Christmas Gift Guide for Teenagers

The teen-age is a tricky one for buying gifts. It’s that time in between a child and an adult; a tween, a kidult, whatever you want to call it, with rapidly changing trends and these kids growing up so quickly, the teenager sure is a difficult one to buy for.

Technology is emerging at an astonishing rate and it’s hard to keep up with what’s hot and what’s not so here’s our guide to keep you up with the trends so your teens are kept engaged and happy over this festive time, but also some ideas for family time.

Gaming Keyboard – Roccat ®Vulcan 121 

£139.99 –  Roccat ®Vulcan 121 AIMO – Mechanical Keyboard

In gaming, the keyboard is one of the most important elements to have. It’s not just about typing, it’s about having a fast paced ability to hit the right keys with precision and accuracy. The Vulcan 121 has been specifically designed for gamers and is a product of years of research and development to take gaming to another level.

First off it’s clearly well made and robust – essential for the hours of pounding it is expected to withstand, and looking at the keys, they are labelled with LED’s rather than printed so it would appear that the days of guessing what worn out Querty keys are, are well gone. Love that.

It’s a mechanical keyboard which to a gamer is more often the preferred option. Unlike the rubber dome keyboard keys we’re all generally used to, a mechanical keyboard is is regarded as raising the bar in functionality, construction and lighting.

The Vulcan 121 is built with Titan switches which are more tactile and responsive for gaming, and wonderfully clicky when typing, giving you a satisfying experience. These crisp keys certainly enable speedy and responsive keystrokes as well as being durable.

Appealing to the ambience seeker (all teens like a bit of bling)  the AIMO lighting system is massively impressive and along with the Kain 200 mouse creates a, subtle movie-like gaming experience especially with the main room’s lights dimmed.

My teen gamer loves the look and feel of the Vulcan, and enjoys being able to personalise the settings. In fact, it’s a superb looking piece of kit that any gamer would be delighted to own. Santa sure will be popular this year if one of these turns up on Christmas morning…

Gaming Mouse – Roccat ® Kain 200 

£89.99 –  Roccat ® Kain 200 AIMO Wireless Mouse

My passionate gamer-teen, started his digital life with Minecraft at Primary school, he’s now 15 and like so many of his friends, he heads straight to his beloved gaming pc after school, to chill out before starting homework. One thing he’s found is that effective and responsive accessories are key to the serious gaming experience, so having an accessory from the award winning Kain family of tech was a real treat.

It’s ergonomics were instantly awesome, along with a sleek appearance. Its smooth buttons and scrolling were welcome throughout a number of Fortnite skirmishes, where it was still really comfortable especially after a couple of hours of non-stop battles and its performance after those couple of hours didn’t wane either. It’s designed to be durable and with a dirt-resistant coating this should last a long long time.

The Titan switch was specifically designed to improve gaming, and it doesn’t disappoint in-game as it enables even more sensitive movements which has proved useful many times, and now it’s regarded by my teen as essential. It is highly responsive and consistently provides great performance, and you get a satisfying click from those well positioned buttons.

Considering it’s wireless, and allowing for weight of a battery, it is still nice and light, and the battery is rechargeable so there’s no need to worry about replacing them.

And my teen particularly likes the very cool AIMO organic lighting system which very much creates an immersive gaming experience. As a gaming spectator, when playing a live action game, with lowered room lights, the sophisticated lighting from the Kain 200 mouse really does add to the overall action ambience.

Top tip: My son’s gaming pc is windows 10, and the set up is as easy as you’d want it to be. I’d recommend downloading the software to allow you to personalise the mouse to your own preferences such as scroll speed, click speed, button settings and lights.

Beat That Board Game

£24.99 – Beat That! Is available from Amazon and John Lewis

Well, they say it’s the “Bonkers battle of wacky challenges” and that’s exactly what it is. Depending on your family’s level of competitiveness, ours is a firm 10 out of 10, you’ll see this as fun way to spend an hour or so, or a super-fun and frantic day-long battle. It’s fast paced, hilarious, frustrating yet elating when you finally master a challenge.  And we found, annoyingly, that no one person was able to reign champion as we all excelled at different challenges.

The challenges can be easy, deceptively easy, or tough, but they are achievable, and there’s just so many challenges to do. I literally can’t see us ever getting bored of this. You get to see people’s real competitive streak, and it’s pure joy. Plus to up the steaks even more you can use tokens to bet on how well you think you’re going to do, this all adds to the pressure you place on yourself in a bid to win.

