Christmas Gift Guide

£25 and Under

First up we’ve got the under £25 category, and while there’s quite a lot you can get for under a quarter of a ton, there’s not much better, and more useful, than a flash drive. Problem is flash drives are a dime a dozen these days, and while they come in all shapes and sizes most are downright dull.

In steps the Stormtrooper Unmasked Star Wars MIMOBOT. Touted as a ‘designer flash drive’ the MIMOBOT series of official Star Wars flash drives brings a bit of nostalgia and fun to the otherwise mundane duty of storage.

Prices range from £13 up to about £40, for different storage sizes, while characters are available from all over the Star Wars universe.

£50 and Under

For the under £50 category our money is on a decent set of noise isolating headphones. Chances are your tech loving recipient is going to have a pocket device capable of rocking their brains with tunes, so why not give them something good to listen to it with.

Sound isolators like the Sennheiser CX870, which can be purchased under £50, block out the noise around the listener passively, by acting like earplugs with speakers in them.

Great for noisy commutes, working in shared spaces or simply blocking out inane chatter. They don’t half sound good either, and will work with almost anything. Brilliant.

£100-ish

So you’ve got about £100 to spend and you want something cool, something current, something ultimately useful?

In steps Amazon’s Kindle 3. OK, it’s not exactly £100, it’s more like £109, but the 6” E Ink screen on the latest addition to the Kindle family is in a class of it’s own. Featuring even better contrast, battery life of about a month (!), and now with built-in WiFi meaning it’s cheaper and you don’t have to rely on a 3G radio, perhaps now is the best time to get that special person the ultimate eBook reader?

They can buy and sync their books with the Amazon eBook store, plus with Kindle apps on the iPhone, Android or Blackberry. It’ll even do a bit of basic web browsing in a pinch.

Blow the boat out

OK, so the Kindle 3 is cool, but if you’ve got a budget the size of a months food bill, then there’s only one must have gift this Christmas and that’s the Apple iPad.

Available in several flavours, but starting out at £429 for the 16GB WiFi-only version, the iPad has redefined tablet computing, and truly carved a niche out for itself against traditional computing platforms like the humble laptop, netbook and even to some extent the desktop.

Although it’s not a true computer in and of itself, you still have to sync it with a computer to be able to use it, the iPad does many things very well. Web browsing, email, video and games — you won’t find much better-a-gift this holiday season. £429, sorted.