Christmas Gift Guide 2018: 25 gadget gift ideas for tech kids

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN

Ah, Christmas: a time for family, happiness and masses of shiny plastic. Alas, while a miniscule sqaure of advent chocolate might be enough to keep the little ones going ’til tea time, after all that wrapping, basting and, err, drinking, there’s a good chance you’ll need to sneak some shut-eye before the Queen gets on the telly box. Thankfully, any one of these gadget gifts should keep your tech-keen kids occupied for weeks, giving you plenty of time to catch up on your kip. You can thank us later.

TECH WILL SAVE US MICRO:MEGA PACK (£50)

Worried that your kids are spending too much staring at screens? Get them doing something more constructive with this experimental coding kit from the folks over at Tech Will Save Us. Designed together with the BBC, the kit comes with all the bits your little ones need to build and code electronic, well, everything. Start them off with the bundled bots, then set them loose with the online projects – who knows what they’ll end up creating?

NINTENDO LABO VARIETY PACK (£60)

Crafting crazy creations from leftover cardboard is as much of a Christmas tradition as leaving carrots out for Santa. So why buy more of the stuff from Nintendo? Well, for one thing, it’s much less messy than letting the sprogs loose with safety scissors on the living room carpet. And, if they’re lucky enough to have a Switch console, they can fold the sheets into remarkable sets that interact with their Ninty machine – from motorbike handlebars to a fishing rod to a piano – in a glorious fusion of corrugated paper and portable console.

NERF LASER OPS PRO ALPHAPOINT TWIN-PACK (£45)

Thwump! Thwump! Thwump! Smash. Nerf guns are great, but a volley of foam darts can quickly obliterate those precious baubles. Switch your kids to this infrared kit for projectile-free play: an IR sensor on each blaster is the target, with light indicators displaying remaining health and ammo. And, if they want more, they can launch the partner app for power-ups and opponent-tracking, or to play a lonely game of AR shoot-’em-up – which, if they’re as clumsy as us, is just as likely to result in decoration destruction.

SUZY SNOOZE (£149)

Threat of empty stockings in the morning doing nothing to get your little ones off to bed on Christmas Eve? Suzy Snooze could be your saviour. More than just a night light, simply push down this connected glower’s hat to start the sleep sequence: it’ll soothe your small ones with relaxing sounds and light patterns, before entering night mode and glowing softly. When it’s time to wake? Its hat will start to rise and raise them gently in the reverse.

SPHERO BOLT (£150)

Youngster outgrown their marbles? This brilliant ball will keep them busy way past Boxing Day: a robo-roller packed with sensors, its partner app puts accessible coding at your offspring’s fingertips. Start out simple with some driving commands, take things up a gear with the light sensor and compass, before getting techy with the new LED matrix – a 8×8 grid of technicolour fun that’s good for games, data and, well, just about anything they can think of. Juiced on the charging podium, Bolt will run for more than two hours – plenty of time to sneak a quick Christmas day snooze.

ANKI COZMO (£180)

Cozmo is quite possibly the brightest robo toy we’ve met – and certainly the cutest: besides scooting merrily around surfaces – cleverly avoiding obstacles and edges – he loves nothing more than playing games with the bundled blocks (though he’ll behave like a bad-tempered Wall-E if you beat him). He’ll nudge you when he wants more fun, squint when he’s concentrating and celebrate when he figures something out – which is probably more reaction than you’ll get out of many relatives this Christmas.

CUT IN HALF (£22)

“Mum, what does a microwave look like cut in half?” It’s not the toughest question your child can ask, but probably one of the hardest to answer visually. Mercifully, madhat YouTube man Mike Warren has done the hard work with his high-pressure water jet so you don’t have to: open up this harcover compendium for countless images of everyday objects quite literally cut in half. Glorious.

LEGO APP-CONTROLLED BATMOBILE (£90)

What’s one more thing wheeling around the rug come Christmas day? Besides robot balls and code-your-own-creatures, this brick-built Batmobile adds an added element of danger for any careless stepper who’s been at the Bucks Fizz. Once its 312 pieces are put together – complete Bluetooth battery hub and twin motors – your would-be superhero will be able to control their Bruce Wayne mini-machine from any smartphone or tablet you’ve got kicking around. Gotham only knows what they’ll end up attaching to it when they get bored.

ALL-NEW FIRE HD 8 KIDS EDITION (£130)

Sick of the kids hijacking your iPad? Gift them this sprog-friendly Fire slate from Amazon and take back your tablet. Wrapped in a chunky case that protects against the drops and knocks associated with little hands, it comes bundled with a free year of Fire for Kids Unlimited – meaning a sackload of apps, books and wholesome content for your offspring. Or Candy Crush, if you allow it via parental controls. Best of all, a two-year warranty means Amazon will replace it if it somehow ends up in the fish tank, or glitter mysteriously gets into the charging port…

KANO HARRY POTTER WAND (£100)

Fresh from the Hogwarts IT department, you’ll need more than a quick reparo spell to get this motion-sensitive stick swishing and flicking. A coding kit for would-be wizards, follow the steps to assemble Kano’s wand before programming it to make magic on a tablet or PC screen. From conjuring fire to growing pumpkins, you can expecto plenty of patro-fun. Sorry.

DISCOVERY CHANNEL 360 SUPER HD MICROSCOPE (£70)

If you want kids to pay attention to anything these days you’re best off putting it on a mobile phone screen – so trick them into learning about science and nature with this nifty microscope. Attach your smartphone to the eyepiece, magnify objects by 60, 100 or 200 times and display what’s underneath on the screen, before snapping a shot of anything interesting. Joke’s on them!

