7 High-Tech Toy Ideas for the Whole Family

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Buying a gift for Dad can be a challenge.
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You don’t want to choose something the recipient might not wear, but gift cards can be too predictable and impersonal.
Gifts for graduates can be even trickier. You don’t want your graduate to be disgusted, right?
Maybe you should consider some high-tech toys?
Sure, gadget gifts are more expensive than golf balls or quirky socks, but buying something for the family for Father’s Day or a graduation present might be a good idea.
And isn’t it worth it?
So, below are some suggestions for the type of dad or graduate you’re buying for.
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Dear avid readers,
Introducing the first color Kobo e-ink reader.
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Rakuten Kobo’s 6-inch Clara Colour ($179) or 7-inch Libra Colour ($249) let you read books and magazines in colour and highlight text like you would in a paperback or textbook, but they have all the other features you’d want in an e-reader.
These include the ability to read outdoors in bright sunlight (or in bed with the built-in backlight), waterproofing (so you can take it to the beach, the pool, or a bubble bath), the ability to store thousands of books from the Kobo Bookstore or your local library (16GB for the Clara Color, double that for the Libra Color), and support for audiobooks via Bluetooth headphones.
Both products have a battery life of over six weeks.
The Kobo Libra Colour also supports Kobo’s stylus pen, which can be used to create notes, journal entries, annotations, daily agendas, and more.
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For fitness types
It’s all in your wrist.
The Fitbit Sense 2 smartwatch with heart rate monitor is not only an activity tracker that can accurately record your workouts and display the information on the color touchscreen or the companion app on your smartphone, but it also helps monitor other important health metrics, like heart rate, stress management, and sleep quality.
On sale for $299 (down from $329) as part of BestBuy.ca’s Father’s Day gift guide, the wearable, waterproof gadget also offers guided breathing exercises and meditations to help you achieve your daily mindfulness goals, especially after a busy day at the office.
Built-in GPS helps calculate pace and distance for jogging, running, and hiking even without your phone, and it offers up to six days of battery life on a single charge.
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Receive real-time call and text notifications and make hands-free Bluetooth calls.

For those who work and play
A multi-purpose device aimed at dads and graduates, the HP Envy x360 2-in-1 (starting at $1,399) functions as both a laptop and a touchscreen tablet.
That means you can use the integrated keyboard and trackpad to get things done during your 9-to-5 job, and then when you take your 5-to-9 break, bend back the 14-inch (or 16-inch) 4K screen on a 360-degree hinge to pinch and swipe through games, videos, podcasts, and more.
It comes with a 16:10 screen ratio display, Intel Core processor, and AI-powered features, as well as several built-in privacy features, including a webcam shutter, microphone mute button, and a fingerprint reader.
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A new twist on the “2-in-1” device, the Epson EpiqVision Flex Smart Streaming Portable Projector ($715) is perfect for conference rooms as well as family rooms.
This compact projector delivers a Full HD image up to 300 inches, four times the size of a 75-inch TV, and boasts a brightness of 3,000 lumens. This means it’s perfect for bright rooms, whether you’re presenting a PowerPoint sales report in the office, or taking it home to enjoy games, sports, TV shows and movies with family and friends.
Along with a built-in (surprisingly good) speaker and Bluetooth support (for wirelessly pairing with external speakers), built-in Android TV lets you sign into your favorite streaming services and control everything by voice via Google Assistant.
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For Content Creators
External hard disk drives (HDDs) are convenient because they allow you to safely store large amounts of data, but solid-state drives (SSDs) are much faster, smaller, lighter, and more durable because they have no moving parts.
SanDisk now offers a “best of both worlds” solution with the Desk Drive Desktop SSD, which combines high capacity (up to 8TB, roughly 8,000 gigabytes) with fast read speeds of up to 1 gigabyte per second. In simple terms, you can leave this high-capacity drive plugged into your laptop or desktop (or USB-C based smartphone or tablet) and quickly retrieve content from the drive, even for huge files.
This makes it ideal for content creators who need to import and edit large photo, video, and music files.
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It’s about the size of two hockey pucks stacked on top of each other, but you can also download Acronis True Image for Western Digital backup software for free to create automatic backups.
Prices start at $519 (4TB), but if you don’t need that much storage, the company sells a 1TB SSD for as low as $99.

For the Proud Suburbanite
Take a walk around your neighborhood and you might notice an autonomous lawnmower silently cutting the grass.
Although it’s becoming trendy, most require professionally installed “boundaries” buried beneath the lawn to keep the robot on your premises.
But its latest model, Worx’s Landroid Vision WR208 ($2,199), is quick and easy to set up and run because it doesn’t require boundary or lawn mapping. Instead, this model uses advanced, safe, AI-powered technology to “see” and learn from your lawn, automatically identifying areas of the lawn that need to be mowed while avoiding obstacles.
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Because it’s electrically powered, it’s quiet, even when mowing at night, and won’t disturb your neighbors. Like other robots, the WR208 doesn’t bag the grass clippings for disposal, but instead leaves them on the lawn to be used as fertilizer.
If it notices that its battery is low, it will automatically return to its charging base.

For home theater enthusiasts
If your budget allows, and it’s time to replace your family’s aging TV with a top-of-the-line model, LG’s 65-inch OLED evo C4 TV ($3,299) is a great choice, with over 8.3 million self-emitting pixels that produce beautiful images with incredible contrast, color, and brightness.
Under the hood, an Alpha 9 AI Processor Gen7 powers behind the panel, along with the ability to “upscale” less-than-stellar videos, as well as support for Dolby Vision. The Smart TV platform not only lets you sign in to your favorite streaming services, but also includes over 100 free LG channels, including sports, cooking, fitness, and more.
Gamers will appreciate the 144Hz refresh rate and 0.1ms response time when playing heated multiplayer matches, including support for NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium.
In addition to support for Dolby Atmos audio, the optional but matching LG SC9S soundbar ($999) comes with a bracket that fits underneath the OLED evo C4 TV so you can mount it on the wall together.
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