Christmas Gifts For Geeks: Tech

As we race towards Christmas, we’re frantically trying to make sure we’ve got everyone a gift this year. But what do you get for the tech lover that has everything?

We’ve got loads of ideas in our ultimate Christmas gift guide , but here we’re sharing some of our favourite present ideas that take inspiration from computers and gadgets but aren’t tech.

We’ve found jewellery made from computer parts, floppy disk coasters, and even a chopping board that looks like a motherboard.

Circuit Board Necklace

Take this amazing Geeky Heart Necklace, for example.

Etsy seller HarResols has more than 250 items made from recycled computer parts such as circuit boards and hard drives, inclucing this nerdy necklace that we love.

Other items available from this store include t-shirts, earrings, clocks, cufflinks and more so there’s something for everyone.

USB Mix Tape

If you miss the old days of exchanging mix tapes with your mates, you’ll love this modern take on the idea. Designed to look just like a traditional mix tape, you can write all of the tracks in the space provided.

But rather than requiring a tape player, the mix tape contains a 1GB USB stick that you can load your songs onto before passing it on to a friend.

Motherboard Chopping Board

We also love this chopping board for nerdy chefs.

It’s made with scratch-proof glass with non-slip feet, with an odourless, hygenic surface that’s easy to clean. Its motherboard-inspired design is lots of fun, and it’s a really great price right now too.

Circuit Board Ties

Another Etsy purchase, this one from ScatterbrainTies, is perfect for a tie-wearing tech-lover.

Choose from Black, Hunter Green or Kelly Green for these quite gorgeous Circuit Board Ties.

You can also choose your preferred tie width. The options are: Normal, Narrow, Skinny or Extra Long.

This set of four coasters is inspired by floppy disks from the 90s.

Simple but effective, these are a fun accessory for any geeky home, and they’re only £9.99 from IWOOT .

Camera Lens Cup

Here’s one for photographers: a camera lens mug complete with a grippy rubber focus ring and a lens hood lid that doubles as a coaster or a place to store your biscuits.

It’s a large mug, ideal for coffee and tea lovers but also perfectly good if you simply want to use it for cold drinks.

It’s a great price, so a perfect stocking filler .

Another fun mug idea is a heat change mug. It’s a departure from the computer-related gifts, but we imagine many geeks will love these retro gaming gifts too.

We particularly like the Game Boy Heat Change Mug from Firebox, but there’s also a Super Mario Bros version available.

When your pour your tea or coffee into the Game Boy mug, the screens on either side will ‘light up’ with some fun, familiar scenes.

Ridley’s That’s So Nerdy Quiz

Our final suggestion is this trivia game for geeks.

That’s So Nerdy is a quiz game with 1,000 questions, spanning categories including Star Wars and Super Mario, as well as technology and the internet.

It’s lots of fun and reasonably priced at £15.

Expert’s Rating

Our Verdict

If you’re after a quirky camera that’ll let you take snaps and print them out for your friends or family, but aren’t worried about the quality, the Kodak Smile Instant Print Digital Camera might be a good option for you. But some of the nostalgia of the instant camera is taken away by the design, the ability to choose not to print bad photos and the lack of the traditional developing film.

Best Prices Today: Kodak Smile Instant Print Digital Camera

Kodak’s Smile Instant Print Digital Camera is half instant printer , half instant camera . It can (in theory) print photos you’ve already taken using a different camera and then transferred onto a MicroSD card, but it also has a built-in camera that means you can use it to capture photos on the device itself and print those too.

This may sound great, but the downside is that we found it does neither thing particularly well. Its camera isn’t fantastic, and it’s very slow so taking photos of kids or animals is almost impossible. You are able to choose not to print bad photos, which can’t be said for all instant cameras, but those you do print are likely to suffer with strange exposure and less than great quality.

We’ve always found Zink printers like this one to be less than satisfactory when it comes to their quality. They tend to lose warmth, clarity and contrast, so you might not love the photos it produces.

The benefit of this kind of printer is that you don’t have to wait for photos to develop, but that’s also part of the appeal of your more traditional instant camera that uses film. As mentioned, you can also choose not to print bad photographs and you can edit them as we explain more about below, as well as exporting them to other devices should you wish to.

When taking photos with the Smile Instant Print Digital Camera, or after you’ve captured one, you can add a border to make the print look more like a traditional instant camera photo, or add monochrome, vintage or aqua filters. These can create some nice effects and we often preferred these edited results to a straightforward print.

There’s also a photobooth option that lets you take two photos to print side by side on one sheet, a timer, and a surprisingly effective flash should you need one.

You can store three photos within the internal memory of the device, but it’s recommended that you add a MicroSD card into the dedicated slot for more storage (up to 256GB). You should also be able to print any photos on the MicroSD card that come from other devices, but during our testing we could not get this to work. All of the photos we added to the MicroSD card, whether in a folder or not, were not recognised as data by the printer and therefore unable to print.

When it comes to the design and build of the Kodak Smile, we found it to be sturdy and compact, which is handy for popping into a bag to take out and about. It has a lanyard attachment available too. The shutter button is easily accessible and the viewing screen isn’t amazing, but does the job and is more than you’ll get from some similarly priced rivals. We found that the battery life was good, with a handy indicator at the bottom of the screen to help you avoid it running out mid print.

It’s a shame the design is more printer-like than camera-like. Some of the charm of an instant camera is taken away by the slightly clunky, boxy design. There are several fun colour options available, though, including black, pink, blue, green and yellow.

If you’re unsure about whether the Kodak Smile is right for you, you might like to check out our round-ups of the best portable printers and the best instant cameras.

Verdict

It’s really tricky to rate the Kodak Smile Instant Print Digital Camera. On the one hand, it’s a compact device that has almost every feature we could ask for in an instant camera/printer hybrid. A decent screen, a microSD card slot, a flash, good battery life, speedy printing, editing capabilities and an affordable price tag. On the other hand, the editing capabilities are limited, the microSD card slot seems to have trouble finding images not taken on the Smile itself, and the prints are low quality when they arrive.