SAN ANTONIO – If you want to put tech under the tree, but need some help, the tech editors at Consumer Reports weigh in with their personal recommendations.
First up, for the music or podcast lover: a new speaker.
“I would definitely suggest the Sonos One smart speaker,” said Allen St. John. “There are a lot of things to like about it. One, it sounds great. And, that’s really the most important thing with any speaker.”
The Sonos One (Gen 2) Smart Speaker retails for $220. It supports Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, and it works with Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Pandora.
Next, Melanie Pinola said the Motorola Moto G Stylus Smartphone with a large 6.8-inch display is a great gift at $400.
“It’s hard to believe you get so many features for the price,” she said.
Features include a high-screen refresh rate, battery life of 32-plus hours, a rarely seen SD card for expandable storage, and the nearly extinct headphone jack.
As for laptops, Nicholas DeLeon recommends the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 with a 12.4-inch touchscreen display. It’s also a Consumer Reports Smart Buy, which means it’s a great value at $570. It weighs only 2.5 pounds, and CR’s testing shows it has 12 hours of battery life. It has an Intel Core i5-1135G7 2.42GHz processor, 4GB RAM, and a 128GB solid-state drive.
“A great gift for anyone this holiday season, including me, would be a Sonos Ray soundbar speaker,” said Jim Willcox, TV editor.
The Sonos Ray Soundbar Speaker for $280 is the least expensive Sonos soundbar that you can buy.
“And it has impressive sound quality for its size, which makes it good not only for watching movies and playing video games but also for listening to music,” Willcox said.
And it can be paired with other Sonos speakers for surround sound in your living room or for a whole home audio system.