yet would be glad to receive one of these as a gift. It’s also cheaper than other electric shavers out there and it has good reviews. Just be sure to try and find out whether the beneficiary of the Panasonic Arc3 Electric Shaver doesn’t have one already.

4. Audio-Technica Professional Studio Monitor Headphones – $190

These headphones made it onto our best tech for the Holidays list because they’re the best headphones I’ve ever used and they’ve got great bang for buck. When you’re looking at gift guides, you usually come across Beats headphones, which are honestly crappy and overpriced, but even so, many people buy them. Now the Audio-Technica headphones are infinitely superior in sound quality and performance and would be the perfect gift for those who enjoy listening to music in a private way or when walking, jogging, traveling or commuting. You can’t fail with these, in my opinion, unless the beneficiary doesn’t like on-ear headphones (unlikely).

5. CamKix Universal 3 in 1 Cell Phone Camera Lens Kit$20

Smartphone photography is becoming more and more popular, so you might understand why the CamKix kit made it to our best tech for the Holidays gift guide list. If you know a person (we’re sure you do) who just loves to use their phones to take artsy photos and share them on all social media sites imaginable, this is the perfect gift for them. It’ll get them out of your hair during the Christmas dinner, that’s for sure, and you’ll probably end up with a good photographer who slowly learns how lenses work. Now the CamKix Kit contains a Fish Eye lens, a Macro Lens/Wide Angle Lens and a Universal clip in black. The kit will be compatible with mostly any modern smartphone, so it definitely deserves to be called a piece of best tech for that only.