Tech Gift Ideas 2018: Buying Guide for Home and Office

The first entry of our Holiday Gift Guide dealt with equipment that your loved ones could use while traveling. In contrast, today's edition focuses on a more home-based technology, that it is about gadgets to improve the configuration of the ### 39, an office or an upgrade A / V for the living room. As with all our guides, we have developed a year of testing to make some recommendations that could really please or be useful for your favorite people. Take a look for yourself.

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Creative pebble

The sound of most laptops and PC monitors is terrible. For those who would appreciate a better sound from their computer but would not want a headset glued to the head all day, the Creative Pebble is a first interesting upgrade. It's a small pair of $ 20 desktop speakers, with a sound that hides its low price.

Now, all the speakers as small and inexpensive have reservations. The Pebble pair is powered by a basic USB-A connector, so it will never give you a massive sound. It can slightly distort the maximum volumes, it is not immune to whistling in the treble of some tracks and deep bass are more implicit than truly impactful. Much of this is just physics.

That said, Pebble speakers are much more powerful than your laptop or desktop speakers, with a much larger sound stage – naturally, since it's a stereo pair – and surprisingly rich midrange. Voices and other high midrange are presented with good clarity and bass is still present on most tracks through the pair of passive radiators located at the bottom of the speakers. It's a more complete sound and more balanced than usual for this price range.

The Pebble gives you some extra wires to manage, but there is nothing easier to install: simply plug the USB-A connector into a power outlet and plug it into the 3.5mm jack of your apparatus. And if a good design is subjective, I would say that the Pebble looks clean for something plastic. They also gave us zero reliability issues after six months of use. Gather everything together and you get a clear upgrade from the desktop default sound for little money.

Logitech MX Vertical

To be clear, a vertical mouse is not a magic cure for wrist discomfort. There is no guarantee that it will be more comfortable than a traditional mouse. Move a mouse with your arm more than the wrist, making sure your wrist is not sagging on your desk, and holding the mouse gently will do more to ensure comfort than just trying a new design.

Yet, more and more people are turning to these things for a reason. If you know anyone who has ever complained of wrist pain or just wants to change its configuration, the Logitech MX Vertical is probably the most successful example of a vertical mouse to date.

There is a learning curve: the click buttons and the scroll wheel are located on the right side, and everything is supposed to be held as if you were playing the hand. Everyone's hands are different, but for me, all the buttons feel like they're in the right place. While you have to rest your arm at a different angle during use, I found that holding the mouse in this way made it more natural to keep my wrist tense while making movements. Despite some initial skepticism, he became my main mouse after three months of testing.

This helps the MX Vertical work well. It has a sensor of 4,000 DPI that has not posed any problem of precision or stuttering so far, a Logitech battery at four months that we have not yet loaded, and a USB-C port to recharge quickly the device and connect it. to a computer. It works with Bluetooth or a USB-A receiver, the textured sides of the mouse give it an extra grip, and the Logitech setup application is simple, but easy to manage. There are four customizable buttons, one for adjusting the pointer speed on the fly and two on the left side that are placed in the natural place of the thumb. (I linked them to copy and paste orders, personally.)

Again, this type of recommendation is particularly subjective. For office work, the Logitech MX Master 2S offers a similar premium feel in a more traditional form. Such a bulky element, which encourages shorter mouse movements, is also horrible for games: the company's G502 Proteus Spectrum is more flexible. Neither is there a left-handed model, which is hard. But if you know a right-handed man who can not shake his carpal tunnel or is just ready to try vertical mice, the MX Vertical can give them a hand.

4K LG 27UK650-W Monitor

4K monitors are starting to make more sense. Higher panel prices have been steadily declining over the last few months, many sizing problems with legacy computer software have been fixed, and the amount of interesting 4K content continues to grow steadily. The higher resolution makes more sense on a monitor than on a TV: it gives you more work space for opening various windows and its physical seating closer to a 4K screen makes it easier to assess sharpness added.

If you want to help someone move to a more scalable monitor, consider the LG 27UK650-W. This is a 27-inch screen, ideal for most people, with an IPS LCD screen. Naturally, it does not have the deep blacks of an OLED panel and, like most current monitors, its vaunted "HDR" features do not really give a particularly dynamic image. But his colors are good and precise, he becomes brilliant enough for non-HDR purposes, and its viewing angles are solid. With a refresh rate of 60 Hz, this is not the best choice for high-end games, but response times are fast and entry delay is not a problem. The panel also supports AMD's FreeSync technology to limit screen tearing with compatible AMD devices.

The design of the 27UK650-W looks nice (although the total absence of USB ports may hinder some), the base could be a bit more flexible and the hardware uses a good amount of plastic. There are no built-in speakers either. Nevertheless, for the needs of the general public, the image here is strong enough to make this case a good deal in the $ 400 range. Just make sure your computer is powerful enough for you to buy 4K first.