3 Great Gift Ideas for the Tech Junkie in Your Life
Christmas shopping is serious business for some people. Last year’s holiday shopping season clocked in at about $579 billion in sales, according to the National Retail Federation. If you have a tech lover in your life to buy for, we’ve got the top picks in video games, smartphones and tablets to get you on the path to stellar gift-giver status.
Video Games
After eight years, the video game industry is preparing to go to war again with a new console generation. The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are releasing in November, joining the already-released Nintendo WiiU. The consoles themselves are great buys for video gaming relatives and friends. However, if your hardcore gamer friends already have the next-gen consoles on tap, take a look at the games.
Photo of Playstation 4 by tofuprod via Wikimedia Commons
PC gamers can download “Battlefield 4” when it releases on Oct. 29. It’s one of the most highly anticipated games of this holiday season. Other great game options include “Watch Dogs,” “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag,” “Killzone: Shadow Fall,” and “South Park: Stick of Truth.”
Smartphones
If you plan on getting a smartphone for someone, the first thing to be aware of is you need an unlocked phone, unless you know specifically which wireless carrier he or she has service through. The last thing you want to have happen is to gift an AT&T customer a phone that’s locked to Verizon.
You can purchase unlocked phones, although these are significantly more expensive than locked phones. One of the hottest smartphones for this season is the iPhone 5s. This is the latest iPhone release and the first to feature a 64-bit processor. It also introduces the latest update, iOS 7. The iPhone is one of the most powerful phones on the market, so if you want to get a gift sure to be appreciated from the apps to the hardware, this is a safe bet. Make sure they like Apple operating systems, though—the Android vs. iOS debate brings up some strong preferences.
Photo by Zach Vega via Wikimedia Commons
Tablets
The introduction of tablets greatly reduced the amount of PCs being sold. People just don’t need a full computer for checking email and browsing the Internet. Instead, they opt for the easier option of getting a sleek tablet to do their basic computer tasks on. Tablets come in a few basic types: Android, Windows 8 and iOS. The Android tablets are the least expensive of the bunch and come in the greatest variety of hardware. One particular stand-out model is the Google Nexus 10. The iPad is wildly popular as well, and Windows-based tablets are gaining ground.
Photo of a Nexus 10 by developers.android.com via Wikimedia Commons
Authored by: Julius Ballard – Julius is a blogger skilled in speaking technobabble to describe his two loves: gadgets and computers.