Reviewed by Jan Marek
Travel tech has expanded as a category as remote working while travelling has become mainstream and smartphones have reduced the number of devices most travellers need. This guide covers the purchases that produce genuine improvements to the travel experience, and the items that sound useful but rarely earn their weight in practice.
Portable Battery (Power Bank)
The most universally useful travel tech purchase. 10,000mAh provides roughly two to three full smartphone charges; 20,000mAh provides four to six. For most travellers, that range covers any realistic scenario. USB-C Power Delivery matters for fast-charging modern phones and USB-C laptops; a battery without it is less useful for modern devices.
On airline compliance: most airlines allow portable batteries up to 100Wh in carry-on luggage, with batteries between 100Wh and 160Wh needing airline approval and anything above generally not permitted. Most portable batteries sit well below these limits, but it’s worth checking before buying a high-capacity option.
Anker’s higher-capacity power banks (in the 20,000-25,000mAh, 100W-plus range) are capable enough to meaningfully charge a laptop, while their smaller 10,000mAh slim models cover phone charging in a genuinely pocketable size.
E-Reader
An e-reader transforms the reading experience for travellers who read regularly: hundreds of books in less weight and space than a single paperback, with battery life measured in weeks rather than hours. The Kindle Paperwhite remains the best all-round option for most travellers, waterproof, excellent in direct sunlight, and backed by the breadth of the Kindle library. The Kobo Libra Colour is the strongest alternative, with a colour display useful for illustrated books and comics, and generally better library-borrowing integration outside the US.
Portable Travel Router
A travel router extends hotel wifi to multiple devices, creates a private network on shared wifi, and lets you run a VPN across every connected device rather than installing it separately on each. GL.iNet’s compact travel routers (the Mango and similar models) are a reliable, accessible option that support VPN protocols and can rebroadcast hotel wifi.
Many travellers genuinely don’t need one: if you use a VPN on individual devices, carry only one or two devices, and are comfortable with hotel network security, a router adds weight and complexity for limited benefit.
Laptop Selection for Travel
The right laptop depends on your work requirements, but the travel-specific factors are consistent: weight (a 1.4kg laptop is meaningfully better to live with across a year of travel than a 2.2kg one), battery life (at least 8 to 10 hours of real-world use), USB-C charging (so you can charge from a portable battery or any standard USB-C charger rather than carrying a proprietary brick), and screen size (13 to 14 inches balances portability and usability best; 15-inch screens help intensive work but add weight).
Apple’s MacBook Air remains a strong reference point for travel: excellent battery life, very light, and USB-C charging, with the trade-off of limited ports. Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon and Dell’s XPS 13 line are strong business-focused alternatives. Apple and most manufacturers update these lines roughly annually, so check the current chip generation rather than assuming a specific model number is still current.
Noise-Cancelling Headphones
See the dedicated noise-cancelling headphones guide. This is the highest-impact tech purchase for long-haul travellers.
What We Did Not Include and Why
Smart luggage with built-in batteries: useful in concept but practically problematic, since airlines increasingly prohibit non-removable batteries in checked luggage, and the battery adds weight and cost to a product that works fine without one.
Dedicated GPS devices: smartphones with downloaded offline maps are sufficient for navigation in virtually every destination; a dedicated GPS device adds cost and weight without a meaningful improvement.
U-shaped travel pillows: the most popular format is supported by marketing more than ergonomic evidence. A rolled scarf or light jacket provides comparable support in a form factor with other uses.
Deciding What to Carry
The right tech loadout is the minimum that lets you do everything your trip requires, not the maximum you could theoretically use. Before adding anything to your packing list, ask whether you’ll genuinely use it every day of the trip and whether its absence would meaningfully impair something you plan to do. Most items fail this test.
The Minimal Travel Tech Setup
For a week-long leisure trip with no work requirements: a phone, its charger, an appropriate plug adapter, and a portable battery for extended time away from power. That’s genuinely sufficient for most leisure travel.
For travellers combining work with travel, add a laptop, its charger, and noise-cancelling headphones for working in noisy environments; the added weight is typically 2 to 3 kilograms for meaningful added capability.
For photography, a phone camera now handles casual travel photography at a quality that was professional-grade only a few years ago. If photography is the primary purpose of the trip or a serious hobby, a mirrorless camera with one or two lenses adds real capability a phone can’t replicate; if it’s a secondary interest, the weight trade-off increasingly favours the phone.