The best tech gear for boosting productivity at school

A 2-in-1 laptop for the right student can be a great problem solver — consolidating multiple devices (a computer and a tablet notably) into one. This pick results in a generally lighter backpack, fewer devices to lose, and files aggregated in a single place.  

The Asus Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip has a lot going for it, including the fact that your student has probably already used a Chromebook at some point in their academic history. (The base model is often standard public school issue.) This one is a deluxe version with a very reasonable price tag — one of the most reasonable in the 2-in-1 category, in fact. 

Despite its cheapie reputation, the Vibe CX34 Chromebook comes with a ton of power, 12th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU, Intel Iris Xe graphics, and 8GB of storage. Its thin 14-inch frame slides perfectly into backpacks. We also love the look — and so will your student — with a cool RGB backlit keyboard.  

Focusing on schoolwork is infinitely easier when you can block out the chatter around you — or when you can lose yourself in a sweeping Frank Ocean ballad. Our testers loved both aspects of these Sony cans, highlighting the superlative well-rounded sound as well as the ability to block ambient noise. 

Mashable Deputy Shopping Editor Miller Kern raved about the sound quality: "The vocals and instruments all got to shine, and the headphones made it feel like I was there in the studio. These are probably the best-sounding headphones I’ve ever tried." Although the XM5 ear cups don’t fold down, making portability less convenient, that wasn’t enough of a detraction to prevent them from earning a Mashable Choice Award.

Sometimes you just need to get out of the house or the dorm room to fully concentrate. And that optimal concentration place — like in the middle of the quad, or in the car while you’re waiting for practice to start — may not always have the screaming WiFi you need.

Hotspots can be big bucks though, and may not always fit a student budget. That is, unless you’re talking about the Suncomm 4G Wi-Fi Hotspot, which clocks in at an incredibly reasonable $16.99. Plug in your SIM card and you can connect your phone, your laptop, and another eight devices if you so choose. The connection should last a good eight hours, long enough to research and submit that paper in relative peace.

While the Apple watch certainly is more than just a fitness tracker and slightly bends our rule of One Task Technology, hear me out. In this case (especially if you are already a Mac user) the synergies with other devices – and the lifesaving, easy-to-use, one-touch, “find my iPhone” feature, beats anything else out there.

The watch tracks steps, workouts, heart rate, HRV, respiratory rate, menstrual cycles, and stress levels. Your kid won’t need to take it off when they shower or swim (it tracks laps too) and is an amazing way to look back at your performance over any period of time.

Sleep can be elusive when you’re deep in the throws of intense academia, but we all know they who does not sleep, does not perform at their best. How can you tell if you’re getting good sleep? That’s where the Oura comes in – it offers a sleep report card when you wake.

The Oura is a (reasonably attractive) metal ring that you wear all day and all night while it tracks various temperature changes and vitals. In the morning the accompanying app calculates a sleep score — a composite rating of your total time in bed, your time actually asleep, how deeply you slept, and ultimately how efficient all that shuteye was.

For sleep-challenged students, awareness itself can be a big part of the fix. Nudges to get to bed at a consistent time, or seeing the negative effects of screen time before bed in a sleep score can be powerful motivators to get back on track.

This is the ultimate do-one-thing-and-do-it-well device. It is an e-ink tablet, which allows your student to simulate the feeling of taking notes with a pencil on paper, while actually doing it digitally. There is no annoying delay as you write with the included stylus, and if you hate your handwriting you can convert your notes to text with a tap. (If you love your handwriting and the act of note-taking, the reMarkable is even more of a joy.) When you need to focus without the distraction of messages popping up while you concentrate on a lecture, this is your tool. 

Upload PDFs and take notes all over them, draw designs and concepts and send them to others, save your notes to a file and even upload them to the cloud, syncing across all your devices.

Let there be no misunderstanding. The Thermomix is not a bargain, but if you can swing the price tag, it effectively replaces almost every device in the kitchen, from the oven to the blender to the rice cooker to even measuring cups.

This device has been a fixture on European countertops for half a century and you can easily spot it in the most rarefied and legitimate of kitchens (ie Great British Baking Show: The Professionals). Covering 24 different processes, it whips, whisks, caramelizes, chops, steams, sautés, blends, boils, kneads, ferments, and emulsifies. With the accompanying app, you are (delightfully) relegated to sous chef, following the on-screen directions to add the ingredients when prompted. If you add together the price of all the devices your student could and would buy to outfit a “normal” kitchen over the next few years, you start to understand its value.