19 Out Of The Box Gift Ideas For Christmas

Holidays are just around the corner and people are brainstorming for gift ideas for the loved ones, It is quite hard to think of some gifts which are not out there because I for one love to see the surprise on the face of the receiver. So here are our first gadget list for the holidays and more will follow, So stick around and check the goodie list we assembled here for you. Do let us know in the comments which one you like the best.

Darth Vader Night Light

Irrefutable proof that night lights are not for sissies, this is perhaps the most foreboding way to reassure kids (or adults) that there isn’t a boogieman under their bed – there’s one on their bedside table.

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Mad Catz M.M.O.Te Mouse

World Of Warcraft veterans will be familiar with that most first world of first world problems – too many abilities, too few mouse buttons. The solution? A dedicated MMO mouse with more buttons than you can shake an axe at. The M.M.O.Te puts 12 such buttons at the tip of your thumb, plus another eight programmable ones elsewhere, spanning three customisable profiles. The result is the possibility of up to 60 separate commands – all without so much as looking at the keyboard. Even the most demanding of hotkey-bashing arena fighters should find their needs well catered for.

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Star Trek Car Emblems

Turn your car into the Starship Enterprise – kind of – with these special custom emblems. You can pick between Kirk’s ship or Picard’s, or you could avoid Roddenberry’s oeuvre entirely and make your Volkswagen Polo suddenly “look like” Red Dwarf’s Starbug or Doctor Who’s TARDIS or… well, the list goes on and on.

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Rocking AT-AT

Have a small child? Love Star Wars? Like assembling cool things? This is the “Rocking AT-AT” for you. Thinking about it, if the actual AT-ATs were on rockers, perhaps they wouldn’t fall over so easily. Something for J.J. to think about there.

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Amazon Fire TV

The streaming set-top box war cranked up a notch this year with more players on the field than ever before. Shouldering the competition aside with its burly shoulders, though, was Amazon’s Fire TV, which launched in October and immediately put the competition to shame. Swaggering to the fore with a quad-core CPU and 2GB of RAM, the Fire TV is amongst the most powerful little black boxes on the market, towering above the likes of Apple TV, Roku or Google’s Chromecast. It takes advantage of the horsepower, too, with an emphasis placed on the box’s gaming as well as streaming potential (there’s a dedicated game controller you can buy separately). The UI is clean and simple, with an impressive voice search function meaning you can just tell it what you want instead of having to painstakingly spell out film titles via virtual keyboard. Amazon Instant Video content is prioritised (naturally) but Netflix, iPlayer and assorted other services are also catered for. iTunes stalwarts are out of luck but for everyone else this is a beast of a streamer packed inside a very small box.

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Turtle Beach Elite 800

As our office Call Of Duty sessions will attest, there’s no point being a crack shot with every assault rifle if you can’t hear the News Editor sneaking up behind you to plant a knife in your back. The solution? Other than a £3000 sound system, your best bet is a pair of cutting edge gaming cans and Turtle Beach’s Elite 800 headphones may be the best of the lot. There are a great many simulated 7.1 channel headphones out there but the Elite 800s also simulate vertical planes, allowing you to tell if that incoming griefer is in front, behind, above or below you. Distractions are eliminated thanks to the addition of active noise cancelling, allowing you to focus entirely on the game at hand. Add in a magnetic charging stand, Bluetooth wireless and a boomless, invisible microphone and these are serious headphones for serious gamers. The 800s are compatible with PS3 and PS4 only, so Xbox owners might want to try the lesser, but still solid, Stealth 500X instead.

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Street Fighter Christmas Jumper

While Dark Bunny Tees’ Die Hard Christmas jumper remains perhaps the best cinematic sweatshirt available, perhaps something game-related might tickle your fancy this yuletide. Be warned, however – if you’re spotted out and about wearing this, expect many, many, many people to run up to you and shout “Hadouken!” very loudly. Mulled wine will do that to you.

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Darth Vader Toaster

Providing new ways to motivate you out of bed in the morning is this Vader’s head toaster. Simply place two slices of bread into the slots and Bob’s your uncle, a couple of minutes later you’ve got breakfast to see you into work. Especially if you work on a Death Star.

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Lego Lonely Mountain

The power of Lego to take movies and reinvent them in the medium of bricks makes us yearn for them to repeat the trick with GoodFellas, Seven Samurai and Citizen Kane – because who wouldn’t want a Lego Xanadu? In the meantime, this Hobbit recreation of pre-Desolation Smaug in the Lonely Mountain will do us nicely. It’s crammed with detail (panic-stricken Bilbo, grumpy Dwalin) and plot points (spot the actual Arkenstone), not to mention a whole mess of action. Benedict Cumberbatch not included.

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Hydra In The Shadows Glow-In-the-Dark T-Shirt

Technology meets Marvel lore meets HYDRA meets S.H.I.E.L.D. meets your chest. Ingenious. This is my favorite T shirt at the moment, It is brilliant and just for $20.

