Buying mom a tech gift for Mother’s Day is a challenge to anyone, particularly since the product should be something she didn’t realize she needed or wanted. These five gift options may be among the best — and most useful — suggestions you can find if you’re in the hunt.
Lyve Home
It’s one thing to take a lot of photos, it’s another to store them all. The Lyve Home is a hybrid 2TB network-attached storage drive that collects all the photos and videos from computers, tablets and smartphones and organizes them neatly in one place. The unit itself has a full touchscreen on its face, allowing users to interact with both the stored images and settings. Photos can also scroll along as a visual screensaver.
There are apps for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire, as well as PCs and Macs, which also include some limited photo-editing features. Users can also tag images as another way to sort and organize images, like names, places, things or other pertinent tags. The unit costs $350 and there is no subscription fee.
Epson Expression Home XP-420 Small-in-One Printer
If printing photos for posterity is something mom cares about, Epson’s XP-420 is straightforward and easy to use. It connects to the home network via Wi-Fi or can be plugged in directly to the router via Ethernet. Mothers can print directly from their iPhones, iPads or other compatible smartphones and tablets, as well as directly from a memory card — ensuring that no computer is required to print images.
Being an all-in-one, the XP-420 is also a scanner and copier, offering the chance to scan old images for a throwback scrapbook, if the mood strikes her. The XP-420 is available now for $100. You could also enter the contest here to win one.
Kobo Glo HD
For the mom who likes to read more than a few books, the Kobo Glo HD makes reading ebooks very easy. The 6-inch E Ink display is sharp and glows softly to enable reading in the dark or in low-light settings. It has 4GB of internal storage, good enough for up to 3,000 books, though it can also read documents in a number of file formats. Integration with Pocket allows users to save articles from the Web and read them later on the Glo HD.
There is access to the Kobo bookstore via Wi-Fi to purchase and download new titles, or to sample those that might be of interest. The Glo HD is available now for $130. Or you could win one by entering our Kobo Glo contest
Roku 3 or Roku 2
The Roku is small enough to fit in any setup with a TV, and the content it offers is worth the price of entry. The Roku 3 ($110) and Roku 2 ($80) are very similar in performance, so choosing between them depends on whether the extra features the Roku 3 offers is worth paying more for. There are now up to 1,400 apps or “channels” currently available on the Roku platform, and they cover the gamut in categories. Popular ones like Netflix, YouTube, Food Network and Facebook are present alongside many independent, regional and ethnic channels. Enter for your chance to win a Roku 3 with WhatsYourTech.ca
Canary
Home security is made considerably easier with this device, which requires little technical know-how to set up once connected to the home Wi-Fi network. There is a 1080p HD camera onboard that keeps an eye on everything using a 147-degree wide-angle lens. It has motion detection and night vision, knowing to arm and disarm based on who or what it sees. If it detects movement from someone when no one’s home, it sends an alert to an iPhone or Android phone.
It’s also able to measure the air quality, temperature and humidity in the home to provide some guidance on how these may factor into health and wellness. It comes in white, black or silver and retails now for $250.
Silk’n SN-001 FaceFX Anti-aging Led Handheld Facial Device
This may be a risky gift to hand over to a mother of any age, but it will be of interest for those who may be looking for a non-invasive way to smooth fine lines and wrinkles on their face. It uses red light therapy and thermal heating to stimulate collagen production, which decreases with aging. Silk claims that it targets both the top and deep layers of the skin simultaneously to achieve the results.
Having not tested this ourselves, we can’t speak to the veracity of all its claims, but we are adding it to this list because reviews appear to be generally positive. It’s also available now from Amazon for a considerable discount from $250 down to $166.
