From gadgets to help you study or organize your life to gadgets that help you stay healthy or connected, there are a wide variety of tech products geared towards helping a college student sail through college.
Some basic tech that every college student needs include a laptop, tablet, smartphone, and peripherals like a mouse, a larger monitor, and keyboard.
Even many tech gadgets themselves, however, need tech gadgets to stay charged and organized.
Here are 7 great tech gadgets to help college students make the most of their education.
1. Amazon Kindle
Instead of having a ton of heavy books you have to switch out daily for different classes, just slip an Amazon Kindle into your backpack instead.
In fact, with an Amazon Kindle, you may be able to ditch the backpack altogether.
Not only does a Kindle save wear and tear on your body, but a screen that automatically adjusts to available light can also help ease eye strain as well.
2. Portable HDD
Solid State Drives offer significantly increased performance over traditional hard drives (HDD’s), but they also offer significantly less storage space than hard drives as well.
Not only does using a portable hard drive offer vastly greater storage, but it also helps protect your laptop from damage.
Just throw your hard drive in your backpack or bag and leave your expensive laptop safe and sound in your apartment or dorm room instead of transporting it around a busy campus.
If anything happens to your laptop, you have all of your documents and media backed up and ready to use on a new computer.
3. Power Bank
All the gadgets you carry around don’t mean much with an empty battery. In order to access all the phone apps and files you need, a power bank with enough capacity is a must have.
A power bank can keep you running on-the-go when you aren’t near a power supply.
Today’s power banks range from solar chargers that can use sunlight to recharge themselves to even power banks large enough to run a laptop or recharge a tablet several times over.
A power bank also allows you to take your studies outside to make the most of warm spring days or beautiful late fall weather.
4. Noise Cancelling Headphones
Dorms, study halls, and even libraries can sometimes be a hive of distracting activity. Noise-canceling headphones can help eliminate distractions to help you focus on what you’re trying to study.
While noise-canceling headphones can certainly be used to listen to music, you can also simply activate the noise canceling feature itself to give yourself some much-needed peace and quiet.
With noise-canceling headphones, even the noisiest dining hall can become a calm, blissful, peaceful oasis.
5. Surge Protector
Electronic devices are expensive, so you definitely want to keep them protected with a good surge protector. In addition to keeping your devices protected, however, there are also a number of other reasons to use a surge protector.
The first is that dorm rooms and even nearby apartment buildings were often built long before the onset of electronic devices, so it’s unlikely you will have enough outlets to keep all of your devices charged.
Not only can a surge protector provide you with more outlets, but many also have USB ports built in, so all you need to charge many of your devices is a USB cable.
6. Cord Organizer
A multitude of cables and cords is the unfortunate natural outcome of an electronic world. While they are definitely not the most expensive component of most electronics, cables, and cords that get tangled can also become more easily frayed and damaged.
Not only do cord organizers help keep your space neat and tidy, they also help prolong the life of your cables and cords.
Cable and cord organizers are also helpful when outlets are located behind furniture or are hard to reach.
Cord organizers can also help you determine which devices all of your many cables and cords are for.
7. Nintendo Switch
College life is not and should not be all business and no play.
In fact, numerous studies show that take a break to relax and do something fun can actually help you study better. While there are a wide variety of gaming devices on the market, the Nintendo Switch is one of the best devices for college students.
With the Switch, you can play by yourself or quickly hook it up to a TV or computer monitor to play with a few friends or your entire sorority. Not only is the switch convenient and portable, but the wide range of available games means there is something for everyone.
In the modern world, electronic devices are no longer simply novelties that college students may or may not have.
They have become an indispensable part of college life. In fact, many schools now actually require them.
From cell phones that can double as alarm clocks no matter where you are, to notebooks and tablets that allow you to access study materials anywhere you need them, electronics can actually help students get a better education.
But electronics themselves also need accessories like chargers, cases, and cables to keep them powered up and doing their job.
Make sure you cover all your bases this semester with not just the right electronics, but all the accessories you need to keep them functioning at their best.