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January can feel like a slog, but the right tech can help you get through Canada’s coldest month happy and healthy. A TV upgrade can make those chilly nights a little warmer, and a new wearable can put a bounce in your step at the gym. Here are some great smart tech gadgets that will let you tackle 2024 like a pro.
Wearables
“Classic” is an ideal descriptor for Samsung’s latest smart watch. Not only does it have a vintage look with its round face and simple strap, but it also brings back the beloved rotating bezel seen in earlier versions of the Korean company’s watches. It provides an intuitive physical interface that allows for quick, precise interactions with all your apps, whether you’re sitting or moving.
Apple’s digital watches remain impressively reliable and robust, with a fantastic array of useful software ranging from a pedometer and heart rate monitor to handy reminder apps for hydrating, napping and even pooping. New to the Series 9 is Apple’s innovative double tap interface. Just tap your index finger and thumb together twice to answer and end calls, stop and start timers, and play and pause music without ever touching the watch face.
If your primary goal for a wearable device is to improve your fitness, you can save a lot of money by choosing a Fitbit Charge 6. It’s chock full of health-minded features, including a heart rate monitor, sleep tracker, stress management tools and the ability to connect to a variety of exercise machines. Bonus: The lightweight design and slim profile will make you forget you’re wearing it, even while sleeping.
TVs
If you’re tired of trying to figure out which TV is best for different use cases, save yourself some hassle (though not any money) and just pick the Samsung S90C OLED. It displays everything—sports, movies, video games—exceptionally well. Fantastic contrast and HDR performance ensures inky blacks and singing colours, and 4K video rendered at 144 Hz is amazingly crisp. Its wildly slim profile is just the sugar on top.
This OLED is categorized as mid-tier, but most consumers will be hard-pressed to figure out where LG’s engineers skimped. Deep blacks you can get lost in, a speedy 120 Hz refresh rate and good upscaling make everything from TV shows to HDR gaming look great. The only real issue you may encounter (depending on the type and number of devices you want to hook up) is that only two of its four HDMI ports are HDMI 2.1.
If budget is a priority, consider the U7K from Chinese TV maker Hisense. It’s an LED set—fully backlit with local dimming—so you’ll be missing out on those perfect blacks found in pricier displays, but it has a wide colour gamut and a quick native refresh rate of 144 Hz. Plus, it features an Android-powered operating system that’s delightfully easy to use regardless of whether you’re invested in Google’s ecosystem.
Laptops
The M3-powered MacBook Pro is an amazing laptop, but unless you’re editing video or playing resource-intensive games it’s overkill for most people. The M2-equipped MacBook Air is a little less powerful, but it’s still great for work, web surfing, watching movies and light gaming. It’s also lighter, slimmer and—in this reviewer’s humble opinion—a bit prettier. And it’ll save you around $700. Wins all around.
Practical types looking for a reliable, no-nonsense Windows notebook that lets you get stuff done will find it in this practical 2-in-1. It’s made for productivity, whether that means scrolling through spreadsheets on its bright WUXGA display, or flipping the screen around and using the included stylus to quickly scribble notes at worksites or meetings. And with half a dozen ports—including HDMI 2.1 and USB Type-C—you’ll have no trouble jacking in any office peripheral.
This 3 kg gaming laptop is an absolute beast. With an 18-inch QHD+ screen, 32 GB of blazing fast DDR5 RAM, a 24-core 2.2 GHz Intel Core i9 processor, and a dedicated GPU in NVIDIA’s 8 GB GeForce RTX 4070 GDDR6, it chews through even the most resource-intensive games with graphics settings maxed. Unfortunately, it’ll also chew a hole in your wallet.
Tablets
Powerful and versatile, Apple’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro can do almost everything. It’s powered by Apple’s M2 processor, so if you pair it with a keyboard it’s basically a MacBook Air. Add a stylus and it becomes both a notepad and a canvas for creativity. And in the evening it’s perfect for cozying up with on a couch to read an ebook or playing your favourite mobile games while watching TV.
Samsung’s flagship slate is the best Android tablet around, and by a healthy margin. It sports a huge 14-inch dynamic AMOLED screen with ultrafine resolution and bright, bold colours. It’s not quite as powerful as Apple’s iPad Pro, but it is slightly less expensive and comes with an S Pen to save a little more money.
If you can’t justify the price of an iPad Pro, an iPad Air makes for a nice fallback. The tradeoffs: it’s a bit smaller, it’s missing features like 4K video recording and Face ID, and it sports an M1 rather than an M2 chipset, so it’s a tad less likely to replace your laptop. If you can live with all of that, then congratulations, you just saved around $700!
Smartphones
Is Apple’s fanciest iPhone worth an extra $300? It might be if you fancy yourself a photographer, thanks to a 5x optical zoom camera that reaches out to grab distant subjects. And its 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR display lets you frame and view photos in vivid glory. Add in the new Action button—a handy way to turn on the flashlight or record a voice memo—and you have the best iPhone yet.
As hinted at by its name, the Galaxy Z Fold5 unfolds to reveal an enormous 7.6-inch AMOLED 2X display that’s fantastic for everything from watching videos and playing games to browsing documents and reading books. When folded, it’s no bigger than most other phones, fitting nicely in a jean pocket. Just need to check something quick? Make do with the (comparatively paltry) 6.2-inch cover display.
It’s not the flashiest phone around, but the Pixel 8 earns high marks for users on a budget. Powered by Google’s own Tensor G3 chip, it’s aces at multitasking as well as photo and voice processing. And the 6.2-inch Actua display—super bright with a fast 120 Hz refresh rate—is beautiful, even if the Full HD+ resolution can’t quite compete with pricier models.
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