With around 727 121 full-time candidates and 155 215 part-time candidates writing matric exams in 2024, there is bound to be a huge amount of young people heading into university or other tertiary education next year.
If you know one of these people and are seeing them over the Christmas holidays and have no idea what to get them, then this list is for you. Uni students have a number of needs, whether they’re staying at home or at res and while some of the more expensive needs – like tuition, food, transport – will have to be handled elsewhere (and they don’t make good presents), we have collected a bunch of tech items that will make them go “Oh wow, I actually needed this.”
Whether they know it or not, many of these items will be really helpful. Take it from us, who have been there and done that.
LET’S GO! ALSO! These are all relatively affordable options.
Noise cancelling headphones
For the dorm resident who wants to study in peace and has to deal with his roommate listening to Jack Parrow.
Marshall Major IV Portable Bluetooth On-Ear Headphone, Black – R1 799
Sony Wireless Noise Cancelling Over-Ear Headphones – Black – R1 799
Volkano Rhapsody Series Active Noise Cancelling Bt Headphones – Black – R500
ChatGPT subscription
At R360 a month, consider hooking up your uni student with a few months’ subscription to ChatGPT, allowing them extended access to messaging, file uploads, advanced data analysis, and image generation.
Believe us when we say that ChatGPT is a godsend for anyone who wants to save time on tedious research tasks like referencing and statistics. It also helps to identify citations and understand theoretical frameworks.
The tool is often in the headlines as something used to cheat, but it has enormous potential to do good.
This will be a solid gift if your uni student already won’t shut up about ChatGPT. Consider making them a brand new account, signing up for ChatGPT Plus and gifting them a nice card with the account details written on it like the account name and password.
A good pad goes a long way
A good pad goes a long way, especially in class. Obviously, Samsung and Apple have cornered the market with their pads but this is an affordable gift guide and we have two winning pads from Nokia that we have reviewed ourselves and can confirm their quality.
The Nokia T10 – R2 799 – is cheaper but contains less powerful hardware. It features a great battery and is really an overall good, affordable little pad.
Meanwhile, its bigger brother, the Nokia T20 – R4 799 – has better performance and a bigger screen, but it is double the price.
Solid Bluetooth speaker for all social occasions
Easy to use, easy to setup. Charge it. Take it in your bag. Play music on campus. Listen to podcasts at res while doing the dishes. It can go loud enough for house parties too and the bass is nothing to shrug at with this price point.
Volkano Mamba 2.0 Series Speaker – R699
Power bank for the phone-obsessed teen
It’s not just for keeping up on social media. Smartphones have become essential for the student on the go. You know which area of Joburg Wits is located, right? Don’t want to run out of battery around there and be out of contact range.
Keep their phones charged with the Romos 20 000mAh Pulse, which is a steal at R400. This is a no-frills power bank that chooses substance over style. Not cute but a lifesaver. It can charge an iPhone 12 four times in a row when at 100 battery capacity. Their friends will love them.
Smartwatch for smart kids
A classic Christmas present for any young person who doesn’t have one already. Behold the smartwatch. Not all cost as much as an Apple Watch, but many do a lot of the same things, including health monitoring – good for the over-stressed lecture-goer – notification giving and exercise tracking.
HUAWEI Band 9 Pink – R1 599
Xiaomi Redmi Watch 3 Active – R999
SSD (external storage) for the hundreds of files and documents
All modern university work is done digitally. All. No more paper. None. It’s all done digitally.
All. Storage space is important, not just for documents but for images, videos, presentations and everything else. Better than a thumb drive, a hard drive can take you further, hold more information and can load it faster.
Andowl 1TB – 2.5 Inch Portable External Hard Drive (500GB25) – R649
Portable External Hard Drive 500GB – R599
Backpack to hold all the tech
If you’re planning to get one or more of these tech items for your uni student, you’ll need a place to keep them all and EVERKI makes solid, waterproof quality backpacks. One of these bags will likely last a very long time, perhaps even their entire academic career and maybe even further.
EVERKI EKP116NBK Waterproof Backpack (Black, 17.3 inch) – R900
Everki Advance Backpack 15.6″ – R999
An affordable, quality laptop
This was the most difficult item to find. There are quality laptops, but they aren’t necessarily affordable, and then there are affordable laptops but not necessarily quality. The danger is getting a cheap laptop and then realising it’s a dud.
A bad machine can make your life miserable. So how do we strike a balance? We look and scour and eventually, we find something. Also, stay far away from Chromebooks.
Lenovo IdeaPad 1 15IGL7 Intel Celeron N4020 8GB RAM 256GB SSD 15.6-Inch Full HD Laptop, Cloud Grey – R5 000
Acer Aspire Lite N100 8GB 256GB WIN11 Home Silver – R5 500
It’s tough to find a quality machine for under R5 000 but the above options should keep your uni student happy, with all the capabilities for working, surfing the net, streaming video and playing some very low-performance requirement indie games.
[Image – Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash]
