Welcome to My Tech Gear! And welcome to another Tech Tip Tuesday!
Now this is a little bit different from the previous ones I've done, in so much that given the season, these are tech
tips for gift shopping. So, if you're going out and buying a gift for your cousin, nephew, brother,
sister, parent, child or whoever quite frankly, or given the year we've just had, you know, just going out
and buying something for yourself, here are 10 gifts that I think should be on your list as
the big main presents that would make you go "WOW" when you open up that present. Let's get into it!
Before we go any further if you do enjoy the video please don't forget to LIKE and SHARE it,
and if you're not subscribed yet then hit that SUBSCRIBE button down below,
and that notification bell, so you're notified about new videos
as and when I post them. It really helps me grow my channel, so that I can keep making videos
for you. Thanks! So it's not always easy buying tech gear, especially when people are particularly picky!
I myself am probably the pickiest person around, and make it quite difficult for buying gifts for.
So here's things that I think everyone really kind of wants, and there's some really
good presents in there that I think would make anyone's day. So let's get into the list!
Now the first one on my list shouldn't be a surprise to any people if you've seen the
other videos on my channel, and it's the Oculus Quest 2. It's a $299 virtual reality headset that
is completely tether-less and you can play on your own, you don't need to hook it up to a pc or
anything else. Download the games as you would like on a mobile phone, but straight onto the headset,
and just get playing. I've played mine, my kids have played it, it's a really immersive experience,
it's a great present for anybody.
Next up on my list is drones. Now I'm not normally into drones.
I either find they're really expensive, like hideously expensive, or they're really cheap and cheerful,
and really not worth buying at all. However, DJI have that sweet spot in the middle
with the dji Mavic Mini. Now that came out about a year ago. Just recently they've now released
the Mavic Mini 2, except scratch the 'Mavic' part, so it's now just called the 'Mini 2'. The important
thing is that it's 249 grams, which keeps it under that limit whereby you have to go and register
drones with the aviation authorities, and all that jazz. So it's a drone that's aimed at beginners, but it's
taking all of the best bits that DJI do well, and do insanely well, in all of the other drones that
they do. Some of the features you've got here is it can now fly about 4000 meters up in the air,
it's more tolerant of wind speeds as well, it can fly faster, it's a general tweak of everything
all round. So it's a little bit quicker, it can go further. Another area where it's massively improved
is around the camera itself. So it can now shoot 4K footage, at 30 frames per second, but it's still 4K.
It can still do 1080p at 60 frames per second, same as the original Mavic Mini could, but it's that 4K
that really jumps it above its predecessor. At $449, it's not a cheap drone, but it's not a necessarily
expensive one either. One thing to watch out for is the price on the original Mavic Mini's. It's
not a bad drone by any shape or form. So, if you can actually find a decent price on last year's model,
it actually might be worth a punt.
This year sees the release of all the next gen consoles,
with both Sony and Microsoft battling it out head-to-head. So with a Playstation 5 costing $399 for
the all digital model (so there's no disk drive in this one), and the super beefed up one costing $499.
XBox on the other hand do things slightly differently. Their top of the range Series X,
that's $499, same price as the Playstation 5 top-of-the-range, but their base model, which is the Series S,
is a $100 cheaper than the digital model of the Playstation 5, at $299! Now it does go
digitally as well, but it also drops the hardware spec, so it is rated slightly lower than the Series X.
That's Microsoft having a bit of a punt on a strategy piece to say it's better to get people
at a lower price point to get them into the start of next-gen gaming, rather than force them all the
way up to four or five hundred dollars. It's going to be interesting to see if the strategy plays out
for them. So it's worth pointing out that the Series X model has a disk drive. the Series S
doesn't ,and on the Sony side, the top of the range Playstation 5 has a disk drive, and the digital one
doesn't. So, if a disk drive is really important to you, you've kind of got to go for the top model.
Personally though, with all of these different store passes and everything else, everything goes
digital anyway, so I personally don't use disks, and haven't done for actually probably a year now.
So with everyone having all their mobile devices, sometimes you just want to play
music, but you want it to sound good, and not like it's just coming out of a mobile phone.
