Must Have Summer Gadgets For 2025

If your outdoor time includes hours spent on a bicycle, mountain bike, scooter, or motorcycle have you ever considered a dash cam? GekoGear makes the ultimate dash cam specially designed for cyclists. You can read our full review here, but long story short, it seems like this thing was designed by people who actually ride bikes daily and wanted the best camera experience for themselves. If you're in an accident, this camera will automatically lock your video file and hard code the location to the footage, making it impossible to overwrite accidentally. Aside from that, it's easy to slide the camera out of it's mount when you're parked. It has an excellent camera, even in low light, and gets between 7-8 hours battery life on a single charge.

This is one of the coolest portable gadgets you'll want in your backpack, beach bag or car. Slight pun intended with the "cool" factor since this is a portable fan. But aside from that, you can use it to top up the charge in your smartphone. Inflate a beach ball or pool floatie. Or tap into the built-in flashlight if you need to traipse from your tent for a late-night bathroom break. The 9,000 mAh hour battery is extremely high capacity, so it can last a long time between charges while recharging your phone a few times over. There's many small attachments for switching between the five different modes, which you store in the (included) pouch.

DJI has been making great camera accessories and drones for years. The sum of those years of experience allow them to make a (relatively) low-cost drone that still produces high quality results. The DJI Neo is a mini drone and perfect for beginners. The device can take off and land in your palm and has an excellent "follow me" feature allowing the drone to follow you while you're walking, running, or riding your bike. Plus you can get it to hover and snap a photo if you come across beautiful scenery and want to be IN the picture instead of the one snapping it. Note - battery life isn't great (I got 15 mins), so you may want to consider the bundle that has extra batteries.

On the other side of the consumer-friendly drone scale is the Pro Max model from HoverAIR. Out of the box it comes with a variety of smart modes to track, orbit, and hover with you as you enjoy your outdoor adventures. You can dial in the app to adjust the default settings (height, spin, and much more). But as you build your confidence, this drone grows with you, offering advanced features in a drone that is incredibly compact and folds up small enough to fit into a jacket pocket. It's pricey, but it's really, really good. And while it's significantly more pricey if you get the package with extra batteries and the optional attachments to turn your smartphone in a controller, it's a nice addition to add down the road as you become a drone aficionado. If you have the budget, this is the best consumer-friendly-pro-calibre drone we have ever used.

The Apple Watch Ultra takes everything that's great about the regular series Apple Watch and amplifies it further. You'll be able to track all sorts of metrics for your outdoor activities so much easiser with the larger, brighter screen. Particularly helpful for hikers is using the Action button to launch Backtrack, which records your journey so if you get lost, you can easily find your way to your starting point. That button can be customized for your favourite action on the Watch. Cyclists can tap into cadance sensors on their bikes to see deeper metrics on their watch. And divers can monitor tides, water temperature and depth with a quick glance. The Apple Watch Ultra is the absolute best Apple Watch experience (maybe even smartwatch experience), so if you can justify the pricier initial cost, it's a great piece of gear.

The Apple Watch Ultra takes everything that's great about the regular series Apple Watch and amplifies it further. You'll be able to track all sorts of metrics for your outdoor activities so much easiser with the larger, brighter screen. Particularly helpful for hikers is using the Action button to launch Backtrack, which records your journey so if you get lost, you can easily find your way to your starting point. That button can be customized for your favourite action on the Watch. Cyclists can tap into cadance sensors on their bikes to see deeper metrics on their watch. And divers can monitor tides, water temperature and depth with a quick glance. The Apple Watch Ultra is the absolute best Apple Watch experience (maybe even smartwatch experience), so if you can justify the pricier initial cost, it's a great piece of gear.

For blasting tunes while you're at the lake, pool, or wherever your outdoor journey takes you, a high-quality portable speaker is a must. The Beats Pill us an excellent Bluetooth speaker (read our article) that plays equally nicely with Android devices as it does Apple. It's well-suited for the outdoors thanks to its IP67 Dust/Water resistance, plus it has premium audio acoustics, and can get about 24 hours of battery life on a charge.

If you're hiking, cycling, or canoeing to your ultimate outdoor destination, then packing light and small is key. JBL makes a very good, small-scale, portable speaker with the JBL Go 4. Battery life is about 7 hours and audio quality is pretty good for such a small housing. It comes in a variety of different colour combinations to match to your personal style, plus you can tinker with EQ settings in the JBL app to dial in the perfect tone for your ear. Plus it has the same IP67 water resistance we pointed out with the previous speaker, the Beats Pill.

This will be, by far, the most expensive product we include in our article, but it has worked consistenly well for me for two summers. The Worx Landroid robotic mower is as set-it-and-forget-it as a smart mower can be. After allowing it explore your lawn, it will create it's own map and schedule and consistently keep your lawn trimmed. It has completely eliminated this chore from my life. It has a multi-zone feature, so it can cross very slightly raised edges (like a sidewalk), though you do have to identify the different "zones" and install a small disc in the lawn so the mower knows where to cross. It takes a long time to cut a small lawn. But since you're not the one cutting it, who cares if it takes 4x longer than it would take you to do it yourself?

Continuing the trend of lawncare, how about a gadget that makes any hose, sprinkler, or watering system instantly smart? The Eve Aqua Smart Controller is a gadget that allows you to control the flow of water from your smartphone. You attach this to the spout of your hose and then anything that's attached to your house can be controlled and monitored through your smartphone. You can set watering schecules or manually turn things off and on using the app. It's compatible with the Apple Home app (in addition to being controllable from the brand's own app). It's simple and straight-forward to use and is priced about the same/slightly cheaper than simliar options.

If you're spending a full day in the great outdoors, you may need to top up your phone's battery, so a portable battery pack is essential. Blavor makes some interesting options for charging on the go. This specific one has a solar panel on the back. But be warned - you can't rely on this as the primary method to recharge the power bank. After two days of charging this using just the solar panel, the battery pack was only about 20 percent charged. Which is better than nothing in an emergency. But it's important to keep in mind if you're buying this model, buy it for it's high capacity, rugged design, or built-in flashlight (which stayed on for two full days for me before draining the battery), not for the small solar panel.

For power on the go to support more devices for a longer period of time, the Anker Solix power stations are a fantastic choice. They can be pre-charged before you leave for your destination and pack enough power to run full-sized appliances (freshly-blended margaritas tentside anyone) while also allowing you to plug into your vehicle battery if you need to top-up the charge while you're on the go. There's a built in light with various brighness levels to help you see the device or the interior of your tent on a camping trip. While it's relatively compact, it's a bit heavy (so you won't want to be lugging this on a hike for miles). But for portable power at your campsite, this is the ultimate convenience.