Travel gear review: Electronics

We’ve been on the road for almost 3 weeks now, so I thought I’d review some of the most useful gear we brought along with us. In this post I’ll focus on electronics in order of most helpful.

• T-Mobile Simple Choice Plan – when traveling to multiple countries for an extended period of time it’s crucial to have access to a phone, maps & navigation, email, and apps. For $65/month ($50 base plan + $15 for international), T-Mobile’s Simple Choice plan comes with unlimited text and data (2G which is a little slow), calls for .20/min, and works in over 140 countries.
  Before leaving I installed a sim card they mailed me in an old iPhone 4s (T-Mobile’s sim card won’t work on models earlier than the 4s) that automatically picks up a new provider as soon as we touch down in a new place. Another plus is that there are no contracts so you can cancel anytime. We priced similar features out with Verizon and the cost estimate was $250-300/month. No thanks. Fortunately Verizon let us put our lines on hold for 3 months at a time for $10/month.

• Amazon Fire TV Stick –  all of the Airbnb’s we’re staying in have a TV, and some have cable, but unfortunately channels in English have been tough to come by. The Fire Stick has made it possible to turn those TV’s into an American home theatre of sorts without having to watch on a laptop. When we’re not out pounding the pavement we’ve appreciated being able to stream our favorite shows directly to a TV.

• QICENT Mini 2-Outlet Surge Protector with USB Charging Ports – I wasn’t sure about this purchase, but we use this thing daily to keep all of our gadgets charged. Paired with the LOOP Worldwide Travel Adapter we can easily setup a charging station anywhere. We use the outlets to charge our laptops and the USB ports to charge our phones and tablets.

Honorable mentions:

• Amazon Fire Tablet 7″ – good for reading and downloading shows to watch when in the air or without internet. An iPad will do the same (we have one of each), but listing the Fire Tablet because you can’t beat the price.
• RAVPower Portable Charger – a power bank to charge your gadgets when not around a power outlet. This one is a little bulky to carry in a pocket, but glad we have it with us.
• Skooba Cable Stable DLX – handy for carrying all electronics and chords in a compact bag.