Bluetooth speakers are still the best way of doing that, especially if you want to be portable. So
for those of you that really want to push the boat out, there is the Ultimate Ears Hyperboom.This thing is
massive, in both sound volume and size. You're certainly not going to pick this up under your
arm and go running around the block. It is $399, so it's certainly not cheap. It promotes
loudness over clarity and quality. I would say if that's the kind of price you're looking at and
you're more interested in the clarity side of things, then go with something like a Sonos Move.
So for the same price, you will get better clarity, although it won't go as loud. If you want something
a little bit more portable, and actually still want good size for your money, then I would
look at something like the JBL Charge 4. This is $179. It's an awesome speaker. I've got one myself,
and the sound that you get out of something that's actually quite small is actually surprising. So if
you don't have one and you want a Bluetooth speaker, I thoroughly recommend that as well.
So you wouldn't think an action camera would have much sway in any recommendation list
at the moment, given the fact that most of us are spending most of our time at home. However,
the GoPro Hero 9, whilst is an awesome action camera, you can also do other things with it as well.
You can turn it into a webcam. You can make it a primary camera for a Youtube video, like this one!
So it is actually pretty versatile. The Hero 9 jumps it up from the previous
Hero 8 and reintroduces some features that it lost from previous generations too.
It's still got the teeth coming out the bottom, so integrated into the camera, which is great.
It is bigger than its predecessor, not just the physical size, but the battery is bigger as well.
So, if you've got a Hero 8 or earlier and you were thinking you just upgrade and reuse the
batteries, you're actually out of luck. The front screen, which is the big change for the GoPro Hero 9,
allows you to see yourself as you're videoing, so certainly if you've got someone who's a vlogger
and is looking for a camera to use, that should actually be high up on their list as well.
The hyper smooth as well has also been significantly improved from the previous generation,
and honestly that just gets better with every version. It's amazing that the fact you can be
running down the street with hypersmooth on and it looks like your camera is on rails. It's awesome!
So I don't think any tech recommendation list would be complete without saying
'smartphone', because at the rate of innovation with smartphones every year, every six months, sometimes
it feels like every three months, there's a new phone coming out. And of course, Apple may have
released some phone recently with the iPhone 12 Pro. The iphone 12 pro is $1099, however it's not the
most expensive phone on the market. The Samsung S20 Ultra is $1399,
which is insane! However, if you seriously have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket then
these are the pinnacle on both the Apple and Android side of what phones should actually be.
If however you're looking for a phone that's a little bit more on the budget side, then I would look at
something like the Samsung S20 FE, which is the 'Fan Edition'. This basically takes all the really
good features from the super expensive Samsung phone, and puts it in a case, and trims a few little
features here and there, but nothing significant, to put it in a body that only costs you $699.
So where would a smartphone be, without a smart watch?! So on the Apple side of things we have
the Apple Watch 6, which was released recently, and that comes in at $399 or $429 depending upon
whether you get the smaller 40mm version of the watch or the 44mm version. On the Android side
of things we have the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3, that's $339 or $369 for the 41 or 45 mm versions.
Now that's pretty expensive. Fortunately, both of those manufacturers do offer watches that are
actually a little bit cheaper. They might knock a feature or two off from the flagship watches,
but it's nothing significant. So apple have the 'Watch SE', which is $269. That's actually not bad,
especially considering it's an Apple product. On the Android side of things, or 'Tizen' if it's
Samsung, they have the 'Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2', and that's about $200 in stores at the moment.
My wife's got that watch, and it is a stonking watch. The only thing that I don't
think is great about it is probably the battery life, but then Apple has exactly the same problem.
you're lucky to get day or two out of that battery.
Now seeing as we're all stuck at home, then really we need something decent to watch.
So here we are looking at 4K smart TVs. See a little bit of a trend here with
the 'smart' right? Well, if you're going to be home, I don't want to have all these
different boxes plugged into my tv. I want everything just in my single TV.
So if you look at the likes of Google Android, Sony Bravia, LG webOS, all of these different
tvs are all 'smart'. So all of your streaming services like Disney+, Netflix,
Hulu, and the likes, are all going to have apps in those TVs, so you don't need a separate box.
