I’ve pored over all the tech and gadgets I’ve had my hands on in 2023 and have come up with a list of some of my favourites. I have something for every budget, from £10 to £500. Whether it’s a gift for someone else or yourself, hopefully this list might help. So in ascending order of price, let’s get started!
I’ve reviewed plenty of torches, but the Olight i3E is a great little torch for around £11. It runs off a single AAA battery, is simple to operate with just one mode, and it’s pretty bright considering just how small it is at around 90 lumens. It comes in loads of colours and is often given away free in Olight’s monthly sales.
The Pica Dry Pencil makes the perfect gift for anyone into DIY. At £12 it’s pricey for a pencil but it can reach into deep holes and it writes on almost anything including rough wood and metal. It has a thick 2.8mm lead that can be sharpened with the integrated sharpener. It’s made in Germany and the build quality is very good. If you have a little more money to spend, they also do it in a set with a 0.9mm automatic pencil, a deep hole marker pen, a white marker and loads of refills. I wasn’t very impressed with the white maker, but it all comes in a nice case.
The Knipex Cobra XS adjustable pliers are only 100mm long and are great value at around £24. They’re small enough to fit in most pockets, but their super slim jaws open up to 28mm and have very strong teeth that can bite into even hard metal. Knipex also do their Pliers Wrench in this compact size too, but with smooth parallel jaws. I’ve found them very useful when travelling with my bike. In my home workshop I have their 200mm version which is superior to a big heavy adjustable spanner in almost every way.
All these Knipex tools are made in Germany and the two XS tools fit in this tiny pouch – if you’re after the perfect gift for anyone who loves any sort of DIY – if your budget allows!
It’s a bit pricey for what it is at around £30, but the PopSockets PopGrip Round for MagSafe snaps onto the back of any phone or phone case. It’s perfect for comfortably holding larger phones and it also makes an excellent stand for watching video content although only in landscape mode. They do supply a sticky magnetic adapter ring for phones without MagSafe but it works perfectly well with my iPhone 15 Pro Max with a Grams28 leather case which already has MagSafe built in. And the attachment is very strong yet it’s still easy to remove as needed. I pull it off to attach to my ESR car mount. This car mount didn’t quite make my list since it runs a little hot – but it’s excellent in every other way.
The Victorinox Compact Swiss Army knife has just the right combination of functions including the always useful scissors, pen and tweezers as well as the usual functions like a blade and can opener.
It’s the perfect accompaniment to the Knipex Cobra XS. It only weighs 64g and is small and slim enough for any pocket. It’s the usual Victorinox quality and it’s a bargain at around £33!
The RovyVon Aurora A8 won my round-up of keychain torches and it’s still the torch I always carry with me. It does seem a little expensive at around £40 but it’s well built and has every function you might want in a keychain or everyday carry torch and has USB-C charging built in. It weighs just 23g but has 650 lumens of output and a decent 110m throw. It’s got a magnetic base and pocket clip, and there’s a side light with multiple LEDs. You’ve got a warm white reading light, a red light with a flashing mode – which is very useful for being seen, and even a UV LED for identifying counterfeit bank notes amongst other things. It has a clever user interface – but may take a short while to get used to.
It’s difficult picking a Bluetooth speaker – I reviewed so many on the channel. But the Anker Motion+, currently £68, is still one of my favourites. It’s compact, sounds good and I quite like its design although I’d like the buttons to stand out a little more.
Anker’s Motion Boom is similar and sounds a little better. But I’m not so keen on its design, and it’s bigger and bulkier.
The MaxxDry Boot Dryer is honestly one of the best things I’ve bought this last year. It’s unfortunately gone up a little in price since I bought it – I paid just over £50. But even at £70, if you’re into the outdoors and know the pain of trying to dry wet trainers, cycling shoes and walking boots, you’ll very quickly wonder how you lived without it!
It blows slightly warm air through your footwear and takes around 3 hours to safely completely dry moderately wet footwear. If they’re soaking they may require another cycle. This model does two pairs of shoes at a time – with the rear driers for longer boots. The build quality is nothing special and the dial to set drying time feels cheap, but it’s survived constant use and abuse over the last year from the whole family. After a wet bike ride or walk, there’s a scramble to load your footwear before it fills up!
