If someone in your life needs a home office upgrade (that includes yourself!), you’ve come to the right place. WIRED’s Gear team has been working remotely since well before the Covid-19 pandemic—we’ve been testing headsets, standing desks, office chairs, and peripherals in our own lives for years. Whether you’re tired of your loved one working at the kitchen table, or you just want to treat them, we’ve got several work-from-home gear gift ideas that can make remote work even sweeter. Check out our Ultimate Work From Home Gear guide for more recommendations.
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Updated December 2023: We’ve overhauled this guide with new picks.
Do you want an Apple Watch that can replace your satellite messenger, your cycling computer, and your running watch? Then, my friend, the Watch Ultra 2 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is for you. Like the Series 9, it has the new S9 chipset for faster processing and Double Tap and the new ultra-wideband chip for precision-locating your phone, and it will be more sustainable when paired with the Alpine Loop strap or the Trail Loop. It also has a new, shockingly bright 3,000-nit display. I didn’t see a difference on a sunny day on the water, but you might, on a glacier somewhere.
However, like the Series 9, many of the Watch Ultra 2’s best new outdoor features are only fully apparent when you’re also within reach of your iPhone. The touted offline maps are only visible on the watch when you download them on your iPhone and have it charged and within Bluetooth range of the watch. If you start a cycling activity on your watch, it shows up as a Live Activity on your iPhone. Many of these features—along with the handy Action button and the three-mic array—are also available on last year’s debut Watch Ultra and WatchOS 10. Again, if you bought a Watch Ultra last year, I would wait to upgrade. If this is your first, however, you will thoroughly enjoy the Watch Ultra 2. This is the watch to get if you love outdoor sports but also want the full functionality of a smartwatch—as long as you don’t accidentally close the tab that tells you how to get back home.
🚫 Why It Might Be Hard to Find: Apple recently decided to suspend sales of the Watch Ultra 2 and Series 9 on Apple.com starting December 21 and in it’s retail stores December 24, pending an expected ban by the International Trade Commission. The federal agency is considering a ban because of a dispute over a patent for the technology that Apple uses in the newest Watch models’ blood-oxygen sensor. If the ban does happen, the Apple Watch may not be available on Amazon or other retailers starting December 26.
The best Bluetooth speakers still have a place near and dear to our hearts, even as we’ve seen better (and more portable) smart speakers creeping into the universe. It’s fun and easy to ask an Amazon Echo or Google Nest speaker to play your favorite track or tell you the weather, but smart speakers require stable Wi-Fi and updates to work. By (mostly) forgoing voice assistants and Wi-Fi radios, Bluetooth speakers are more portable, with the ability to venture outside of your house and withstand rugged conditions like the sandy beach or the steamy Airbnb jacuzzi. They’ll also work with any smartphone, and they sound as good as their smart-speaker equivalents.
We’ve tested hundreds of Bluetooth speakers since 2017 (and many before that), and we can happily say they are still some of the best small devices you can listen to. Here are our favorites right now. Be sure to check out all our buying guides, including the Best Soundbars, Best Wirefree Earbuds, and Best Smart Speakers.
Updated December 2023: We’ve added the JBL Authentics 200, Urbanista Malibu, Sonos Move 2, Sennheiser Ambeo Mini, and Ultimate Ears Epicboom.
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Lemur Pro is not the best for graphics-intensive tasks like gaming or video editing (see below for some more powerful rigs with dedicated graphics cards), but for everything else, this is one of the nicest laptops you can get.
Best for the Minimalist
Dell’s XPS 13 Developer Edition was one of the first big-name laptops to ship with Linux and it remains the lightest, smallest laptop with Linux installed. This configuration sports a 12th-Generation Intel i7-1250U processor, 32 GB of RAM (soldered), and a 1-TB SSD. It ships with Ubuntu Linux 20.04, but in my testing, it will happily run any distro from Fedora to Arch (Dell support applies only to Ubuntu though). When you’re on the product page, make sure you choose Ubuntu Linux 20.04 LTS as your operating system (it defaults to Windows).
For more details on the hardware, see our review of the Windows version (6/10 WIRED Review). While performance was not great with Windows, I have not found the same to be true using Ubuntu. The main drawback to this machine is the lack of ports. There are two USB-C ports, one of which is your charging port. There isn’t even a headphone jack.
Best for the Maximalist
If the Dell’s lack of ports leaves you wanting, this is the laptop for you. System76’s Pangolin (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a 15-inch, AMD-powered monster of a laptop with every port a sysadmin could hope for. This config ships with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U, 32 GB of RAM (soldered), and a 250-GB SSD. You can configure the Pangolin with up to 8 TB of storage.
The battery life is good for the size—it lasts all day in most use cases—but it’s not as good as the Dell. The keyboard, on the other hand, is fantastic and a real pleasure to type on. The one downside is the number pad, which makes the trackpad off-center. The port selection is where the Pangolin really shines. There’s Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port (with DisplayPort support, but not Thunderbolt), three USB-A ports, a 3.5-mm headphone/microphone combo jack, and a full-size SD card reader.
