So… Valentine’s Day isn’t too far away and if you hadn’t already gotten that special someone a present, we thought we’d suggest a few gadgets that you might want to consider for your Valentine.
The list will range from the more high-end stuff to the affordable. We are after all in a national lockdown and for some of us will be “gifting on a budget”
N.B We looked for shops that could do home deliveries
Wearables
Smartwatches and fitness bands are all the rage these days. I have seen a lot of people sporting an Apple Watch or a Fitbit on their wrists. Some do it for the aesthetics, functionality or they have joined the ever-growing Fitness Mafia. Whatever the case may be here are our picks for that special someone
Now, if you are “ballin” the retail price of an Apple Watch Series 6 is retailing for US$941 on Gizmo The Tech Store. More into the midrange, the Samsung Gear S2 is going for US$105 on the same store.
But if you are looking for something more affordable (in the wearables category) you can grab a Xiaomi Mi Band 4 Fitness tracker for US$45 on Techzim’s Market.
Tablets and readers
So I recently got a Kindle and I have been absolutely loving it. As much as I love physical copies of books, the feel and look of the Kindle has won me over. It’s compact, the screen sort of feels like a page and the battery life lasts a literal aeon. If your Valentine (no name pun intended) is a reader then I strongly suggest you pick one up from the Techzim Market.
If you are on the high-end and you are looking to spoil your loved one with an iPad then look no further than Gizmo The Tech Store:
On the low-end of the spectrum, there is the Lenovo TAB4 7 that is going for US$121.85 at TV Sales and Home’s online store.
Laptops and computers
The once luxury item is almost a necessity in this the “new normal”. Everyone has had to adapt to either working or studying from home.
Gifting your Valentine with a laptop is in a sense, the gift the keeps on giving and so we will start from the low end of the price range and then build up. The first entry is the HP 15 DA3007NIA which has a 10th Gen i3, 4GB of RAM and 1TB Harddrive going for US$550 at Fi Laptops. The HP has plenty of storage and enough power to deal the day to day tasks.
In the midrange, you can opt for the i5 model of the HP 15 DA3007NIA which is retailing for US$750 at Fi Laptops. Or you can opt for the HP Pavillion i5 Cs3063cl which is going for US$850 and has 8 Gig RAM, and 265 GB SSD storage.
At the upper end of the scale (and to break the HP monotony) is the Asus ZenBook Duo going for US$1 650. It has an interesting touchpad keyboard arrangement as well as 10th gen i7, 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD with 8GB LPDDR3 RAM as well as Facial recognition, and built-in IR camera.
Smartphones
There are a bunch of really good smartphones out there and it’s no longer just the mid and flagship phones that are value for money. Low-end models like the Techno Spark 5 and GTel Infinity 8s (both of which we reviewed and you can check those out with the links below) are pretty good too.
GTeL Infinity 8s review. Reasonably priced, reasonable value
Tecno Spark 5 Pro review. Is this the new battery king?
Samsung also has some solid products with the Galaxy A10 (US$187), A10s (US$196) and A20 (US$233) and all these models are available in the Techzim Market.
In the midrange, we will have to start off with Samsung’s excellent midrange. The Galaxy A30 (US$308) and A50 (US$411). I have had the A30s for almost a year now and it was definitely money well spent. Also available in this line are the camera focused Huawei lineup of the P40 Lite US$320, the Y9 Prime US$265 and the P30 Lite going for US$230 on Gizmo The Tech Store.
We will round off the list with, of course, the coveted flagship phones. In this category, it would be hard not to mention the iPhone range. With the 12 now out and retailing for an eye-watering US$1 050 all the way US$1 340, it might be worth looking into the older generations of the iPhone like the X which is still value for money at between US$835 to US$990.
On the Android side of things you can’t go wrong with the OnePlus Pro 8 US$955, the Samsung Note 20 Ultra US$1 200 or the Huawei P40 Pro going for US$950.
This list is by no means a comprehensive one but I’m sure that if what you are looking for isn’t here, you’ll find on any of the online stores we referenced.
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