A high-flyer’s holiday entertainment kit

There’s no need to strain your luggage allowance with clunky electronics to maximise your holiday entertainment holiday. Financial Times gadget guru Jonathan Margolis rounds up his compact must-haves that will not only enhance your inflight experience, but also the rest of your trip

Jawbone Mini Jambox

There are dozens of wireless speakers and compact devices that provide implausible stereo sound via a Bluetooth signal from your devices. For travel, however, one stands out – the £150 Mini Jambox from Jawbone, who invented this genre of speaker just four years ago. It can fill most hotel rooms with astonishing sound. If you can find space in your travel bag for two – they’re virtually pocket sized – you can rig them up as separate mono wireless speakers and have a serious Wi-Fi system to travel with.

Snugs custom earbuds

Noise-cancelling headphones are rightly popular, but you can achieve the same, or better, level of isolation from outside sound and benefit from amazing audio quality with in-ear headphones customised to your ears – like the monitors musicians use. These can cost thousands and still be uncomfortable. Devon-based Snugs has perfected customised headphones that are also comfortable, from £127. But if you want the best that money can buy, its top model – currently selling for £1,287 – is probably the best consumer headphone in the world.

Philips Fidelio M1BT

Bluetooth headphones aren’t normally as good as wired ones, but they offer the convenience to move around while listening to music. This is ideal on aircraft, in hotel rooms or on the beach. Philips’ Fidelio M1BT (£237.99) are among the best Bluetooth cans available, offering fantastic sound, leather-covered build quality and good battery life – well in excess of 10 hours. Some people find them comfortable – I certainly do – others less so, so try them in store first. The controls are rather fiddly, but exceptional nonetheless.

iPad Mini

It may sound obvious, but if you take one electronic gadget on a trip, it has to be an iPad Mini (from £319). The best combination of portability and lightness, it will store hundreds of music albums, as many games as you can play and dozens of films. The Retina screen quality is perfect, and the 7.9-inch size is optimal for viewing from close up. And if you get bored, one of the 500,000 available apps should keep you entertained.

iFly Pad

The iPad Mini is a fine portable entertainment centre but, unless you’re flying on one of BA’s newly refurbished A320s which comes equipped with an eye-level seatback tablet-holder, it’s awkward to find a comfortable way to place it when you’re travelling. Enter this brilliant gadget, the iFly Pad (£30), which grasps your iPad (or any tablet) firmly with reliable rubber suckers and, by the same method, sticks it to the seatback screen in front of you, with an adjustable viewing angle.

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This article has been tagged Technology, Travel Tips