Choosing the right Father’s Day gift takes a bit of thought and care. When it comes to technology themed gifts, it can be a challenge. It helps to recall casual tech conversations you may have had with dad over dinner or while online chatting. You might peek in his bathroom and check what types of shavers or toothbrushes he uses. What about that old barbeque? Here, you will find cool tech-armed gifts that have lasting value to choose from.
Ninja Woodfire Pro Connect XL Outdoor Grill & Smoker
Just about every dad has a gas or pellet burning barbeque. A few might even stick with charcoal grills. It’s time to check modern outdoor grill alternatives that do away with dependence on gas, propane, pellets, or charcoal. Instead, the Ninja Woodfire Pro Connect XL Outdoor Grill & Smoker uses electricity with half a cup of real pellet firewood for flavour. Like the first, generation model air also crisps, bakes, roasts, broils, dehydrates, and smokes by flavouring your meals using a half cup of pellets accessible from the outside of the hood, thus the “outdoor” designation for this series. There is real woodfire here.
There are three heating elements in all the first and second generation Ninja Woodfires. An under the hood top element with a large fan for circulating heat and smoke, an under the removable grill element, and of course, the pellet burner. They all work in conjunction with each other depending on the cooking function you pick. For example, the Broil function is best for crisping or melting cheese while the Grill mode cooks from underneath and the pellet burner kicks in when flavourizing is called for. It includes two flavour sample pellet packs.
But this new model has a larger cooking surface and festures features two smart thermometer inputs (comes with one plug-in thermometer) and works with iPhone and Andoid phones or tablets using the Pro Connect app. LIt works fully manually of course but the app and phone mode offer more control and awareness. Spend more time with your guests! It shows the different functions in the cooking phases including temperatures and when to flip or remove for sitting before serving. Each of the two thermometer probes can be followed onscreen. It works with bluetooth but adding Wi-Fi is more accurate from longer distances. Mix different foods for example, like meat and poultry and monitor temperatures separately on your phone screen.
This second-gen model series (recognized by the absence of large side carry handles) is $549 and has 30% more cooking space than the original Woodfires with room to handle two full racks of ribs, 10 burgers, 2 kg of wings, a pair of 7-lb. (3.2 kg) chickens, or a 10-lb. (4.5 kg) brisket. It comes with amazing recipes like chicken and steak fajitas with all the trimmings to get you started for up to eight guests. Even a smoke flavourized hotdog with smoke tastes amazing.
Archer BE550 BE9300 Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 Router
Fastest home Internet? Dad will appreciate the speed and powerful WiFi7 performance of the 9214 Mbps Tri-Band WiFi 7 from TP-Link. For $360, it enables devices to run at full speed keeping up with the fastest home Internet connection. This means fluent 4K/8K streaming, immersive AR/VR gaming, and blazing-fast downloads. It increases performance throughput in your home or small workspace, reduces latency, and improves reliability for emerging applications. Connections? Lots! There are full 2.5G Ports, including one 2.5 Gbps WAN port and four 2.5 Gbps LAN ports that break through the 1G bottleneck, driving dad’s devices to peak performance.
Enjoy maximized coverage with proprietary Wi-Fi optimization and optimally positioned antennas along with beamforming, delivering more capacity, stronger and more reliable connections, and less interference.
For larger areas, it works with EasyMesh routers and range extenders to form seamless whole home Mesh Wi-Fi, preventing drops and lag when moving between signals. This router is a perfect match with my previously reviewed TP-Link Deco BE95 Wi-Fi 7 Home Mesh system. TP-Link Includes enhanced security with HomeShield defending against the latest cyber threats.
Philips OneBlade 360 Pro Face & Body Electric Trimmer & Shaver
For the dad who does a mix of trimming and shaving, the Philips OneBlade 360 Face + Body Hybrid Electric Trimmer and Shaver is small and works quickly. For only $85, it trims edges accurately with smooth shave results and trims beards to a wide range of depth with no nicks or cuts. The innovative 360 blade lasts up to four months and can flex in all directions to adjust to the curves of your face. The design enables constant skin contact and control. Philips antifriction OneBlade has a unique technology designed for facial grooming on the go and handling any length of hair, safely. The battery lasts for 90 minutes while you switch between the 12 – 1 comb modes, and it’s waterproof. A USB-A charging cable is included (wall power adapter not included).
EKSA S30 Open-Ear Air Conduction True Wireless Headset
The Eksa S30 EKSAtelecom S30 Open-Ear Air Conduction True Wireless Headset is an innovative headset designed for excellent noise canceling with comfortable ergonomic left and right powerful speakers. They clip over your ears and sit by the temples unlike traditional in-ear buds that insert into your ear canals. The $211 Eksa S30 combines advanced AI technology with safety and impressive noise cancelling feats. They employ a single-sided adjustable swivel VoicePure ENC 99.99% noise-canceling mic boom with a noise reduction depth of over 50 dB. Get 70+ hours of use offering clear communications in noisy environments. It doesn’t match the audio music quality of in-ear solutions, but is perfect for dads who primarily talk more than listen to music and don’t like putting anything in their ear canal. Plus, you still get decent audio with music playback.
