Travel Tech

We couldn’t be digital nomads without travel-friendly tech. Compact computers let us work from anywhere on the globe, modern smartphones are as adept at translating a menu as calling home, and the technology behind our favorite childhood video games now fits into a handheld gadget. Here is some of the “travel tech” that powers our trip around the world.

Updated for 2024

Phones

Our phones are undoubtedly the most indispensable items in our travel arsenal. They’re our cameras, maps, translators, communicators, and time wasters. Kevin uses an iPhone 13 mini, Danielle carries a Samsung Galaxy A41. It’s important to us to have access to both ecosystems. Between the different app stores we have access to any app we could want. And being able to test on both iOS and Android is critical for Kevin’s mobile game development.

We’ve been on-again-off-again with tablets over the years, and we’re currently on again with an iPad mini 6 in tow. With a small travel-friendly stand, it makes a great demo device at trade shows, YouTube and Nebula caster at the dinner table, and jukebox for playing comforting music to put our baby to sleep.

Many long-term travelers invest in expensive DSLRs to take the best possible photos, but we are pretty happy with our phone cameras. Every photo on our site was taken with them. We tried a number of cloud storage solutions to back up our photos: Apple iCloud, Amazon Drive, Google Drive… but we ultimately settled on Microsoft OneDrive (included in Microsoft 365 subscription). It continues to provide the best storage/price ratio, device compatibility, and upload speed.

Computers

While our phones are our most important hardware as travelers, our computers are what make it possible to work as digital nomads. Once again, we tried to cover both the dominant ecosystems for maximum software compatibility. Kevin currently develops on a Razer Blade 14. Previous devices have had a lot of issues, and the Razer is no exception. But so far it’s functional and gets the job done.

High demand workloads can put a lot of thermal strain on powerful laptops, so a lightweight laptop cooling stand is a necessity. The Microsoft Surface Mobile Mouse was our favorite travel-friendly mouse, but unfortunately the long-term quality isn’t there. Multiple mice have failed in the same way (with button clicks becoming less and less reliable) over a few years.

Danielle’s personal computer is a MacBook Air M2 (13″). Our previous Air was too obsolete to continue developing for iOS, and with a new Apple silicon device Kevin can now target macOS in addition to Windows for Steam releases.

We previously never bothered with noise-cancelling headphones, but a string of noisy neighbors eventually forced our hands and now we can’t imagine living without them. The Sony WH1000XM4s have top-notch noise cancelling and classic “cans” style is also excellent at insulating. They’re ideal for getting sound mixes just right or tuning out noise on an airplane. Apple AirPods Pro (2nd gen) are surprisingly competitive though. The noise cancelling is just behind the Sonys, and while as earbuds they’re obviously not as good at blocking out noise, the convenience factor (much smaller size and weight) makes them overall as good if not better.

Entertainment

We’ve picked up a small number of entertainment devices to keep our spirits up on the road. After our first year of travel demonstrated the expense and unreliability of finding English-language books around the world, Danielle finally caved and bought a Kindle. It’s been indispensable ever since.

The Nintendo Switch is easily the most travel-friendly console available to date (though the Steam Deck is gaining in appeal). Just make sure to stock up on spare JoyCon joystick replacements. Their abysmal quality and drift issues have bitten us several times already.

An 8BitDo Pro 2 is the perfect choice as a second controller. It has a slider to easily switch pairings between Switch, PC, and even iPad, which makes it the ideal controller for developing and testing games on a wide range of hardware.

Closing Thoughts

Even with our unusual pile of gadgets and wires, we’re rarely hassled by airport security. Only a few times have they pulled out our bag of adapters – more often they just scowl at the x-ray and ask something like, “you have cables in your bag?”

We’ve been reasonably happy with our current travel tech. We have the flexibility to develop, write, and connect when we need to. Everything packs up neatly into our carry-on bags. We’d recommend nearly anything on our list of devices (except maybe the Surface mouse… clearly we have bad luck with that brand).

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