Do well in a given task, and you challenge the others to beat that. This is totally coming with us when visiting family over Christmas.

Interaction Board Game

£25 – INTERACTION is available from Amazon and rudy-games.com/shop

This sparked a massive interest for us because as a family of game players (if you’ve seen the film Game Night you’ll get a good idea) it is a game that attempts (quite well) to merge the digital world into the real world.

It’s a family game of fun challenges that provides a realistic level playing field for all ages of players through the clever use of an intelligent app. No need for instructions, you fire up the app and let it walk you through it, and there was no huge need to ‘help’ the younger players, (or the oldies!) As each player’s details are loaded in, so the questions and challenges can be tailored to that players age and ability. Clever huh? 

As the game progresses, the app learns more about each player, therefore improving the game as it goes. There’s 5 different categories (knowledge, creativity, sports, social and games) and with the thousands of potential challenges, there’s room for all ages of players to excel, or fail – which is when it’s at its funniest! There’s questions, challenges, mini games, duels, and the excitement level is superb. A fantastic way to prise a teen from one digital device and onto another but with family fun, bonding and skill building thrown in by stealth. And with regular updates sent to the app, every future party opportunity promises to bring something new. 

As a family who’s enjoyed playing games like trivial pursuit in the past, we were really impressed with this and can genuinely see it as a staple part of all future family get togethers.

Pokémon Themed Gadgets

Poké Ball Wireless speaker £24.99
Pokémon Phone Charger £54.99

Pokemon has been around since the late 1990’s and for the teens I know, with the Pokemon app they all have on their devices, which can get quite competitive, it’s been fairly constant for about 2 years now. Even the mid-age-teens are still out there catching Pokemon and enjoying it. The competitiveness is crazy but it gets them out in the fresh air so it’s all good. 

So keeping the gifts current, we really liked the idea of these Pokemon themed gifts – the Poké Ball Wireless speaker and the Pikachu Pokémon wireless phone charger. They’re both top spec digital gifts that as well as being perfectly functional, they’re Pokemon branded and really quite cool to have on a teen’s desk.

You pop your phone on Pikachu’s tail and the Pokémon will recharge the phone without any wires to plug in; via induction power. Pikachu’s cheeks light up whilst charging, and you can connect a further 3 items into the 3 USB receptors. It’s really very useful.

The Poké Ball speaker enables the owner to play music wherever they are, whether on the move or at home. If you didn’t know it was a speaker, you’d think it was just a toy, but for the initiated it’s a real tip of the hat to the original, iconic Poké Ball with its very cool realistic design. Just don’t throw it at any escaped Pokemon.

Christmas Eve Box

£34.00 normadorothy.com/christmas

We’re in love with this Christmas Eve Box from www.normadorothy.com. It’s a fairly recent idea here in the UK, but it’s one that I genuinely feel everyone should be doing. For younger children it helps to bring Christmas a little early and reduce the over-excitement but for the rest of us, especially teens who haven’t previously had one, having a box for the night before with maybe some new PJ’s, sweet treats and a book is just lovely.

This box is made of pine and as the daughter of a retired old-school carpenter, I can see it’s top quality. The dovetail joints are superb, and along with the engraved personalisation and gorgeous design on the lid, make it a beautiful item for anyone, young or old.

The Christmas Eve box measures 30cm x 20cm x 14cm externally and comes untreated which for a keen up-cycler like myself is perfect as I’m going to add a couple of coats of matt varnish to protect it. Some may like to finish it off with their own style, but please no chalk paint on this! Keeping the beauty of the wood and those dovetail joints exposed is a must.

It’s really lovely and a once in a lifetime purchase for all, no matter what age.

School Locker Decorating Bundle

£21 – www.lockerdays.com

This is something we’d not comes across before and when you get it in your hands you do think what a cute idea. Let’s face it, school lockers are kinda boring, so this provides a solution to pimping up a locker with the use of faux fur carpet, pre-cut wallpaper for the walls that attach with magnets, and locker door magnets adorned with inspirational messages making it a fabulous positive wellbeing product. I can easily see this becoming a popular trend, especially with the additional accessories you can buy to match including magazine files, pen pots and cute photo pegs too. Lovely idea.