17 Excellent Geeky Gifts

Image by China Daily / Reuters

Since Thanksgiving, rather than dump gift guide after gift guide on you, we’ve been picking precisely one gift per (business) day. Here they are all together, just in time for the last shopping weekend left before the big day. (Besides, it’s not like you actually got your shopping done early or anything.)

1. Cheap, excellent headphones

Everybody needs one cheap pair of headphones. Monoprice’s 8320 headphones are that pair: At $9, they are nearly disposable, but they are in fact supremely decent buds.

Why we like them / $9

Source: amazon.com

2. Instax Mini 50S instant camera

It’s like a Polaroid, but better.

Why we like it / $100

3. Tiny, beautiful videogames

Everybody likes some movie. And everybody likes some game — they just haven’t found it yet. These games are breathtaking, groundbreaking titles that practically anyone can play. And they’re cheap.

Why we like them / $5-$15

4. The best ereader

Reading books on soft, comfortable paper is so much nicer than staring at a giant light bulb for a couple of hours, especially at night.

Why we like it / $120

Image by David McNew / Getty Images

5. The gadget design bible

If you want to know why gadgets today so often look the way that they do, Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams will explain it to you across 808 beautiful pages, in both English and German.

Why we like it / $50

6. Amazon Prime subscription

Free two-day shipping sounds like a perk, a trifle, a distraction even — but it is transformational to the experience of being a consumer.

Why we like it / $80

Image by David McNew / Getty Images

7. A New York Times subscription

A Sunday-only subscription still gets you full digital access, meaning the complete daily edition as well as generous archive access reaching back to 1851 (trawling old NYTs is a pastime of mine).

Why we like it / ~$5 a week

8. A Wi-Fi hotspot (contract-free)

4G wireless hotspots practically pull Wi-Fi out of the ether. And these have no commitment.

Why we like it / $80

9. A gadget cleanse

Your electronics are disgusting. This $25 package — wrap to taste — contains the three pillars of electronic cleanliness: compressed air, a package of microfiber chamois, and household isopropyl alcohol.

Why we like it / $25

10. Subscription to a computer lifesaver

Super-easy backup: CrashPlan+ lets you back up an entire computer on the internet.

Why we like it / $50

11. Internet TV in a box

The Roku can’t quite replace a full cable package with DVR, but it comes a lot closer than people might think.

Why we like it / $80

12. Gloves to use your phone in the dead of winter

No one has to know you’re using special dork gloves! They’ll just be AMAZED you can use your phone with your gloves on and they can’t.

Why we like them / ~$10

13. A USB battery pack to recharge dead phones

Nobody plans to run out of battery power, which is why few people think to buy battery packs for themselves — and why they’re a perfect gift.

Why we like it / $65

14. Cool books about the internet

James Gleick’s The Information is a sweeping history of the concept of data, while Andrew Blum’s Tubes is a port-to-port textual diagram of how the internet fits together, where and how it physically exists and what that means to regular people.

Why we like them / $11.50; $17.50

15. Awesome Audioengine A2 speakers

A taste of audiophile sound. Or just a huge upgrade from terrible laptop speakers.

Why we like them / $200

16. A music subscription

Unlimited access to basically the entirety of modern recorded music, since the catalogs of Spotify and Rdio contain literally millions of tracks.

Why we like them / $10 a month

17. FitBit One fitness tracker

The ultimate fitness gadget: Fitbit One automatically tracks steps, distance, stairs climbed, calories burned and how well you sleep.

Why we like it / $100

(BTW, full disclosure: BuzzFeed gets a small kickback if you purchase something on Amazon after following any of the above links. It’s automated.)