Ninja Thirsti Sparkling & Still Drink System
If dad enjoys his original SodaStream, check out an upgrade to the Ninja Thirsti Drink System for $200. It’s a water based carbonated flavouring system that will bring “fizz” to a new level. It uses CO2 canisters similar (but not compatible) to SodaStream with four carbonating settings like none, low, medium, and high. You can go beyond water and experiment from a choice of more than 20 unsweetened and sweetened flavours (it comes with a four starter flavour packs: Vitamins, Hydrate, Raspberry, and Energy). The unit can hold two flavour packs at a time, for optionally using one or mixing two choosing two separate volume levels. A Ninja subscription is available for discounted CO2 refills. You can generate hundreds of Thirsti combination beverages mixing flavour volumes and carbonation intensity.
Philips Sonicare 9900 Prestige
For the dad whose lowly toothbrush needs replacing, the $400 Philips Sonicare 9900 Prestige oozes performance, class, and functionality while still leading in design and smarts. Philips paid attention to detail like a one-touch button that gently accelerates to full speed and turns off gently, eliminating the jarring sudden on and off all other models or brands have.
It’s shorter and sleeker than its siblings and includes a sub-compact travel case with a built-in USB-C port that charges off your phone charger. The small charge stand takes less space than a standing toothpaste tube. AI fortified SenseIQ technology seems to care about your oral health more like a human. It adapts to your cleaning style instead of following the “proper” cleaning techniques shown on the phone apps of the past. Sensing pressure (its base lights up if you are brushing too hard) and motion, it monitors your brushing style up to 100 times a second and automatically adjusts intensity in real time. It tracks your time brushing not just for cleaning but factors in gum techniques over time, all of which shows up in the smartphone app.
If you veer away from proper cleaning over time, it lets you know. Two newly designed Philips Sonicare all-in-one brush heads are included finally doing away with previous annoyingly separate brushes for cleaning, removing stains, and gum massage. Sonicare brushes have always been one centimetre longer reaching deeper, past wisdom teeth compared to competitors.
Ekster’s Father’s Day bundle
Give dad Ekster’s Father’s day bundle, which includes classy gift bag. The package has a milled Brown Ekster Wallet with handy five card pullout, an Apple Find My Finder Card, a cash clip, a mighty credit card-sized tool card, and a gift bag. What makes the Ekster Wallet so special? It offers a quick card access mechanism, RFID blocking technology, and works with Apple’s Find My network. It’s even voice-activated using Siri making this one of the smartest wallets around.
Epson ET-8550 High Quality Poster Printer
If dad enjoys printing his own photography using the standard family home printer his eyes will pop when he sees his holiday or fishing trip photo prints on the Epson Eco Tank ET-8550. It features a 5860 x 1400 printing resolution invisible to the naked eye. Simply put, it beats consumer lab services quality and prices several times over for its $900 price. It prints up to 13” x19” paper stock including art variants like cloth, velvet, cotton, canvas, even metallic paper. Of course matte, glossy and stipple are also available. It has a paper feeder for standard home printer sizes to album size and can assume household duties for everyone. Even black and white prints look amazing with the help of the normal black, grey and photo inks the ET-8550 uses. 70ml vibrant Claria ET photographic dye inks look very much like those of even costlier professional Epson printers. It also scans and prints legal 8.5 x 14 documents and has a maximum 1200 x 4800 scanning resolution. Sorry, no fax.
Why so pricey? Because ET-8550 is a unique printer placed between consumer and professional offerings. It uses Epson Eco Tank technology using large tanks, compared to much pricier standard cartridges costing a fraction to refill. Pay 90% less for bottle Eco Tank ink compared to cartridges. Six full bottles of ink are included. Comparing average print pricing of paper and ink against local Canadian consumer labs will impress dad too. Like a 4” x 6” for 9 cents vs 40 cents. An 8” x10” for $1.05 vs $5.99 and a full size 13” x 19” poster for $3.32 vs $18. With print savings like this, even a full size 13” x19” canvas print for $10 vs $45 clearly makes the ET-8550 a fast investment return on consumable spending. Not to mention the much higher quality prints from today’s better photo phones, many with 50MP settings and Samsung’s newest S24 Ultra 200MP mode. Clearly, the initial outlay of three times the cost of a standard printer is appreciated. Epson Canada also has the ET-8550 Certified ReNew for $715 with a 1-Year Limited Warranty, 30-Day return policy and free shipping.
For more gift ideas, check out our Father’s Day 2024 Mega Gift Guide.