5 Tech Products That Make Traveling Easier This Summer When you're on the road, these items help you log in, and tune out the noise.
By Mario Armstong Edited by Frances Dodds
This story appears in the May 2024 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
We've all been on trips where we feel all over the place. Scattered stuff, scattered mindset, just barely getting from one place to another. But certain products can make us feel like we're at home wherever we are. Or at the very least, they can make us like we are comfortable, charged up, hydrated, caffeinated, and ready for a hotel dance party — wherever we end up. Here are some products to bring on vacation this summer.
1. The 2-in-1 thermos.
Here's how to travel lightly, stay hydrated, and cut down on single-use plastic: Just pack the CamelBak MultiBev [$52; camelbak.com]. The full thermos can keep 22 ounces of water chilled for hours — but the real genius is the lower portion, which screws off as a separate 16-ounce cup. Use it to carry coffee without a paper cup, to brew in your hotel room, or help keep a regular-size can cold. The MultiBev's two-part lid holds a reusable silicone sipping lid to prevent spills. Unlike those massive, insulated thermoses, this one fits into your car's cupholder.
2. Slick surround sound.
Want surround sound to fill a room with music, or to make your presentation audible from anywhere? Pack the svelte Sony HT-AX7 Portable Theater System [$500; electronics.sony .com], which creates an envelope of sound with three Bluetooth-connected speakers. Slightly larger than a tissue box, the main wireless speaker's battery lasts about 30 hours per charge with a pair of 4.8-inch wide satellite speakers. The speakers sync together, and you can place them wherever you need to fill a space with robust audio.
Related: 5 Tech Tools That Will Impress Strangers When You're Working On the Go
3. To-go espresso.
If you're camping (or heck, .just traveling for work in cheap hotels), a decent cup of coffee is hard to find. The solution: Bring the Outin Nano [$150; outin.com], a portable, TSA-friendly brewer weighing just under 1.5 pounds that uses an internal battery to turn cold bottled water into a shot of espresso in three minutes. The kit includes a cup, which you'll appreciate when your airport hotel doesn't contain one, and it brews from ground beans or espresso pods. Or bring it to a meeting for an afternoon pick-me-up — the brewing is nearly silent!
4. The sound of sleep.
From planes to noisy hotels, a good snooze isn't always easy. Next time, pop in the Soundcore Sleep A20 Earbuds [$150; available late May from soundcore.com]. A silicone earbud and fin fit snugly in the ear, designed to stay comfortable even if you sleep on your side (and they're also good for regular daytime wear). It passively blocks sound by itself — but if you prefer white noise, you can pick from more than 50 in its app or stream your own. Expect up to 14 hours of runtime when playing sound through the earbuds.
Related: Struggle Focusing at Work? These 5 Tech Products Can Put You in a 'Flow State.'
5. The tiny charger.
Most portable chargers are for heavy-duty work, and squeeze into the maximum TSA-allowed size of 100 watt-hours. But the Rolling Square TAU 2 [$40; rollingsquare.com] goes small. Its 2.2-by-1.7-inch battery is about the size of a car key fob, with a 2,000-mAh battery to provide 28% to 54% of a phone's charge, depending on the size — enough to get you out of a dead battery jam. The battery includes a tethered cable to charge just about any small device, and a magnetic dock to make recharging easy. It might even stop you losing your keys!