Prices for these TVs are actually pretty good as well. I'm not going to go through every model that
exists because we would be here all day, but you're looking at about $500 for a 65 inch TV, and if you
want to get something a little bit smaller then a 50 inch TV goes for roughly $350.
Brand-wise, I'd always look at brands like Sony, Samsung and LG, that give really good TVs for the money.
If you actually want to have a little bit cheaper price, it might be worth checking out TCL as well.
So you've got a smart TV but the speaker in it is all tiny and horrible because it's a really thin
TV so the speakers aren't very big at all. So, you need to go and get a sound bar. But, we're, you know,
theming 'smart' now, so you want a 'smart' sound bar. So for these I thoroughly recommend any by Sonos
pretty much. So the Sonos Arc is their top of the range biggest one, and that's $799, but it is
massive, and I mean massive in sound, not really massive in size. Sonos do sound bars really well
because they've come from a music background, so not only do they create sound bars that sound
great when you're playing movies, but they sound great when you're listening to music as well.
That's something that some sound bars don't do particularly well. The Sonos Arc is the pinnacle of
Sonos soundbar development. It supports Dolby Atmos, so it will bounce sound off your ceiling
to make it sound as though there's something behind you. The clarity, and the breadth, of the
sound coming out of this thing is awesome. If you can't quite stretch to $799, or you've got a smaller
room, then I'd certainly recommend looking at Sonos Beam. This was the one that they released the other
year, and it's a more compact unit, but you get a surprising sound clarity and wide sound stage
for such a small device, so it's definitely worth checking out. Because both of these speakers are
Sonos speakers, they are also smart speakers. The advantage to these is that not only do
they support Amazon Alexa, but they support Google Assistant as well, and you can jump between the two
so you don't have to lock yourself into one ecosystem, it actually supports
both! That's great to see because now you don't have to pick a speaker because it only supports
the ecosystem that you've got in your house. You can pick a speaker because of the sound quality.
And whilst we're on the subject of sound, we come to wireless headphones. Now these have been getting
better and better each year, with the battery life lasting longer, better codecs, better noise
cancelling. The pinnacle of this is the Sony WH-1000XM4. Honestly, Sony have to come up with
better naming convention. Why can't they just call it the Sonos One, or the Sonos Two? That
would be so much easier! For me, they are the go-to headset. It is also worth looking at the Bose 700's.
They were the successors to the QC35 Mark II's. Honestly, all companies need to come up
with a better naming convention. Anyway, the price of the Bose 700's is $379, and the Sony XM4's is $349.
So I definitely recommend checking both of those out. On the subject of the QC35's,
If you actually want to save a little bit of money, you can go into the market and the QC35II's
are actually a little bit cheaper, and they'll come in at $299. On the Sony side, they have one
that's slightly cheaper as well, that's the WH-CH710N. Honestly! That comes at the same price at $299 too.
The noise cancelling won't be as good the sound quality won't be quite as good,
but you are saving yourself a little bit of money. So if you don't want over-ear headphones, but want
to have in-ear ones instead, then I certainly recommend checking out the Sony WF-1000XM3's.
They come in at $299. At the same price point of $299 are also the Jabra Elite 85T's. Now these
are an upgrade on last year's 75T's, with some improvements around sound. They've got 6 mics
instead of 4. It's definitely a step up from Jabra, and it has to be because that's a high
price point and you're battling Sony here. If you don't want to spend that much money then if you
look at the 75T's, which were last year's model that I mentioned, you can actually get them for a
little bit of a cheaper price as well. You can find those for $159. They're still really good in-ear headphones.
So there's 10 gift recommendations, and something I certainly hope gets you thinking,
and actually gives you a few ideas as you start shopping over the next month or two.
Do let me know in the comments down below if you get any of them, and what you thought of
this video as well! I will make a video between now and Christmas that will go through
the top 10 or 20 gifts under $100. So if that's something that you want
to see, let me know in the comments down below, and I'll do that. So thanks for watching everyone!
If you did enjoy it, please don't forget to like and share it, and if you're still here but not
subscribed yet, then hit that subscribe button down below.
And as always... See you in the next one!