Mice. Keyboards. A pack and accessory to go. The modern worker needs to think of working from home and the office, and there’s a gift or two to match.
As much as we love the Work From Home era and are never going to put that concept back in the bottle, the modern worker probably needs to think about working from two places. They could be both a WFH tragic and yet have succumb to the requirement of one or two days back in the office, begrudgingly all the same, and that means they’ll have some gadgety needs.
When you’re a worker, those needs can be turned into gifts, particularly if you know someone you just can’t work out what to buy for.
Does a modern worker you know work from home several days per week, and you still don’t know what to gift them? Consider a gadget aimed at helping them work better from home or anywhere, making their weekdays just that much easier to deal with.
Dell Silent Keyboard
Price: $99
Consider starting with a keyboard designed to be quiet, if there ever was such a thing.
There is, actually: it’s a silent keyboard by Dell, and while it comes with a mediocre-but-portable mouse, the KM555 Silent Keyboard is engineered to be quiet. Handy if you have coworkers in the office and you’re a fast typist, or maybe because you work from home and typing in the kitchen office is beginning to bug the people who live there.
Logitech Lift Mouse
Price: $129
A different style of mouse, Logitech’s ergonomic Lift could be a handy way to keep hands and wrists feeling comfortable regardless of whether they work from home or in the office.
As a gift giver, buying this means you’re thinking about a worker’s health, namely their wrists and potential for RSI, which is exactly what the Logitech Lift is designed to deal with.
Rather than grip it like a conventional mouse, you hold the Lift with a grip, moving your arm around to give it some exercise and keeping your hand elevated for a more comfortable mouse experience.
Bellroy Transit Workpack
Price: $259
The moment the modern worker knows they need to leave the house, they’re going to need a decent spot of luggage to hold it all together.
We’ve seen a few, but one pack that we keep coming back to and using is the Bellroy Transit Workpack. It holds a laptop, it holds a tablet, and it can also handle a rolled up cardigan and a zipped up protected bottle of water.
There are plenty of backpacks out there, and frankly, any decent backpack can make a great gift for the modern worker, whether it’s a brand they know, or even one of Australian bag brands they’ve not yet thought of.
Logitech Casa Pop-Up Desk
Price: $290
Working from home is easy: you have your laptop or monitor stand, keyboard and mouse. But you can’t take the stand with you, so what if you could?
Encasing the very idea of a working setup in a folio of sorts, the Logitech Casa combination could just making working from anywhere logical. The folio includes a laptop stand to raise a laptop up, as well as a small keyboard and trackpad you can take out and use.
Use it at home, or pack it up and use it in the office. It’s one of the more interesting accessories for the modern worker to use today.
Anker Prime 250W Power Bank
Price: $299
One of the worst things about working from anywhere is knowing that sometimes you’ll need to work from somewhere else, and that can mean running out of battery.
Work from home and there’s a plug nearby. Work from somewhere where there’s no plug, and you’re going to need a portable power source.
Anker’s Prime 250W is just about the best portable power bank for laptops we’ve found, providing a staggering amount of power in a portable form-factor, complete with a screen to tell you how much is left.
Espresso 15 and Stand+
Price: $499
Working definitely improves when you have more screen real estate, whether that’s a large screen or two displays in front of you, but travelling between work at home and work in the office can make that more difficult.
Solutions include a new monitor in each location, but what else is there? We’ve seen screens mounted to the back of a laptop before, and while they are definitely one approach, Australia’s Espresso could have the other.
The company literally formed on the idea of a portable screen ideal for home and the office, and its latest aims to keep the price down while offering a stand made for two places. Workers can bring the Espresso 15 and the Stand+ around, or have a stand in each location, making it possible to extend a screen all too easily by carrying it in a bag.
Belkin Connect Pro Thunderbolt 4 Dock
Price: $500
Back at home, ensuring you get the most out of a laptop is important. After all, a laptop is the modern worker’s Swiss Army Knife of sorts. It’s what they rely on for work, and it’s where all the features are.
These days, however, the modern laptop for the modern worker may not have many ports. If you’re lucky, there’ll be more than two USB-C ports, and one of those will be occupied for charging the entire time.
Grab a dock and fix that. In fact, grab a Thunderbolt 4 dock if someone you’re buying for has a relatively meaty laptop such as a MacBook Pro or equally beefy Windows machine, and make sure they suddenly not just have more ports, but enough power supplied back to their laptop from the dock all from the one cable.
Two Apple HomePods
Price: $994 for two ($497 each)
Our final suggestion is a couple of speakers for someone with an iPhone, largely because together, the experience is a big burst of sound you can place at a desk under a monitor, or even a little beyond.
The Apple HomePod offers one of the better stereo experiences, not just because the sound is great from two speakers, but because there’s also a decent adaptive audio setup able to automatically judge a room. And when used with Apple Music, you also get an Atmos experience from the service, as well.
