Gone are the days when a simple suitcase and a point-and-shoot camera were enough for your adventures. Friend: it's 2023. No man’s bag is complete without an arsenal of gadgets and travel accessories to enhance the journey, whether you're taking the red-eye out to Osaka or pottering across town to your mate's for a day of spritzers in the rain.
From having a more peaceful interruption-free flight to capturing envy-inducing snaps and staying connected across continents, we’ve picked the must-have kit that earns a spot in our luggage. We're talking speedy chargers to power up your devices on the go, e-readers and tablets to bring your digital library with you, waterproof portable speakers for the outdoors and much more. Oh yeah, and a drone. A travel drone. Fly it around, take some shots, make your Insta pop off. Nice.
The fewer cables, the better. This handy and minimal magnetic charging station is an ideal solution to refuel your earbuds, iPhone and Apple Watch simultaneously. When it’s time to leave the hotel at the end of the trip, it all folds down into a fabric travel pouch that holds the wall plug and USB-C cable too.
If you’re bringing several devices on a trip, you need a big enough power bank to keep everything refuelled without it being too big to be banned by airport security. This Anker model keeps multiple devices charged on the fly, can fast charge a MacBook Pro, and has a high-tech screen showing off its capacity, power output and battery health.
What if you could bring the cinema with you on your trip? This handheld projector is lightweight enough to go in your bag and offers enough battery for you to watch all of 2001: A Space Odyssey or Goodfellas before needing more juice. And when it does, you can power it with a portable charger via USB-C rather than needing to head back to the mains.
Sick of untangling wires in your bag or stomping around airports looking for plug sockets? This tiny model snaps to the back of an iPhone to refuel it without the need for wires (although you can hook it up for a faster charge) and has enough capacity to restore about half of your iPhone 14 Pro battery.
As good as phone cameras have become, you'll never be able to get the same kind of results as you would with a quality standalone camera. With the Sony RX100, you’re getting a terrific zoom and a brilliant sensor for high-quality snaps which won't languish somewhere on your iCloud forever.
After a sleek storage option that you can bring onto the plane and will hold all your essentials? This discreet and minimal backpack is smart, compact and water-resistant to handle any surprise downpours.
Remember when you would hold and cherish photos rather than just scrolling past them on a screen? We sure do. A compact photo printer is an ideal way to get physical keepsakes of the shots you snapped on your phone or camera, and this one makes ideal wallet-sized snaps to give to your mates.
Yes, a nice snap of a nice negroni spagliato and an upturned copy of a Sally Rooney is what we all want from a trip away, but books are the quickest way to weigh down a bag. Opt for an e-reader and you’ll be toting around thousands of reads in a pocketable device. The “Signature” Paperwhite is the best one Amazon makes, offering an auto-adjusting backlight, wireless charging, waterproofing, and a ridiculous 10 weeks of battery life.
Yes, taking a drone on holiday is a bit much. But its a-bit-much-ness is its power. Not for you the same five-second clip of walking along the Seine or pottering along the beach. Nope, your holiday will look like the opening shots of a BBC2 history documentary about the majesty of Roman architecture.
The AirTag and the Tile Pro are smart buys to ensure you never lose sight of your essentials, even as they’re making their way through the airport. Whichever one you go for, it’ll come in a compact and convenient size while offering around a year of life and replaceable coin cell batteries. If you’ve got an iPhone, though, pick an AirTag. These are easy to track due to the sheer number of iOS devices in the world, and they integrate seamlessly with the rest of your Apple kit.
You're stuck in an airport somewhere in central Europe. Your train ride has suddenly come to a halt. Instead of working from home, you're working from swim-up bar and your manager wants some quick facetime. In all these instances, a compact tablet is an invaluable companion.
These customisable earplugs are among the smallest but most important essentials in our travel kit. They’re sleek defenders that give you some much-needed serenity when flying or simply trying to pretend you're not on a bus. And you can change the filters so next time you're at a gig you get all the sound, but a lot less of the eardrum-splitting volume.
This is an excellent way to share your albums or movies with your travelling partner, allowing you both to catch up on those episodes of The Bear that you didn’t quite manage to watch before jetting off.
Don’t start blasting your music out of your phone’s piddly speakers. You’re better than that. For those after a proper portable belter, the Roam is our pick. It’s smart enough to work over wifi or Bluetooth and durable enough to survive dust and a dunk in water, plus there's 10 hours of battery life. It sounds brilliant too.
As much as we’d love to stuff our bag full of tech, it often makes sense to travel light. Don’t have space for over-ear cans or are not sure they’ll get much use? It’s no problem, today’s noise-cancelling buds are just as good, and this luxury B&O serves us well with crisp sound quality, top noise-cancellation and unbeatable sleekness.
None of us wants to, but if you’re in a situation where you need to – heaven forbid – fire off a few emails from your sun lounger, you might as well be typing comfortably. This familiar little keyboard is light and compact, with keys that are sealed, and dirt and spill-proof.
There are a lot of things to like about today’s laptops and tablets, but an infuriating lack of ports isn’t among them. Where am I meant to connect my travel fan? My dehumidifier? My USB desk lamp? That’s why a multiport USB-C hub can be such a nifty gadget to connect to speedier internet via Ethernet, get photos offloaded from your memory card, or hook up your computer to a TV via HDMI.
Travelling is chaotic. Noise-cancelling headphones make it serene. We reckon the PX7 S2 are an ideal companion in your bag, with a compact carry case and distinctive British style as well as top noise-blocking capabilities, in addition to stunning sound quality.
Sure, your passport could just live in your pocket, but we reckon it’ll feel happier and more secure within a suave travel organiser that can keep your cards and cash safe too.
If you’re taking a lot of photos or videos on your trip with a proper camera, there’s nothing worse than losing all your shots and footage due to a dodgy memory card. We recommend offloading your work to a portable drive like this one with water, dust and drop resistance.
Apple’s marketing for the Ultra smartwatch is all about hikers, adventurers and marathon runners. Still, the serious screen brightness, massive battery life, loud 86-decibel siren and a customisable quick action button are features any traveller will appreciate. And anyone who's schlepped through the barriers at Stansted after a 12-hour flight knows what true endurance is.
Braving the elements? You’ll want to shield your trusted phone from bumps, drops and water damage. This highly protective case is IP68-waterproof, so it won’t just get you through a downpour, it can survive being submerged for up to an hour.
