Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – Last Minute Gift Ideas!

Christmas is fast approaching and I would hope at this point that you’ve at least got the vast majority of your shopping out of the way. I know I did as I usually use the Black Friday sale as my prompt to pull my seasonal clicking finger out for one mad flurry of spending. – If you are, however, in desperate need of a gift for a friend, family, or significant other, make no bones about it, your time is running out!

Fret yet not though, presuming you have an Amazon Prime account, there is still a very real possibility that if you order something today, it may arrive on your doorstep in enough time for you to crudely wrap it up with the nearest newspaper to hand.

So, with that in mind, if you need a gift for your tech-minded friend, perhaps some of these quick, convenient, and (mostly) cheap suggestions will help!

LED Lighting Strips

LED/RGB lighting has become one of the easiest and affordable means of giving a PC system a bit of extra added flair. Admittedly though, they’re not for everyone. Given that you can buy this RGB LED Strip kit (including a remote control) for just £16.50, it’s cheap, cheerful, and I daresay you could find some way to deploy it in a ‘Hey take a look at this!’ manner.

Upgrade to a 4K TV!

With the recent release of the Xbox Series X/S and PS5, the chances are that you may be one of the lucky few to be expecting your brand new console to be currently sat under the Christmas tree, or maybe hidden behind the back of the wardrobe under a pile of shoe boxes. – Either way, with these new gaming consoles offering 4K gaming, you’re clearly going to need (or at least want) something capable of displaying in that output.

While Ferguson may not be one of the most prestigious brands around, they are British made and come with a surprisingly big 2-year warranty. So, for a 50″ 4K TV available here for just £299.99, it looks like a very solid bargain to me!

Get Blown Away with this USB Fan/Clock Combination

Do you have trouble keeping track of time during those hot and sweaty gaming sessions? – No, me neither. If you do though, then falling into the more ‘novelty’ scale of purchases, this USB powered fan has the rather interesting addition of also providing you with the time. – Better still, at £9.99 you don’t have to break the bank with this one!

AMD Ryzen 3700X

It’s hard to deny that while the recently launched Ryzen 5000 processors are exceptionally impressive, actually getting hold of one (at the time of writing) is more than a little difficult. It shouldn’t be forgotten, however, that despite how amazing their new CPUs are, the AMD Ryzen 3XXX series is still exceptionally worthy of attention.

With the Ryzen 7 3700X available to purchase now for £300, it’s still not ridiculously cheap, but I daresay that for many of you this would represent an amazing upgrade. Particularly so if you’re still using one of the first-gen Ryzen releases in your system. And remember, if you are one of those people, your motherboard (B350/X370) will still almost certainly be happy with this. Well, pending a BIOS check/update.

SEGA Mega Drive Mini

The mini-console trend has died out a little when compared to last Christmas, but in terms of a gift that’ll likely be very well received, I don’t think you can go far wrong with a retro gaming system. – With this SEGA Mega Drive Mini, firstly, it’s a damn sight better than the absolutely garbage one AtGames released 5(ish) years ago. Secondly, available now for £59.99, this could represent your perfect final stocking filler!

MSI Radeon RX 570 ARMOR

While we’d all love to have an Nvidia 3090 or AMD 6900 XT sat in our desktop PC, sometimes you simply have to pick what you can afford, and in this respect, despite its relative age (particularly of the Polaris architecture), the AMD RX 570 is still a more than component entry-zone for decent 1080p gaming.

Is it a world-beater? – No. But for £186.72, it’s still an exceptionally component GPU that’ll keep you happy until maybe one day you can afford something a little more potent!

hohem 3-Axis Gimbal Stabilizer

If you regularly record video footage from your smartphone, then you’ll undoubtedly know that it’s more than a little tricky keeping things reasonably steady. If you haven’t, therefore, tried out a gimbal stabilizer before, then this might just be the perfect gift for you.

What does it do? Well, in a nutshell, the idea is that as you move around, the technology within the device should look to keep the screen perfectly stable meaning that if you’re recording a VLOG on the go, there shouldn’t be that much ‘bouncing’ with your footsteps as the gimble keeps track of your face.

Admittedly, I’ve not personally seen this particular model in the flesh before, but it certainly seems to pack all of the right features and for £84.50, this might be the perfect kickstarter for your new and amazing social media/influencer career! (Just remember us if you make it to the top!)

Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – What Do You Think?

So, a perfect selection of what I hope are some gift ideas you may not have considered that tech-loving person in your life. Albeit, I’m not stopping you getting any of these gifts for yourself because I daresay that after this year, you probably thoroughly deserve it!

If you enjoyed Mikes Rant, you can check out more via the link here – Alternatively, for more of his Christmas-related rantiness, check out the link here! They’ll be a new rant (nearly) every day between Christmas and New Year!