Another torch for you – but this one is more of an all round gadget and I’m confident it’ll make a great gift for a lot of people. The Olight Baton 4 Premium is £70 on sale – I would only get it on sale since Olight has a sale almost every month. It’s a very small but powerful 1300 lumen torch, and it comes in a nifty charging case which not only charges it up to 5 times, but also acts as a power bank. Perfect for the car, travel or general use.
The Crucial X9 is a super compact, fast, portable SSD for carrying and working on all your files on the move. I have the 1TB version which only costs £70 but the 2TB version doesn’t cost much more. That makes it one of the best value SSD’s around.
Build quality is excellent – it’s drop proof to over 2m. It has 1050MB/s read and write speed which I confirmed on my MacBook. That’s fast enough to edit 4K footage off, if that’s what you need it for. I bought it to use with my iPhone 15 Pro Max.
I designed and printed this adapter to attach it which also acts as a useful grip. I’ll be covering this in more detail in an upcoming video, but I can now directly record high quality ProRes footage at up to 60fps using the built in Camera app, directly to this SSD.
The Meater Plus is a wireless smart thermometer that connects via Bluetooth to your phone. I use it mainly on the BBQ, but you can use it for your oven Sunday roast too.
It’s a little expensive for what it is so I’d again only buy it on sale – it’s currently £80. But its best feature is the app. It has a comprehensive database of fish and cuts of meat with recommended cooking temperatures. The probe measures the internal temperature but also the oven temperature and the app uses these temperatures to estimate remaining cooking time which is brilliant.
There’s even a graph that tracks temperatures. It’s not perfect though. The app doesn’t give any recommendation on what the BBQ or oven temperature should be, and wireless range is poor.
Luckily you can use your mobile devices as repeaters. I leave my iPad near the cook and thermometer, and can then track the progress on my phone over WiFi.
The ISDT Power 200H 200W charger is around £100 and has 3 fast charging USB-C ports, 1 USB-A port with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 support and a 15W wireless charging pad on top. It has a colour digital display and an accompanying app that shows exactly how fast your tech is charging. The app even has a graph that tracks charging progress. This model has 2 65W and 1 100W USB Power Delivery 3.0 ports. The 100W port will fast charge the latest 14” MacBook Pros. The 16” MacBook Pro would need the more expensive model with a 140W Power Delivery 3.1 port, for fast charging at least. For how I use it, it’s hard to fault – even the fan is pretty quiet, and it looks good too.
This gadget is perfect for the golfer in your family! The RedTiger RangeFinder costs around £100 and can measure the distance to any object, golf flag or animal to the nearest 0.5m, up to an impressive 1100 metres away! It fires an infrared laser beam and measures the time it takes for the reflection to be received, which it converts to a distance. Considering the laser is travelling at the speed of light, it’s quite staggering just how accurately it can measure this time and calculated distance!
This model has a useful 7x magnification and vibrates when it locks onto a golf flag. It can also be used for hunting and can even measure the speed of an animal or anything else for that matter. Plus it has angle measurement which amongst other things provides golfers a slope adjusted distance to work off. This mode can be turned off for tournaments where that’s not allowed.
Whilst we’re on lasers, I can’t help but include the Mileseey S7 Outdoor Laser measure with a built in camera. It currently costs £130.
If you’ve never owned a laser measure, they’re incredibly useful gadgets. Not only are they faster and easier to use than a tape measure.
But with a built-in tilt sensor they also have clever mathematical functions to calculate various distances including height and this one even measures point to point.
So I can point the laser at one end of a gutter, and then the other to get a pretty accurate measurement without even getting a ladder out.
I wanted a laser measure also for outdoor use. This model has a killer feature where it uses its built in camera to measure up to 100m outdoors, where typically you wouldn’t be able to see the laser dot.
