11 Newest Tech Gadgets for Summer Travel
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Travel is all about technology, from GPS and Waze, to Airbnb and, well, airplanes. But beyond these basics? That’s when it becomes essential to equip yourself. During the busy summer travel season, the right gear can keep you hydrated, ventilated, and entertained, allowing you to relax into a Nantucket beach vacation easily, or insulate you from the worst insults of a red-eye to Omaha.
Technology starts low. As in—below the waist. Yes, flying in a suit in the 1960s was glamorous, but who wants to sweat through tweed? Instead, try the ventilated support of Lululemon’s ABC Jogger WovenAir, which wicks sweat without compression. Should turbulence dress your pants with cranberry cocktail, rinse and hang-dry at destination with the Flexo-Line travel clothesline, which can be strung across anything short of the San Francisco Bay. Finally, fortify your baggage with a TSA-approved lock and a Cincha travel belt, which guarantees your tote bag won’t spill its guts—and the $50 SPF inside it—on the jetway. Now, here’s the high tech.
Light weight, long lasting battery, and a larger screen than previous models make the Amazon Kindle Scribe a travel necessity for bookworms. As the name suggests, Scribe also allows for users to draw on the screen or write notes directly onto, for example, their favorite passages of a novel.
Baggage restrictions get more severe by the day. Why not leave the tablet at home? The Google Pixel Fold unfurls into a 7.6-inch tablet on stainless-steel hinges, with a powerful camera—here, 48 megapixels. With up to 72 hours of battery life, you might endure your entire long weekend getaway on one charge.
Even organized types misplace things while hustling out the door. Cut down on the panic with the Apple AirTag, which wirelessly transmits the location of crucial items to your phone. Tag your wallet! Tag your passport! Tag your kids! All the info is encrypted, so your valuables can betray their whereabouts to you alone.
If you ask really nicely, or bring a forged doctor’s note, a flight attendant might agree to heat up this compact, clay-bead-filled neck wrap in the nut-warming oven, allowing it to provide soothing radiant heat to the tension-prone muscles in the neck. If not, its pleasing weight is enough to comfort.
Anker is the king of aftermarket charging solutions, and this Apple-specific block makes wrestling with a thatch of dingy white cables a thing of the past. The block doubles as a phone stand, turning your airplane tray table into a mini cinema.
Some unplug on vacation, but hybrid workers, culture vultures, and cinephiles demand fast, private internet wherever they go. Why risk low-security airport Wi-Fi or a Colorado cabin without means to stream The Shining? The new Nighthawk uses a sturdy 5G connection for 8Gbps speeds and can support 32 devices for up to 13 hours. It’s a spec monster; your home router is jealous.
There’s an iron lurking in most hotel rooms and vacation rentals, waiting to unleash tarry stains from prior use onto your one nice outfit. Steam instead. This handheld device eases wrinkles from shirts, suits, and slacks sans risk. You know the shower trick? This is that, without the wet sleeves, the 45-minute delay, and the flooded foyer carpeting.
Save this one for your destination: A compact, powerful projector that can turn any blank wall into a screen. The Freestyle can project from the side and adjust its picture automatically, greatly increasing its use cases. Plus, a built-in speaker and optional battery base make this a true portable cinema.
If you’ve decided to stick with your old Samsonite but still crave on-the-go metrics, this Tumi travel luggage scale provides ounce-accurate measurements from a case small enough to fit in a purse. Flying to Montana? Use it to weigh trout too.
Built for a backpack, the JBL Clip 3 bluetooth speaker is small in stature but large in sound. Plus, durable rubber cladding means it can survive a tumble onto the pool deck, or the indelicacies of the most sadistic baggage handler, and come out singing–for up to ten hours between charges.
What if you never again had to frantically and humiliatingly reapportion your underthings and other unmentionables out of a 51-pound checked bag at the airport counter? The SmartLuggage 26" has a built-in scale in the handle, so you’ll always know exactly how heavy you’re rolling.
