Search form

menu menu

Travel savvy: Three helpful holiday gadgets for your summer break

10:09 02/07/2019
Before heading off, check out these holiday essentials to ensure happy travels this summer

Kindle PaperWhite
€90, amazon.de

We’re pretty certain we don’t need to repeat the benefits of taking an e-reader with you on holiday instead of a stack of actual books; it’s the weight, of course. The newest edition of Amazon’s Kindle PaperWhite is lighter and thinner than ever, being only 8.19mm thick and weighing just 182g. That’s not the only box it ticks off in terms of vacation-proofing; its lightest version ports twice the storage of previous generations of the PaperWhite, with 8GB of storage memory.

You’ll be bringing bookcases, not books, to your holiday location. Another feature that renders the new PaperWhite extremely travel-friendly is its screen, which delivers crisp laser-quality text, and whose front light even eliminates glare when you read in direct sunlight. But the pièce de résistance is its waterproofness. Drop it in a 2m-deep swimming pool and neglect to take it out for up to an hour, and Amazon asserts it will still work.

Xiaomi Mi Fast Charging Powerbank
€30, xiaomi-belgie.be

When you bring lots of devices with you for a day at the beach, you’ll most likely need to charge them by midday. A power bank would certainly come in handy. There are many, many of these gadgets out there, by a plethora of brands, but few deliver the power and versatility of Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi’s Mi Fast Charging Power Bank.

Take a look at its battery volume, for instance: it holds 20,000 milliampere (mAh) of juice. Considering a modern smartphone has a 3,000 to 4,000 mAh battery, you’ll be able to recharge multiple times in a day. The Mi Fast Charging Power Bank also has two USB-A ports, so you can mount two devices at a time. Devices that support 45W fast charging will also get a boost through the USB-C port.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II
€300, bosebelgium.be

For a pair of headphones to take with you on your travels, to listen to tunes or podcasts, you’ll need three things: they need to deliver splendid sound, they have to wirelessly connect to your devices, and – mostly for use during the flight to your travel destination – they definitely need to be noise-cancelling. You’ll find all three in the QuietComfort 35 II by Bose, the American audio brand that pioneered great sound and set an industry standard in cutting out noise.

The battery inside the QuietComfort 35 II lasts up to 20 hours on a single charge. And there are two buttons to interact with your digital world: on the right earcup, there’s a multi-function button to take incoming calls and access digital assistant Siri on an iPhone, while for Android phone owners, there’s an equivalent action button on the left to start up the Google Assistant AI interface.

This article first appeared in The Bulletin summer 2019

Written by The Bulletin

Comments

rosemary.weston...

You need to know that the Amazon.de does not ship the kindle to Belgium! Perhaps you would enlighten us as to how we receive it! Thanks

Jul 3, 2019 13:27
shirley.foxcastle

Neither does Amazon.co.uk. Amazon cites safety risks...

Jul 23, 2019 13:50