The 100m range is a little optimistic – it depends how reflective the object you’re measuring is – but I’ve got close to that. If you don’t need to use it outside, you could spend a lot less for a model without a camera.
I’ve just fitted the Tado Wireless Smart Thermostat Kit which costs £135. It’s a smart heating solution – after installation you can control your heating via an app. It’s compatible with almost every boiler on the market and doesn’t require professional installation.
The starter kit has a receiver you wire into the boiler, a wireless bridge you plug into your router, and a wireless thermometer you attach to your wall.
I’ve since added their radiator thermostats for room by room control but that’s not absolutely necessary.
You can access the app via your phone or a computer and it has auto-assist features – for instance turning off your heating when you leave the house, and turning it back on again as you return.
Although some of these auto-assist features do require a £30 per year subscription.
Once installed you can use Alexa or Apple Home to control your heating. For instance I can say – Alexa, turn up the heating in the childrens’ bedrooms. It’s completely transformed our ageing boiler – I’d highly recommend it with a few caveats I’ll cover in my upcoming review.
The Shokz OpenFit Open-Ear headphones, currently £152, are my new favourite headphones for running. They don’t have the noticeable vibration you get with Shokz bone conduction headphones and they sound better too.
The OpenFit are also true wireless – they no longer have the neckband and they now come with a compact, convenient charging case. If you want to save some money I do still like the Shokz OpenRun Pro – and the neckband can be useful to stow the headphones around your neck.
The Worx Nitro HydroShot is a battery operated cordless pressure washer. I bought it when we had a hose pipe ban since it can run off a rain water butt or even a 2L drinks bottle. But it’s much more capable than I thought it’d be! It’s currently £200 but I got it for a lot less on sale so look out for discounts.
It comes with all the accessories you need – although I did pick up this short lance attachment which makes it less cumbersome to use when you don’t need the long reach of the standard lance.
It’s perfect for cleaning our bikes – it has an adjustable nozzle with anything from a light sprinkle to an intense focussed jet of water. It’s not as powerful as my Karcher K5, but it’s far more convenient only having to hook up water. And the 4Ah battery will do maybe 10 bike washes or one wash of my VW Transporter van.
The Huepar S04CG self-levelling laser level is another gadget I’m wondering how I did without. This basically replaces your spirit level and fires 360° laser lines all around your room.
It has 4 green lasers, two horizontal and two vertical. It achieves automatic level via small pendulums that quickly settle after you turn the unit on. It’s remarkably accurate – I checked all four lasers. Way more accurate than a spirit level and far more convenient.
The Huepar also has a LCD screen which gives an X and Y readout of the angle which I really like. You can lock the pendulums and use the laser in manual mode to set say a 45° angle to align picture frames up a wall up a staircase.
And the Huepar comes with a load of accessories in a hard case including a fine adjustment mount and a remote control and can even be controlled via a Bluetooth app. The Huepar costs over £200 but I’ll be comparing it against cheaper models in an upcoming review.
The Gozney Roccbox pizza oven retails at £400 but it’s often on sale at £320. It reaches temperatures of up to 500°C and can cook a pizza in just 60 seconds!
It runs off gas as standard but Gozney does an optional wood burner. The Rocxbox has a thick 19mm stone which does a good job of retaining its heat when you’re cooking one pizza after another. It comes with an excellent perforated pizza peel for loading pizzas into the oven and there’s a convenient temperature dial on the side that gives a clear indication of temperature of the stone so you know when you’re ready to cook.
It’s been a family hit over the summer – it makes amazing pizzas and it looks very stylish. My only criticism is how long it takes to heat up. In summer it can take up to 45 minutes which isn’t too bad with careful planning. Over winter we keep the oven covered but it can still take hours to get up to temperature if the non-removable stone gets even slightly damp.
The TopDon TC005 is a thermal imaging camera that I find new uses for all the time. Just recently for balancing all the radiators after a boiler issue! But you can use it around your house to check for damp patches, diagnose electrical faults, even to check your pizza oven is up to temperature! Thermal cameras have very low resolution compared to visible light cameras but the 256×192 resolution of this camera is actually very impressive for its price.
