GO HIGH-TECH FOR YOUR HOLIDAY GIFTS

The countdown to Christmas is on. But now is not the time to despair and settle for socks or perfume. Here’s our last-minute shopping guide to fun, functional and slightly offbeat tech gifts.

Entertainment

If you’ve been following our tech gift-buying guides, we’ll assume you’ve got that wireless speaker thing covered — the combo gift of a music subscription with a wireless speaker, with speakers for every budget from sub-$50 to $500-plus. And just in time for the holidays, Google launched its family plan in Canada, allowing up to six family members to share a Google Play Music account for $15 a month. But everyone still needs a pair of perfect headphones and while most high quality ones may be a stretch for your shopping budget, RHA’s S500i headphones come with a $60 price that belies their powerful audio performance. Find them at Apple stores and online. For the younger audiophile on your list, check out Kidz Gear Bluetooth stereo headphones, which have a removable boom mike and retail just under $50.

Action cameras

Go Pro has been the action camera of choice since it launched the category. And if you’re looking for different options, GoPro delivers with a lineup that starts with its $270 GoPro Session and goes all the way up to the top-of-the-line GoPro Hero4 Adventure in Black at $650. However, consider also the TomTom Bandit, a formidable contender in the category that’s waterproof without adding an extra housing, although you do need an optional dive lens cover if it’s to stand up to its 50-metre underwater rating. This bullet-shaped camera has some features that make it especially fun if you’re heading to the mountains for the holidays. Its sensors, which monitor everything from G-force to speed, altitude and more, will not only track the action, they’ll identify the most exciting parts of the video. A shake-to-edit feature will use those highlights to turn out an edited video on your smartphone without having to wait to download the video clips to share the fun times with your envious friends. Find it at tomtom.com for $500.

Phone action cases

Watching all my Facebook friends’ updates from Hawaii this month, I thought: Wouldn’t it be great to carry just a smartphone for shooting holiday photos and videos? But unless you limit yourself to touring the USS Missouri or sipping pina coladas by the pool, all that holiday surfing, snorkelling and other actionpacked activities could leave you shopping for a new smartphone. That’s where the Hitcase Pro comes in. A shockproof, waterproof, mountable case that has an optional neoprene carrier to keep your Hitcase floating while you’re swimming, this can truly turn a smartphone into an action cam. It comes in versions designed for various iPhones, from the iPhone 5 up to the 6. The Hitcase Pro Plus Action Pack comes with interchangeable lenses, including a flat one for waterproofing as well as a 170-degree super-wide angle, a tripod mount plus a monopod. At $160, that pretty much covers anything your holidays will require. Without the extra accessories, the Hitcase Pro is $100. Earlier this month, Australian cinematographer Mitch Oates, an ambassador for this designed-in-Vancouver line of cases, hosted a world’s first: a livestreamed broadcast from his iPhone of cage diving with great white sharks. If that sounds like your kind of holiday, check it out at hitcase.com.

Health

I would have said putting an electric toothbrush under the tree was a little like giving someone a set of pots and pans — useful, but not the most exciting present. That was until I gave one as a gift (to a family member — definitely not a present for the office party or for the mother-in-law you’re barely speaking to) and the reaction was: “This is cool! It’s something I’ve always wanted but never bought for myself.” So if you have a techie in your house — or this could be a great, albeit at $250 expensive, way to get your kids enthusiastic about brushing — take a look at Oral-B’s 7000 SmartSeries electric toothbrush. It has an app that gives you feedback on your brushing, or it can be programmed to follow your dental hygienist’s most exacting brushing instructions. Plus — and this is the one I really like since it brings morning multi-tasking to new levels — it can give you news and weather updates while you brush.

Coding for kids

I love pulling out board games and card games when our family gets together for the holidays. And if you have little ones at home, Vancouver’s Littlecodr is a card game they’ll love — plus it’s a fun way for them to learn the basic concepts of coding. After a stumble that saw the game creators struggling to meet demand for this card game, which producthunt.com describes as “insanely fun,” the first edition is available on the site at littlecodr.com for $20.