Make merry with these Christmas gifts

Tech makes great Christmas gifts and you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg.

Belkin’s 15K Pocket Power power bank sells for $79.95

Tech makes great Christmas gifts and you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg. You can put a smile on people’s faces with items that cost less than $100 and are directed at meeting people’s needs.

Tile Pro:
$44.95 or $79.99 for two

Tile Pro

Losing or mislaying an item is no trivial matter. You can spend hours looking for a phone that’s later found under a cushion. You may have misplaced your keys or wallet. It’s exasperating. Tile has a range of small trackers that fit to keyrings and wallets, can be inserted into luggage or stuck on to your glasses or a dog’s collar. Their batteries typically are rated to last a year. You locate a missing item using the Tile app for iOS and Android. The manufacturer says that Tile Pro can be detected from 120m away. If you lose the item in the street, Tile has a community spanning 230 countries, and any user’s Tile app can detect a missing Tile belonging to someone else should they pass nearby.

Cygnett Smart Plug: $49.95

Cygnett Wi-Fi smart plug

“Alexa, turn on my electric blanket.” “Hey Siri, switch off the slow cooker”. “Hey Google, turn off the dryer.” Smart plugs let you control any device you plug into them. In the case of the Cygnett Smart Plug, you can address plugged-in devices with voice commands using the three biggest home control systems: Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Siri. If you’re away from home, you can make sure the dryer is off using the Cygnett smart app. You can set schedules to have appliances switch on and off at specific times. The Cygnett Smart Plug also tracks the power usage of any device or appliance connected to it. Cygnett, a Melbourne firm, is run by the children of David Swann, who established Swann Communications.

Belkin 15K Pocket Power: $79.95

Belkin 15K Pocket Power power bank

Power banks that recharge a phone on the go are popular, affordable gifts. The Belkin Pocket Power 15K power bank can store 15,000 milliampere hours of charge, ready for when you’re out of juice. You charge the Belkin using a supplied micro USB cable. The unit then delivers power to phones and tablets via two USB-A sockets, so you can charge two devices at once. One socket rated at 17 watts offers quick recharging. The other is 10 watts. Four LEDs show the battery power level. This device is more suited to phones with traditional USB-A connectors. If you have USB-C connected devices, consider the Cygnett 27,000 mAh power bank with two USB-C outputs. One is rated 60 watts for laptops, the other at 12 watts for phones and tablets. It’s more expensive at $199.95.

Amazon Echo Dot with clock: $99

Amazon Echo Dot with Clock

Amazon and Google are working overtime to get a device inside your home so they can recruit you as a customer. Their smart devices take the form of speakers, video units and even clocks. At $99, Amazon’s new Echo Dot displays the time on its front edge like you’d see on an old-fashioned clock radio. Amazon says the clock’s LED adjusts to the brightness of the room. You can issue the usual Amazon Alexa voice commands. You can ask it to set timers, set alarms, tell you the weather forecast or play music through its speaker. There’s a 3.5mm audio jack if you want to link in another speaker. You can tap the top of the dot to snooze an alarm as you might an old clock radio.

BlueAnt X1 & X2 Speaker: $79.95, $99.95

Blueant X1 Bluetooth speaker

Australian audio device maker BlueAnt has released two affordable and sturdy Bluetooth speakers that won’t break the budget. They offer more than 90 decibels of sound with high dynamic range sound and deep rich low tones. The X1 & X2 are designed to function indoors and outside, are rated splashproof (IP56) and offer Siri and Google Home integration. The X1 has a 14 watt Bluetooth speaker, 2x40mm drivers and BlueAnt says it delivers 10 hours of play time. The X2 has a 20 watt speaker and 2x45mm drivers.