There’s enough resolution to see even small variations in temperature, and there’s a built in visible camera too which can be merged with the thermal image to enhance detail further. You can even connect it to your computer with the supplied USB-C cable for some quite advanced analysis if you want. I’ve owned two Flir thermal cameras that connect to my phone but this is far better and comparable in price – and I much prefer having a standalone unit that doesn’t rely on my phone. It’s more robust too. My only real criticism is its slow boot time – it runs its own operating system and it’s around 40 seconds before it’s ready for use. And it is still pretty pricey at around £350-£400, but look out for frequent reductions on Amazon.
The Insta360 GO 3 is a thumb-sized versatile action camera weighing just 36g. It comes with a generous selection of accessories including the Action Pod which has a built-in flip-up LCD screen and turns the GO 3 into a more general purpose super compact camera. The image stabilisation is excellent and Insta360’s smartphone app makes it very easy to edit and share your footage. It does lack a 4K video mode, and its £380 price tag is a little steep, but it is a lot of fun and currently the camera I grab most often when I’m out for a bike ride or run.
I’ve reviewed a lot of portable power stations this year which are great for camping, outdoor DIY and around the house for power cuts. The Bluetti AC70 I just reviewed has a 1000W inverter and a 768Wh long-lasting LFP battery. That’s enough power for most household items and a decent capacity whilst also keeping the unit portable. Most impressively it’s only around £500 – which is close to half what you had to pay for a similar 1000W unit a couple of years ago – and back then you wouldn’t have had super fast mains charging, smartphone app control and 100W USB-C charging ports.
There is a lot of tech I’d like to include over £500, but I’ll save that for another list. If you’d be interested in that – please let me know in the YouTube video’s comments!
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
Amazon links (as an Amazon affiliate, I get a small commission from purchases made via any Amazon links):
Olight i3E: https://amzn.to/3v8pC68 – or order directly from Olight: https://geni.us/kjOSZK
Pica Dry 3030 Pencil: https://amzn.to/485EaCb
Knipex Cobra XS: https://amzn.to/3vdHvAk
PopSocket PopGrip Round MagSafe: https://amzn.to/483gZsd
Victorinox Compact: https://amzn.to/3Nv75XN
RovyVon Auorora A8 650 Lumen Torch: https://amzn.to/4aw5paK
Soundcore Motion+: https://amzn.to/48rkRCS
MaxxDry Boot Dryer: https://amzn.to/3twprRt
Olight Baton 4 Premium: https://amzn.to/3v7zmgT – or order directly from Olight: https://geni.us/kjOSZK
Crucial X9 SSD: https://amzn.to/3RN6rHU
Meater Plus: https://amzn.to/3tmDfOB
ISDT 200W Charger: https://amzn.to/41uYo5E
RedTiger Golf/Hunting RangeFinder: https://amzn.to/3TzNxWa
Mileseey S7 Outdoor Laser Measure: https://amzn.to/3RRQ9xz
Tado Wireless Smart Thermostat: https://amzn.to/3RDiOFk – you also order directly from Tado and use my link for £15 off: https://www.tado.com/
Shokz OpenFit: https://amzn.to/3GOm37w
Worx Nitro Hydroshot: https://amzn.to/3GRgrcT
Huepar S04CG Laser Level: https://amzn.to/48qgWq8
Gozney Roccbox Pizza Oven: https://amzn.to/3Tt5B4n
TopDon TC005 Thermal Camera: https://amzn.to/3RZBWPf
Insta360 GO 3: (from Insta360 – use my link for 5% discount, free carry case and free T-shirt till end of this year) https://store.insta360.com/product/go-3?insrc=INRT7JX
Insta360 GO3 from Amazon: https://amzn.to/41uIR5P
Bluetti AC70 from Bluetti US: https://shrsl.com/4c7xb (use my code techAC70 for $20 off!)
Bluetti AC70 from Bluetti UK: https://shrsl.com/4c7xe
Bluetti AC70 from Amazon: https://amzn.to/47f4CrS (available in the UK early in the new year)
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