Know someone who lives in the future, and is always has to be ahead of everyone else? There are a few ideas you might find this holiday season.
Lifx Beam
Price: $299
Science fiction paints rooms with strips of light inside them, but that’s the sort of lighting you might only expect in films or visions of the future. Yet that’s the sort of thing you can get already, and it connects with a smart lighting system.
Developed by Australia’s Lifx, the Beam is a strip of light that can be shortened or set in different positions thanks to a magnetic design, allowing you to build right angles or lines controllable by an app or assistant.
Bose Frames
Price: $299
We’re not living in a future where we have music played directly to our brains, but we are in a world where you can throw a pair of sunglasses on and listen with clarity.
The Bose Frames are a surprisingly solid pair of sunglasses with some fairly impressive sound innards, allowing you to walk around and listen to music, podcasts, or just talk in the phone, all simply while wearing a pair of sunnies.
While Bose really needs to support replaceable lenses, the Bose Frames are a great first step for an early adopter to jump into, instead of yet another pair of wireless earphones.
Read our review of the Bose Frames…
Nuraphones
Price: $499
Headphones as sunglasses aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and if you think the person you’re buying for just might prefer a pair of headphones they can wear whenever, yet still live in the cutting edge, you might want to check out the Nuraphones.
An Australian invention, they’re a very different pair of headphones that goes both in the ear and around it, encasing it with sound and vibration.
These headphones also have another trick, with a special sound test that can measure how your ears hear and adapt the audio to suit you. Everyone will hear music differently, and the Nuraphones can adapt to everyone by using a special ear test.
They definitely have a different level of comfort, so they won’t be for everyone, but the sound and concept is definitely something you can expect to find in future devices. Alternatively, if the fit doesn’t seem right, you may want to consider the Nuraloop, which is coming early next year.
HTC Vive Pro
Price: $1299
We’re not quite living in that future where we have a holographic world around us for entertainment, but an early adopter can get some of the way there with VR.
Virtual reality can deliver a virtualised experience all around you, and is used for games and entertainment, and even some apps not dedicated to those areas. The whole holographic thing is a while off, but if you want to get someone a little closer, you might want to look here.
Oppo Reno 5G
Price: $1499
The next level of mobile internet is 5G, and it’s something that officially came to Australia this year. While most 5G phones hit above the $1500 mark, the Oppo Reno 5G introduces the next generation of mobile internet speeds just below it, and with Oppo’s flagship for the year.
Beyond 5G, Oppo also has a pop-up selfie camera, and a three camera setup at the back sporting a 48 megapixel camera and a neat periscope zoom camera.
Samsung Galaxy Fold
Price: $2999
A phone that folds? It’s actually a thing, and while this year was supposed to be all about foldable, it didn’t quite happen that way.
Instead, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold was the only model that arrived, delivering a 4.6 inch slim phone that folded into a 7.3 inch tablet. A little thicker than other phones and lacking 5G, the Samsung Galaxy Fold is still a forward thinking phone because of what it delivers: a phone that folds into a tablet. Crazy.