Most Repairable and Future-Proof
If you want a laptop you can upgrade, Framework’s Laptop is the best Linux rig for you. There are a few flavors available. I tested the second release of the 13-inch model (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and loved it. The Intel Core 13th-Gen series chips with 32 GB of RAM, a 2-TB SSD, and whichever mix of ports suits your needs start for around $1,400. That will ship with no operating system. When it arrives you can install Linux yourself (or opt to ship it with Windows if you need to dual boot). I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but an AMD version is also available. Framework is also taking pre-orders for a new 16-inch model. The 16-inch model is available with an AMD Ryzen 7040 Series processor.
I tested Ubuntu, which Framework supports, and Arch Linux, and both worked great (though Framework does not officially support Arch). My only gripe about using the Framework is my gripe about almost any Linux laptop: battery life could be better.
Best Dedicated Graphics
The System76 Oryx Pro comes in either 15-inch or 17-inch models with 12th-Gen Intel processors and Nvidia graphics (either the 3070 Ti or 3080 Ti GPU). There are options for a glossy, OLED 4K screen, up to 64 GB of RAM, and up to 8 TB of SSD space. It’s not cheap, but the Oryx Pro is by far the most powerful laptop on this page. Like the Pangolin above, the Oryx ships with either System76’s Pop_OS! or Ubuntu Linux. Unlike the Pangolin, the Intel chip in the Oryx Pro means it ships with Coreboot, and open source firmware.
Best for Hackers
OK, it’s corny, but there’s something about the Lenovo X1 Carbon Linux edition that makes me want to install Kali Linux and start probing the coffee shop Wi-Fi. Whatever the case, this is a slick laptop for those of us who think ThinkPads are, ahem, slick. That slickness comes at a serious price though. For almost double the price of our other picks, you get a 13th-Gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 256-GB SSD (much of this is customizable).
On the plus side, you do get a nice 2K (2,880 x 1,800), OLED, anti-glare screen. I have not had a chance to test this latest model, but I really like the previous release (8/10, WIRED Recommends,) and the new version is primarily a spec bump. It’s frequently on sale for around $1,700.
If Your Budget Is Tight
Photograph: Lenovo
One of the beauties of Linux is that it requires fewer resources and maintains support for older hardware far longer than Windows or macOS. That means you don’t need to spend a fortune on a new laptop; you can breathe life into an old one or grab a used laptop off eBay. I have been doing this for years, working my way through Lenovo’s X-series laptops (starting with an X220, now an T14 Gen 1), but old Dell and Asus laptops are also great for Linux. If you opt to buy used, have a look at our guide to buying used on eBay to make sure you get a good deal.
While an ebook subscription might sound ideal, you should take some time to consider the pros and cons of each one. These digital reading services are often billed as the equivalent of Netflix or Spotify for books, and there are similarities, but ebook subscriptions also have some unexpected restrictions.
Content: All ebook subscription services offer limited libraries of ebooks. (This is where the Netflix comparison is useful.) They may boast more than a million titles, but that total doesn’t necessarily include any works by your favorite authors; none of the services we tested had a single title by Cormac McCarthy, for example, though some had audiobooks of his works.
The big five publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster) dominate the bestseller charts in the US but have had limited dealings with ebook subscription services so far. Current best-seller lists are not well represented, and the modest list of mainstream hits that appears mostly comprises older titles. Whatever service you are considering, we advise browsing the available library of ebooks and audiobooks before you commit.
Reading Habits: If you only read one or two books a month, you might be better off buying popular titles, recommendations from trusted friends, or works by your favorite authors. That way, you get to choose the best ebooks and keep them. With ebook subscriptions, you lose access the moment you stop subscribing, and the library of available books can change at any time without notice.
Voracious readers who are happy to try new and unfamiliar authors will likely get the most value from ebook subscriptions. But while these services are typically described as unlimited, they often do have hidden limits. This is where they differ from services like Spotify and Netflix. With Scribd, for example, the available library is reduced when you hit opaque limits.
Support: Make sure the devices you like to read on are supported. Most ebook subscription services offer apps for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac, at a minimum. Languages, accessibility, and extra features like search vary, so do your research to make sure the app supports your needs. Sadly, many ebook readers, like Kindles, are not compatible with ebook subscription services other than their manufacturer’s offering.
Audiobooks: Unlike ebook subscription services, some audiobook services offer a monthly credit system that allows you to buy audiobooks you can keep, even if you stop subscribing. Others offer apparently unlimited access to a streaming library, but there are often hidden limits that narrow your choice for that month after you’ve listened to an audiobook or two. Consider also the maximum bitrate for audio streams, as this differs from service to service and can impact the quality of your audiobook.
