Ladies and gentlemen, it’s almost Valentine’s Day again. But the most romantic holiday on the calendar can also be the most frantic, with lovers racing around to find that special gift for that special someone. Well, put down that pathetic teddy bear and box of chocolates, because we’ve got you covered with items that they’ll actually want. Check out these hand-picked tech gifts with a thoughtful twist.
What better way to start Valentine’s Day than with a pot of rich, dark, fair-trade coffee? The Bonavita 1900TS is one of Digital Trends’ favorite coffee makers; the top pick, in fact. It’s a small machine that uses pre-infusion — wetting the coffee before brewing — to ensure even extraction. It’s a great gift for a significant other who enjoys coffee, and if you live together, it’s sort of a gift for you, too.
Beards can look great, as long as they get the proper grooming, and great beard sculpting requires a great beard trimmer. But as the bewhiskered among you know, trimming can also be messy, leaving sinks and counters coated in hair. This Philips Norelco trimmer solves the problem (somewhat) with built-in vacuum that sucks up hairs as the trimmer mows them. While the vacuum isn’t always 100 percent successful, it does cut down on the mess.
Smartwatches, once clunky, have started to resemble their classier, analog predecessors as big-name brands have gotten into the business. The Kate Spade Scallop is a gorgeous, fashion-forward smartwatch, with a scalloped bezel and slim casing. In addition to a mature appearance, the Scallop packs some nice software — it runs Android 2.0, offering Google Assistant and Bluetooth functionality, and you can even tailor the digital watch face to match your outfit.
Skagen’s watches exemplify the Scandinavian approach to fashion — svelte in form and minimalist in color — and the Falster fuses this aesthetic with smartwatch technology. An AMOLED screen gives the watch face deep blacks, and conserves battery life in the process, and a Snapdragon 2100 processor gives it enough muscle to handle any tasks you might need to accomplish.
This Valentine’s Day, give your significant other the gift of better cardiovascular health with a pair of RYU running shorts. Made of lightweight fabric that allows for easy movement while also halting the growth of bacteria, these shorts will feel good on a run without reeking afterwards. These shorts made DT’s list of the best workout clothing, and come in both women’s and men’s sizes.
Smart homes are the future, and you don’t want your significant other stuck in the past, do you? Imagine having guests over, only to watch as your partner fumbles with the remote trying to play some tunes. The shame! With the Sonos One, all the gadgets in your home will work with a mere voice command (provided they support Alexa). Suddenly your place will be the most happening, most futuristic home possible.
Topping DT’s list of the best overall headphones, Sony’s MDR-1000x are simple in design, with muted colors and no aesthetic bells or whistles; but these headphones are all about functionality. Lightweight and easy to wear for hours, they also use active noise-canceling to provide an isolated listening experience, and the sound itself — full of clear highs and rich bass — is superb. If your significant other loves music and needs a pair of headphones for their daily commute, or just home listening, you would be hard-pressed to do better than the MDR-1000x.
Are you dating someone who likes beer? You could just pop over to the store and buy them a bottle of the finest imperial stout, but there’s a certain romantic quality to brewing one’s own concoction. Homebrewing is a difficult, labor-intensive process, but the PicoBrew C makes it a bit easier. The Pico C doesn’t eliminate the work, but it does streamline things for amateur brewers. Just make sure they keep it somewhere with thick walls or distant neighbors, as the machine can get quite loud.
Photos are a fun way to chronicle activities and events, but Instagram posts don’t have quite the aura of physical photos. If you want to help the shutterbug in your life take old-school photos with a smartphone, a printer like the Fujifilm Instax Share makes a great gift. Just shoot a picture with a smartphone, then use Fujifilm’s app to connect to the printer and make copies.
In an age of streaming and readily available digital albums, vinyl remains, for many, the hippest way to listen to music. If you happen to be dating a budding audiophile, a turntable is an impactful gift, and the Pro-Ject Debut Carbon is one of DT’s favorite budget options. The Carbon’s tonearm and cartridge are engineered with sound quality in mind, and the sleek design makes it an attractive addition to any room. Grab a couple old LPs from the local record store and close out Valentine’s Day with an intimate listening party.
A bouquet is one of the oldest standbys in the annals of Valentine’s gifts, and while flowers may not be particularly modern, online delivery services like Teleflora are. The service has a large variety of bouquets available, and same-day delivery means you can secure one even if you wait until the last minute and find every florist in town picked cleaner than a Thanksgiving turkey. We’ve even rounded up some of our favorite places for ordering flowers online, just to make things a little easier for you.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.