For the lazy techie: These are Ars staff’s last-minute holiday gift picks

The holidays have snuck up on us. How is it already that time?

If you’re on top of things and have already bought all your Christmas gifts, I commend you. Not all of us are so conscientious. In fact, one of us is so behind on holiday prep that he is not only running late on buying gifts; he’s also behind on publishing the Ars staff gift guide he said he’d write. (Whoever could we be talking about?)

So for my fellow last-minute scramblers, I polled Ars writers and editors for gift ideas they know will be solid because they’ve actually used them. As such, you’ll find gift options below that Ars staffers have used enough to feel good about recommending. Further, I made sure all of these are available for delivery before Christmas as of today, at least where I live.

For each gadget (or whatever else it might be), we have a brief description of how or why we’ve been using this particular thing and why we would recommend it. Note that the prices we’ve listed here represent where they were at the time this article was written, but online retailers often vary prices based on different factors, so you might see something different when you click through.

Ars Commentariat: If you feel inclined, feel free to share some other ideas. I genuinely might take advantage if you share something good.

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs. (We won’t affiliatize any shared links in the comments, of course.)

Under $50

Tiny USB-A to USB-C adapter pack – $8

Somehow, amazingly, we are still living in a split USB-C/USB-A world all these years later. No one’s thrilled about it, but there’s no end in sight. Some folks in the Apple ecosystem turn to Apple’s first-party adapters, but there are two problems with them in my view: first, they’re weirdly expensive, as you’d expect. And second, they’re larger than they need to be.