The Gen XY Lifestyle
Travel Smart with the Right Tech
Travelling can be tiresome when there’s plenty to pack and carry around. While you want to keep things simple, sometimes there seems to be no two ways about it.
But wait, while we are pretty much tied to our gadgets, we don’t have to be a slave to clutter – there’s no need to carry a truckload of adapters and messy wires with cumbersome 3-pin plugs. Here’s an interesting take on how you can enjoy the best of both worlds.
Phone and camera: Samsung Galaxy S6 (from S$998)
The smartphone is undoubtedly the center of our tech-powered lives, and this powerhouse of a smartphone checks all the right feature boxes. It’ll provide you the means for communications, navigation, mobile entertainment, and most importantly it’s equipped with a pretty solid camera provided you don’t need a powerful zoom feature. Leave your compact cameras at home!
Headphones: Jaybird Bluebuds X (S$239)
Wired earphones sure are reliable, but they sure are messy. Jaybird makes arguably the best wireless earbuds out there right now in the form of Bluebuds X. Despite its relative age, they’re renowned for their great sound and ease of use. But most importantly for our criteria, they take up relatively little space, and can be easily stored without tangling.
Laptop/tablet: Microsoft Surface 3 (from S$748)
If you must have a laptop along by your side in anticipation of some urgent work that may crop up, the Microsoft Surface has all the power of a fully functioning desktop, but in a form of a portable tablet. They also make excellent entertainment devices on their own, and will come to your rescue if the hotel TV or inflight TV is not to your liking. Plus you can charge it via USB, which is a big plus if you want to travel light.
Backup Power: Xiaomi 5,000mAh Power Bank (S$14)
These life-saving batteries are so cheap and well-designed, its hard to imagine recommending anything else. Pick up the 5,000mAh model for its phone-hugging slimness; it’s good as a backup for your phone as well as your earbuds on the move – and you need to bring just one cable. If for some reason you must need backup power for your tablet, spring for the 16,000mAh model.
Reading Tablet: Amazon Kindle (from USD$79)
If reading is your preferred form of entertainment, the Amazon Kindle is a must have. It’s small enough to fit easily in any bag and it also saves power – reading on your phone and tablet isn’t the best use of your battery. Actually, with the ability to store thousands of books and a battery that lasts for weeks, the Kindle can easily be the only entertainment device you’ll carry with you.
Router: Asus WL-330NUL Pocket Router (S$59)
You can’t assume that all hotel rooms will have adequate Wi-Fi coverage, so sometimes it’s better to take matters into your own hands, literally. The Asus pocket router easily fits in the palm of your hand, and yet it works wonders in enabling connectivity for all your devices by utilising the wired ethernet port that almost all rooms will have. Plus, it’s conveniently powered via a USB port.
Charger: Anker 60W (S$54)
As your dependency on your devices grows, so does your dependency on chargers. The diminutive Anker 60W makes charging your devices a breeze: it comes with six 2A ports that let you charge six devices at once, and at maximum charging speed. If you haven’t already realised, you can charge everything mentioned above at once with just this one charger!
Alternates: A Xiaomi Mi 4i (S$279) if you must have a dual SIM phone; and if you must have a better camera, there’s the Sony DSC-HX90V (S$599, for 30x zoom) or the FujiFilm X100T (S$1,899 for fantastic image quality).
