I find it hard to imagine travelling without all my toys. All the surprises would be lovely, but so is being sure the driver is actually taking you to your hotel…
This is the second part of my Gear post. You can read the first part here.
Electronics on the road
Ahh, electronics for travel. It’s a very nice contradiction. You leave to get away from it all, but you bring your electronics to stay in touch, or make your frenemies jealous when you return. If you’re like me, you want to make photos, triage them, book hotels, create blogposts, navigate and a whole lot more. We used the following stuff.
Camera: Sony DSC-RX100 (three versions by now)
In short: the best camera that you can fit in your jeans pocket. A sensor that’s a lot bigger than those in other cameras makes everything better. Combine it with a f:1.8 wide-angle lens and low light photography, depth of field and dynamic range become best in class. If the best camera is the one you have with you, I’ll happily bring this one. By the way, The Wirecutter agrees with me:
If I could have any point-and-shoot camera under a grand, the one I’d get is the Sony DSC-RX100 II. It’s $750, which puts it in the price range of cheap DSLRs, but make no mistake—this is the best pocketable camera out there for less than $1,000 thanks to its large sensor, fast lens and small size.
There are three versions, all great. Get the one you can afford.
Gorillapod
If you bring a small camera, you can also bring a smaller tripod. We haven’t used our gorilla pod often, but when we did it was super nice for selfies and night photography.
Phones and Pads
We’re a pretty Apple-centric household (because of me). We brought our iPhones for navigation, reading, music and hotel booking. The iPad mini got used for triaging photos, reading and exploring TripAdvisor. Which brings me to apps. We couldn’t do without:
- Content creation
- Exploring
- TripAdvisor: Making sure we book your trip at the right place.
- Foursquare: What to eat, what to drink?
- Forevermap: Got us home…
- Booking
- Agoda Best prices, but you pay in advance.
- Booking.com (and their Tonight app for discounts):
- Air Asia, Nok Air, etc.:Flights!
- Communication
- Messages
- iTranslate
- Entertainment
- DS File: Yes, we downloaded complete movies…
- Spotify: Mister music, will you play?
- Pocket Casts: News and entertainment for me.
- Reeder: This has to be the most used app on my phone.
- Information
It’s surprising how little we used things like Nu.nl and the various weather apps. Usually you’ll deal with the weather when it gets to you…
Sometimes we put the phones into a waterproof case by Lifeproof. The Frē model for the iPhone 5 sucks! It has a vanity window at the back so you can see the Apple logo. After a month, this had fallen out, so no more waterproof joy for me. The version for the 4(s) is fine.
Toothbrush
Yes, we brought an electric toothbrush (actually, we brought two!). It will be hard to brush three times a day, so you might as well do a good job of it. It’s a shame all electric toothbrushes are so terribly designed, but that’s a different rant (watch this space).
Charging
All Those electronics need a steady stream of electrons to keep them going. That’s why we bought the ‘mother of all chargers’. This is a USB charger with 6(!) ports. Have you got an iDevice with a Lightning port? This device will make your touchscreen feel adventurous, since it becomes wildly inaccurate. Still, it’s a lot better than bringing six chargers… And you can share with fellow travellers!
We also brought a world plug and a triple plug plug of course.
Would we bring it all again? I would, although I’m not sure about Jacqueline…
Have you read read the first part of this blogpost?