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Sherlock Bookends

It’s not enough to own all three series of Sherlock on Blu-ray: you need a bust of both Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, as well as some natty art cards. Well, “need” is a strong word, but if you consider yourself an aficionado, once you’ve seen these bronze-effect bad boys, your desire to own them (and hug them and kiss them) is going to be pretty overwhelming.

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Logitech Harmony Ultimate

One device to rule them all. One device to find them. It may not quite have all the advantages of The One Ring but Logitech’s Harmony Ultimate is without doubt The Dark Lord of all universal remotes. Like the rest of Logitech’s Harmony range, the Ultimate organises everything by activity. Want to ‘Watch Netflix’? The remote will turn on and configure all the required devices and control them for the duration of your viewing. It’s an elegant, intuitive solution to the ‘where the hell is that fifteenth remote?” problem and once you’ve embraced it, there’s just no going back. The Ultimate is an evolution of the old Harmony Touch, retaining the former’s balance of hard buttons and programmable touchscreen with added gesture support. The reason the Ultimate really lives up to its name, though, is through the included Harmony hub, which transforms a versatile remote into a complete home automation system. Not only can the hub take on all Infra-red duties, letting you point the remote any which way you like, but it also adds the capacity to control Bluetooth devices like the PS4 or Fire TV, which are impervious to traditional remotes. Add in the ability to swap in your smart phone and take control of the whole system via the Harmony app and this could very well revolutionise your whole home cinema experience.

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Mad Catz Pro Racing Force Feedback Wheel

The roar of the engine, the squeal of the tyres and the patter of flying gravel on the windshield: there’s nothing quite like strapping into the driving seat of the latest console racer to bring out the boy racer in all of us. A controller, however, is no substitute for a real wheel in your hands and Mad Catz’ suede-wrapped Force Feedback Wheel for Xbox One is about as opulent an accessory as you could ever hope to own. Boasting dual motors for maximum feedback, the wheel lets you really feel the terrain beneath your tyres (something that comes into its own during Forza Horizon’s off-road challenges) and the adjustable steering sensitivity (arcade and simulation modes are possible) caters to every class of driver. Dedicated petrolheads with a penchant for high end racers could ask for nothing more.

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Dancing Groot

It’s no secret that the best thing about Guardians Of The Galaxy (which was choc-full of excellent things) was the dancing Groot during the end titles. “I want one!” we all cried. Well, someone listened and now you can have one. Awww, look at his widdle face!
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Saitek S.T.R.I.K.E. 5 Gaming Keyboard

It may look like some kind of experimental weapons platform but beneath its mental looks the S.T.R.I.K.E. 5 is a fully customisable, PC gamer’s dream. Whether your poison is RTS, RPG, FPS, MMO or MOBA, this beast can be configured to fit your particular needs. Its modular design means that each segment from number pad to macro strip can be repositioned for maximum accessibility, while the OLED screen can display anything from respawn timers to volume levels with the touch of a button. A serious keyboard for serious gamers.

Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones II: Seasons 3 & 4

As you’d expect from such a first-rate production as Game Of Thrones, this luxury hardback behind-the-scenes book is full of detailed episode and character breakdowns, high-res pictures and artwork, but trust us, once you’ve bought it, you’ll want the first volume as well.

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Bose QuietComfort 25

If you use public transport, travel by plane or really occupy any space likely to be shared with other people, then noice-cancelling headphones are all but mandatory. Long the overlords of this particular niche, Bose is a company that knows how to help you ignore people and its flagship QuietComfort 25s are a misanthrope’s best friend. Lightweight, long-lasting and with a peerless level of background blockage, these will ensure that your quiet time is never anything but.

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Pivos Xios XS

Where the Fire TV has the mass-market end of the streaming set-top-box field in its grasp, those willing to do some tinkering under the bonnet will find Pivos’ Xios XS a very attractive alternative. Unlike the Fire’s locked-down ecosystem, the Xios XS (like the Xios DS before it) is built on an open Android platform, with all the flexibility that comes with it. Sitting on top of the Android backend is the TOFU Media Centre UI (essentially a reskinned iteration of XBMC Gotham with grey and pastel purple replacing the black and blue), and as a front end for your entertainment needs TOFU performs extremely well – which you’d expect from an XBMC clone. Local content is streamed seamlessly, with additional data scraped from online sources to add cast lists, pack shots and short synopses. Being entirely open, the XS also puts Google’s entire Play Store at your disposal, opening the device to an endless stream of apps to suit almost any taste or need. All of this does requires rolling your sleeves up a little, though, so this is by no means a gift for luddite in your life. Those with a touch of nerd in their DNA, however, will love every minute of it.

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The Goonies Playing Cards

Holy S-H-I-T! You’re probably expecting a “Do the truffle shuffle!” joke here, aren’t you? Well, you’re not getting one. Instead, here’s a link to the artist who created the designs for these cards, Nat Iwata, whose work is truly excellent.

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The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug – Bookend Edition

Sherlock may have busts, but Smaug has bookends. There’s something about films and TV shows starring Benedict Cumberbatch that warrants beautifully-designed shelf furniture, it seems. Also, it looks like you get a Blu-ray copy of The Desolation Of Smaug with this particular dwarven duo, so that’s a bit of a bonus.

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