What do you get the man who has everything? You get him something tested and certified by the Digital Life Labs is what.
Smorgasbord Kuggstang
If he has everything, the chances are he as a serious problem: a charging problem, because everything needs to be recharged nowadays.
To the rescue comes the Smorgasbord range of recharging stations, which allow you to charge multiple devices at once, all on the one neat bamboo charging unit, all while using just the one power outlet in the wall.
The Kuggstang is the fanciest of the range. On the top of the box are slots for up to five phones, tablets or slim, USB-C powered notebooks, though at a pinch you can squeeze in more devices if you need somewhere to store them. Inside the box is where the magic happens. All the USB charge cables for the devices can be fed into the box through a slot at the top, and then plugged into the included 5-port USB charging hub. The hub is the one thing that needs to be plugged into the wall. It's rated at 7.8 amps, meaning it can charge all your devices at once, and (in our tests at least) can even fast charge most devices that support fast charging.
There's even room in the box for most of the USB cables: you just poke the ends out to plug it into your phone and tablet, and have the rest of the cables hidden neatly away. $169.
Google Chromecast
If your goal isn't to get your man to spend less time in front of the television but, rather, more time, then getting him a Google Chromecast is cheaper than getting him a whole new TV.
The Chromecast is a Wi-Fi dongle that plugs into a spare HDMI port on any old TV, and streams content from the internet such as YouTube (which can be very addictive), NetFlix and Stan. Typically, he would use his phone or tablet to control it, selecting content on the phone before "casting" it over to the TV. The neat thing is, once the TV has been told which content to stream from the internet, the phone can be switched off, and the content will keep playing.
There is also a $99 Chromecast Ultra coming out (which we hadn't reviewed at the time of writing), that does all those things but in 4K UHD rather than in mere HD. It's probably worth the extra $40, but keep in mind that most 4K TVs already have most of the functionality of a Chromecast built into them anyway, rendering one far less useful than it would be attached to an old HD TV with none of the modern apps. $59
Ruark Audio Swiss Red Limited Edition R1 Tabletop Radio
If TV is less his thing than listening to music or talkback radio, then the new Swiss red Limited Edition of Ruark's R1 tabletop radio might be in order.
The R1 is sort of modern, and sort of retro (but in a good way). It supports DAB+ digital radio as well as FM radio, and it also has Bluetooth so he can connect it to a phone and play Spotify or Google Play Music or whatever music subscription he has. Is he into podcasts? No problem. There's also an auxiliary jack at the back, so it can be wired to other devices.
The best thing is, it has an old-fashioned antenna that he can pull up, meaning it will work even in the holiday house where there's not yet any Wi-Fi. It also has a big, fat knob on the top, so it can be controlled without recourse to reading glasses when he wakes up bleary-eyed in the morning.
Actually, those are only the second-best things. The best thing is it's red, like a Swiss army knife. $499
Dyson V8 vacuum cleaner
You may not be able get him to help with the backbreaking task of cleaning the whole house, but at the very least you should be able to get him to clean up after himself, right?
Dyson's V8 battery-powered vacuum cleaner is perfect for just that. It's light enough to carry around effortlessly, but its 110,000 RPM, 425 Watt motor combined with the legendary Dyson vortex system gives it some powerful suction.
There's not quite enough suction to passively drive spinning brush heads, so instead Dyson sells active brush heads that run from the same battery as the main motor itself.
It's perfect for small jobs. So perfect, in fact, that a lot of Dyson handheld owners never bother pulling out their main vacuum. They just do the whole house in short bursts, using the handheld.
And you know what that means, don't you? Without even knowing it, he'll be doing all the vacuuming and you'll be kicking back, watching the Chromecast. from $749
Oral B Genius
What do people do when you give them a gift? They give you a little in return, is what.
But if that little kiss risks turning into a big one, then the strategic gift might be a toothbrush that has so much technology in it, he won't be able to help but start brushing properly.
The Genius is an electric toothbrush with replaceable heads (so you can use it yourself). It connects to a mobile phone using Bluetooth, like a number of high-tech brushes nowadays, but it also uses the phone's camera to check it's brushing in the right places.
The idea is, he mounts his phone on the bathroom mirror (the toothbrush comes with a special suction-cup camera holder, like you might get for your car only hygienically white), and then starts the Oral B app. The app then uses the phone's selfie camera to watch the brushing process, and turns the whole thing into a little game: each area of the mouth (middle top, left top, right top etc) has its own progress bar, and when it's been brushed enough, hundreds of rewarding little stars burst out of the quadrant so you a) know to move on to a new area and b) think you're a winner.
If the bathroom is well lit, it works pretty well. Failing that, he will end up with a nice, white, $369 phone holder that he can use to have conversations while shaving. $369
