12 tech gifts for under $50 you can still get excited about
These dozen items are cool purchase for less than $50.
Touchscreen Phone Gloves
Touchscreens are everywhere, but with wintertime upon us, so is frostbite. So keep your touchscreen controlling digits toasty inside a pair of special touchscreen gloves. All these gloves offer special fibers or fingertips that let you tap, swipe and scroll in the coldest weather. AGloves, for instance, use silver threads as a conductor, Echo’s eLink fabric is adhered to the index and thumb fingers, and Muji’s have a “conductive material” interwoven into the thumb and forefinger so you can pinch-and-zoom on the tundra.
iPad 2 Kickstand Case
To complement Apple’s tri-fold Smart Cover, which this case accommodates, ZeroChroma cover/kickstand can be adjusted to 11 different angles and rotates 360 degrees to create a seemingly unlimited number of stand positions, both portrait and landscape. Plus, when you wrap the Smart Cover under the kickstand, it acts as a little tray to prop your iPad across your lap. The kickstand also acts as a handle when holding iPad while standing up. It’s available in black or white.
Veyl iPad ePillow
Instead of a Pekinese, keep your tablet comfortable in your lap and at the optimum viewing and touching angle by resting it on this not-quite-suede pillow. Your tablet sits in a leather-like enclosure on the pillow, there’s a handle and a strap that lets you slide the pillow onto your rolling luggage handle, and there’s a built-in pocket to hold a remote control or a phone.
Cell Drive
This is one product that’s easy to grok and you want to have. It’s a 4GB USB 2.0 flash drive. And, it’s also an emergency power source for any low power gadget equipped with an Apple 30-pin jack, a miniUSB and a microUSB jack. For cellphones, it’ll give you an extra hour of talk time.
Crossbow Snowball Launcher
You’ll really be hoping for a white Christmas so you can unsling this potent snowball weapon. Just like a real crossbow, you load a large chuck o’ snow into the front; pull back the lever, aim and FIRE! It’s more like a ballistic missile launcher considering your projectile can sail up to 60 feet. Beware, all top hat wearers.
Incipio Stowaway iPhone 4S Case
Forget carrying both an iPhone 4/4S and a wallet. The rear of this Incipio case opens up to stash credit cards, your driver’s license or other ID and cash inside. If you’ve got nothing stowed in the Stowaway, the door doubles as an iPhone 4/4S kickstand to prop your phone on a table top and watch video hands-free.
Eton Rover
Considering the power outages caused by the great Halloween blizzard in the American northeast, perhaps it’d be wise to give someone this great all-around emergency gadget. You wind it up to generate juice — no batteries or sun required — for the AM/FM and NOAA weatherband radios, a three-LED flashlight and, perhaps best of all, a USB cellphone charger. A minute of cranking gets you 30 seconds of cell calling, which could mean life or death in an emergency.
Ravi, The Instant Wine Refresher
Tired of tepid Pinot Grigio? Slip this thermos-like contraption on the tip of your wine bottle and the lukewarm liquid inside pours out is as chilled as if it just came out of the refrigerator. You have to keep Ravi in the freezer for six hours before use, you have to keep your thumb on the air in-take valve before you pour, and there are complex cleaning instructions so the flavor of the Riesling you sipped yesterday doesn’t linger in the Chardonnay you taste today. But it sure is a geek conversation starter.
SubSonic Camo Pro Controller
Go to war — or, more specifically, go to a PS3 or PC multiplayer first-person shooter such as Battlefield 3 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 — with this camouflaged controller. You get comfortable curved triggers and all the usual fixin’s: vibration feedback for a smidge of added realism and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery built-in. There’s also a matching camo Bluetooth headset available for $25.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
How can any tech geek — even if you’re an Apple hater — not be fascinated by our era’s greatest tech exec? You’ll learn he was not always a nice man (but then Henry Ford was a virulent anti-Semite), but he undeniably changed how we interact with and what we expect from our gadgets — and, as the recent decision by Adobe to abandon mobile Flash and rumors of an Apple HDTV indicate, he may not be done yet. Keeping it techy, consider gifting the e-book version.
Marley Smile Jamaica Earphones
Marley, as in Bob Marley, as in jamming’! These earbuds are environmentally responsible — they’re made with wood pulp, recycled plastics and recycled paper. You can get them straight ($30), with a one-button iPhone remote button ($40) or three-button in-line controls for volume ($49.99). You also can get them in one of four different color schemes — Rasta (green), Lily (purplish-red), Curry (yellow) and Fire (red) — they include three different-sized silicon ear tips, have an angled headphone jack and a 52-inch fabric cord that reduces tangles.
Hasbro Star Wars Ultimate FX Lightsaber
Its light-blade doesn’t extend up like in the movies, but the red LEDs on this toy lightsaber light up progressively to make it seem like it does. Your table lamps will be in more danger than any storm troopers, but it does makes all the appropriate power up/down, clash when it hits something and swinging “swoosh” noises, all on three AA batteries — included. Cool!