It’s that time of the year again where restaurants and high-tea’s will all be fully booked out with eager families bringing the mothers out for a day of pampering and love (on top of what you should be doing on a daily basis of course!). Behind a birthday gift, a Mother’s day gift could possibly be the hardest thing to buy. After countless cards and bouquets of flowers, the team here at Lowyat.NET have decided to help you out by sharing with you our picks for a perfect Mother’s day gift for all levels of tech savviness out there. On top of that we’ll be sharing what WE would buy for our respective mothers and why!
Huei
I have to admit, buying mother’s day gift is possibly one of the hardest thing to do, I’ve run out of phone ideas to give her, the last laptop (netbook) I gave her is still in the box and I don’t think another red packet is meaningful enough so this time my Mother’s Day pick for my mum would be the Pebble Smartwatch, the red one to be precise.
Sure, she isn’t tech savvy at all and will definitely not put the watch to full use but it makes sense, for the both of us. She’s loves fashionable items, especially watches, while I’m a geek who’s clueless about fashion so what better than the geekiest watch out there? Moreover, since she checks her watch more than her phone, she can easily see SMS and call notifications right on her wrist. The Pebble Smartwatch can also track the amount of exercise (walking) she has done, a good record to keep.
So head on after the break for some MORE last-minute tech gift ideas for the mother in your life this second Sunday of May!
The second item I will pick for Mother’s Day would be an automatic vacuum cleaner like the Samsung Navibot or an iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner. Sure, a day full of pampering like spa and such is a good idea, but she’ll go back home and resume everything like before, so why not a gadget to help her out in the long run? An automatic vacuum cleaner can vacuum the house and recharge itself, saving her precious time from doing the daily mundane task of sweeping. Top it up with the iRobot Scooba Floor Washing Robot and you have the best helpers in the world that doesn’t talk back and won’t run away.
Lucas
On the grand scale of things, my mother is quite tech savvy – or so she would like to think. In between bugging me on Whatsapp and liking my pictures on Facebook, she still has a hard time working her Macbook Air. So I decided that this year I’d not even get her that iPad Mini that she wanted (but won’t really use) and go with something a little more practical. The recently released (in Malaysia) Jawbone Up would make a perfect gift for her. The combination of food tracker, fitness (in the form of a pedometer) tracker as well as the functionality to tell you how well you slept and “silent alarm” that will wake you when you are not in deep sleep is perfect to make sure she keeps healthy and is suitably techy enough to satisfy her inner closet tech geek. Now, let’s just hope she remembers to charge it and how to sync it. Thankfully the Jawbone Up comes with an easy to use app to guide her so I won’t have to.
As for all the other mothers out there, I would have to say one of the complaints I hear is now, with the change in how we consume content, at a standard media centre, there are way more components than ever before. This leads to the problem of which remote controls what. Personally in my home entertainment centre, A good gift in this sense would be one of Logitech’s Harmony universal remotes. The Harmony 1100 has a very big 3.5inch screen and is user friendly enough not to confuse your Mother when she wants to watch downloaded Korean Dramas or just something on Astro. Plus, think of all the space you save when you stow away all the remotes!
Pang
Seeing as my mum isn’t the most tech savvy person, it is rather difficult to recommend gadgets that she’ll simply end up not using. But that’s the beauty of technology: barriers are constantly being lowered to the point where it fits seamlessly into our lives. Just like nifty gadgets such as Vogel’s range of tablet mounts. The company specialises in a variety of mounts for tablets, including one with a flexible stand – perfect for the kitchen and my mum who loves experimenting with new recipes. Now all that’s missing would be a tablet…
On the other hand, smartphones with bigger displays are very popular among the ladies – but many women (especially those of a certain age) have voiced out about their difficulty in reading the small text fonts on their HD screens. We recently previewed the new Samsung Galaxy Grand, and a chance conversation our editor shared with us shows the potential the mid-range Android smartphone has for our parents and others in a similar age group. The smaller pixel density means fonts are larger, while the lack of high-end specs also do not matter as much as it does for the younger generation. While many are unhappy at Samsung’s lack of innovation and ingenuity in their many, many smartphones in the market, they may have stumbled upon a whole new target market with the Galaxy Grand.
Chapree
What I Would Get For My Mum: Acer Iconia B1 Android tablet
Don’t judge this tablet by its sub-RM 500 price tag. Of course, it might not be as well-known as Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab but the Acer Iconia B1 still get the job done thanks to its rather capable MediaTek MT8317T chipset which features a 1.2GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU and PowerVR SGX531 GPU.
The tablet’s 7-inch form factor made it small enough to be carried around but if you ask me, the only huge disadvantage that Iconia B1 had is that it is not equipped with a rear camera. Not that you can’t use it to take photos but frankly speaking, it is very hard to snap a photo when you can’t see the viewfinder.
Despite that, I still believe that the Acer Iconia B1 tablet is still not a bad option considering that the market is filled with many sub-par generic Android tablet from China within the Iconia B1’s price range.
My General Suggestion: Spend more time with her.
Well…it’s not a gadget but I believe the best mother’s day gift that one is able to offer to his or her mother is by spending more time with her. At this age and time, it is very common that we overlook the interactions with our beloved mothers while we are busy pursuing our ambitions and dreams.
It is good to be reminded once in a while…and you can start by teaching her how to use the gadget that you bought for her on this Mother’s Day.
