Perfect Father’s Day Gifts
Dads are funny people to buy gifts for. We often say we don’t want anything for birthdays and Christmas – let alone Father’s Day – but let’s face facts, we’re as happy as anyone in the family when we do receive a thoughtful gift. Now I’m not saying we don’t appreciate the socks, underpants or pyjamas but here are three more gifts that are guaranteed to put an especially wide smile on almost any dad’s face.
Dads want to keep the family safe
All dad’s want to keep their homes safe, so the dad in your life will definitely appreciate the wireless Spotlight Cam Plus Battery from Ring. Ring have been market leaders in video doorbells for years, so you know you can trust these security cameras to watch over the rest of your home. The Spotlight Cam Plus Battery comes with HD Video, motion-activated spotlights and a security siren to keep potential intruders at bay. It also has customisable motion zones and instant alerts when motion is detected and allows two-way chat between you and whoever is on your property, which means you can tell the postman to leave your parcel next door, or you can tell any intruders that the police are on the way.
There’s a siren built in as well, if you’d prefer to scare unwanted visitors off with that. The Ring app allows you to decide, just as it allows you to choose the brightness of the spotlight and any zones you want to cover for motion detection. It’s a breeze to install too, with no wires whatsoever, so you won’t need to buy him a tool set to go with it. There are also a wired version and a solar powered version, if you don’t want to change the battery. All footage is saved onto Ring’s cloud servers too, which means you don’t have to worry about overwriting any incidents or evidence if the worst does happen – as it did earlier in the year when we had someone break a window at our home.
We chose the battery powered version, which I was able to fit to the side of our house in under ten minutes (and trust me I’m not a particularly practical man). All I had to do was drill four holes, attach the base plate to the wall and that was pretty much it, the Spotlight Cam then just slots onto the base plate and is secured with a quick turn of the screw. To charge the battery I just slot it out and plug it in to charge before slotting it back in again. I feel a lot more secure when I’m away from home knowing the Spotlight Cam is watching over our house and alerting me to any visitors. It comes in handy for speaking with delivery drivers too and asking them to leave any parcels with my neighbours instead of putting it behind the green bin, as some companies seem to do.
Currently retailing at £149.99 on Amazon.
Dads like to be entertained
We’ve been buying Fire tablets for the kids since they were about three years old. They do an excellent job for the price and have regularly made the perfect Christmas gift for our little ones. They’re also great gifts for adults to be honest, and while they might not be as prestigious as an Apple tablet the Fire HD8 can look just as great, once it’s in a cover. Thanks to the octa-core processor these Fire tablets are really fast these days too, and when it comes to durability there’s no contest – the Fire HD tablets are officially twice as durable as the 2021 iPad Mini in tumble tests. With USB C charging and 13 hours of battery life Dad will be able to watch all the Netflix, iPlayer, Sky Sports, Prime Video he needs; it’s also very handy for controlling your smart home devices or just asking Alexa to play some music for you.
Currently priced at £99.99 on Amazon but regularly on special offer.
Dads like a coffee boost, wherever they are in the world
One of the great pleasures of travel can be sitting in a café sipping a fresh java and watching the world go by. But if, like me, you get through five coffees a day the costs of this can soon rack up. If you’re lucky there might be a Nespresso machine in your hotel but more often than not it’s a simple kettle, which means ground coffee is off the menu. Luckily, I found a solution last year when I came across the Nanopresso from Wacaco – who make a variety of other travel systems for coffee lovers.
This remarkably compact contraption has saved me a fortune and lets me drink my favourite brand (Lavazza), whatever hotel I’m in. It’s made up of a few small parts, measures less than 16cm and easily fits in my jacket pocket, which means I can take an espresso machine with me wherever I travel. Making a brew is as simple as unscrewing the cap, filling the small coffee filter basket with your chosen brand, screwing on the top back on, filling the bottom of the Nanopresso with water from the kettle and then pumping the coffee out with its retractable pumping handle. The results are every bit as good as a regular espresso machine thanks to the 18 bars of pressure that it produces as you pump. There’s even a removable cup incorporated seamlessly into the design, so you’ve got everything you need in a tiny little package – except the coffee that is.