DIY ELECTRIC DOUGH KIT (£23)

If the Electro Dough Kit had been around when we were kids, we’d still be sitting in mum’s kitchen crafting cats out of dough, before bringing them to life with light and sound. And we’d probably be far happier. Give your kids the life we missed with this nifty kit. It’s simple and astonishingly good fun: mould something out of Play-Doh (or a home-made equivalent), add LEDs, buzzers and wires, and – hey presto! – you have a flashing dough thing. Genius.

SAM LABS CURIOUS CARS (£150)

Given how many years we spent playing with paper bags and tennis balls, it’s remarkable just how many coding kits for kids abound nowadays. This kit is perfect for children with a thing for cars, allowing inventive little tykes to knock together their own remote control toys using nothing but a bunch of modular SAM blocks, the app, the models and, of course, their own imagination. The only problem? Give it a few years and they’ll be hacking the infotainment system on your Prius to play Despacito every time you open the door.

LITTLEBITS AVENGERS HERO INVENTOR KIT (£150)

Encouraging your little ones to make like Iron Man might seem like a good idea, until you remember that Iron Man is in fact Tony Stark, and Tony Stark is, well, a bit of a rogue one. Still, before they become off-key billionaires, they can entertain themselves buy piecing together this Avengers glove from LittleBits: shipped with a host of modules – including an accelerometer, light sensor, LED matrix and more – pair it up with the partner app to access all kinds of interactive super-powers. Thankfully, flight isn’t one of them.

MARVIN’S IMAGIC (£25)

Marvin’s Magic boxes have long fascinated wannabe David Blaines, and now the magician’s gone all gadgety: teaming traditional props with augmented reality via an iOS and Android app, it’s a truly 21st century take on sleight of hand. Gasp as objects jump from your phone screen to your hand! Gawp as mysterious lights dance before your eyes! Gibber as you accidentally summon Beelzebub with your iPhone X! OK, maybe not that last one.

GATOR WATCH (£99, THEN FROM £9/MONTH)

Little one constantly going walkabout, leaving you with an empty glove and an impending sense of grave fear and danger? Get some help with Gator Watch. Essentially a tracking device disguised as a smartwatch, besides pinging its location to your smartphone, it’ll also hold several phone numbers which your kid can call if they find themselves lost, speaking to you through the Gator’s in-built mic. Yes, you have to pay a monthly subscription for data, but who can put a price on peace of mind, eh? Gator, it turns out: £9 or £11 a month.

ANKI OVERDRIVE (£125)

If there’s one thing better than wrapping paper strewn everywhere on the Christmas Day, it’s having little Lewis Hamiltons building bonkers circuits round your feet. Scalextric for the smartphone generation, Anki is a modular track of straights and right-angles, which robotic supercars learn and race. Compatible with both iOS and Android, players control the speed and lane choice, while the cars handle the corners – and each has unique attributes to be used in Battle mode, melding virtual with reality right on your living room floor.

MINI LED ORIGAMI DINOSAUR (£14)

If your little one’s mad about dinos, there’s no better way to decorate a dim corner than with these roarsome origami glowers. There are two sizes and several types to choose from but, seriously, it’s got to be a T-Rex, right?

MIROBOT V2 (£60)

Kids might love to doodle, but, let’s face it, they’re often a bit rubbish. Fortunately, there’s now a robot that’ll do it for them. Mirobot V2 is a Wi-Fi-connected ‘bot-and-pen that trundles across a desk, drawing whatever you tell it to via a variety of apps. It comes as an easy-to-assemble kit which requires no soldering and, once it’s up and running, on-board sensors should ensure it avoids any unfortunate wall-related incidents.

EACHINE E010 (£19)

Give them a drone, they said. It’ll be fine, they said. A tree’s worth of shredded tinsel later and you’ll be starting to wonder why you ever paid any attention to them – given that they don’t have kids themselves. Still, rather this budget flyer goes headfirst into the baubles than your new DJI machine. It’s simple, sturdy and the blades are enclosed to keep little fingers safe.

FITBIT ACE (£80)

Getting kids to go outside and get active is harder than ever – unless there’s a promise of a) snacks or b) more Fortnite time at the end of it. Strapping on yet more tech might not seem like the best solution, but this kid-friendly tracker from Fitbit could be just the trick to get your offspring motivated and moving: it does everything you’d expect of an adult tracker (think activity logging, sleep feedback and more), as well as setting step challenges, comparing results with friends and sharing those all-important stats with parents.

BEASTS OF BALANCE (£69)

A game of Buckeroo for the Iggle Piggle generation, every item you stack another beast on BOB plinth it appears in the virtual world via an iPad app. But it’s not that simple. Beasts can evolve, lose energy and be crossed with others to make crazy new hybrids. Just be careful not to topple your tower, or you’ll have to rebuild it quickly before the volcano erupts. Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense – and seem incredibly important – if you’re a kid.

LEGO PORG (£60)

Don’t tell your little ones, but those annoyingly adorable little squawkers in The Last Jedi? They were created to digitally disguise the plethora of puffins that inhabited the island where they were filming. Keep the Porg dream alive with this 19cm-high Lego kit – complete with opening mouth and flapping wings.

WOWWEE MIPOSAUR ROBOT AND TRACK BALL (£96)

So you’ve told the kids they can’t have a puppy for Christmas and you’ve broken the news that no, they can’t have a tiger either. What they can have is their very own dinosaur. In fact, the MiPosaur may well end up being the best pet they ever have: they can feed it, train it, stroke it and play with it, thanks to clever gesture-sense tech which lets them control it with hand movements. It comes with its own toy, too – a Trackball that Dino will chase after when it’s thrown – and they can add more fun via an app. Suddenly puppies don’t seem quite so exciting.