Still stuck for gifts for Father’s Day next month? Time to get creative. Here are our 10 picks.
Welcome back to Fitmodo powered by the new Fitbit Charge HR activity wristband — now with continuous heart rate tracking — and the Fitbit Surge fitness super watch. Heart rate, calories, steps and sport tracking with long battery life, call and text notifications, auto sleep monitoring and more.
Leatherman Tread
If you’re an adult, you should own a multi-tool. This is a Fact. But if you’re also a frequent flyer, you’ll know the annoyance of not being able to carry said multi-tool through airport security both in Australia and internationally. This is where this nifty new tool will come in handy — the Leatherman Tread packs 29 different tools, sans knife, into a vaguely fashionable bracelet.
The Tread is a multi-link bracelet, with 9 links each with 2 to 3 tools on the outer edges — Phillips and flathead screwdrivers, a bottle opener, a cutting hook, glass breaker, and so on. Perfect for Dads.
Leatherman Tread, $394
Home Brew Starter Kit
Give a Dad a beer and he’ll be quenched for an hour. Teach a Dad to brew his own beer and he’ll be quenched for the rest of his life. That’s the promise of a home-brew starter kit anyway.
Sydney home-brew supply shop The Hop & Grain do great work with their $80 starter kits available online, but you can also get them from Coles if you’re feeling lazy.
Home Brew Starter Kit, $80
GoPro Hero 4 Session
GoPro has a new action camera out, called the Hero 4 Session. It’s the smallest GoPro yet by a massive margin, being 50 per cent smaller and 40 per cent lighter than any other variant of the Hero 4, it’s waterproof without an additional case, and you can switch it on and start recording with a single button.
Sitting in the middle of the current GoPro line-up — that is, above the entry-level Hero and Hero+LCD — the Hero 4 Session records in 16:9 1080p60, and 720p100 resolutions and frame rates, as well as various 4:3 formats like 1440p30 and 960p50 and the 4:3-squishing Superview. With a native 4:3 sensor inside, the Hero 4 actually auto-orients its video recording whether it’s the right way up, upside down or otherwise on its side, which massively boosts the range of mounting options and different uses. Like more expensive GoPros the Session has ProTune recording, which is a flat colour profile better suited to post-processing video recording.
GoPro Hero 4 Session, $579.95
Fitbit Surge
The Surge isn’t quite the lightweight fitness tracker we’ve come to expect from Fitbit. It is indeed a smart watch, but perhaps not the smartwatch you might expect. It’s a so-called “Fitness Super Watch” designed with runners in mind, adding built-in GPS (for a total of eight sensors) to track your routes and give you access to all kinds of workout data. You could already track routes with the GPS in your phone and the Fitbit app, mind you, but with the Surge you can leave your phone at home. Plus, it comes with every other Fitbit feature including the Fitbit HR’s heartrate monitor, and gives you a manufacturer-estimated seven days of battery life too.
Alternatively, if you want something a little more hardcore for hiking…
Fitbit Surge, $349.95
Garmin Fenix 3 GPS Smartwatch
…try the Garmin Fenix 3!
Whether your Dad runs, bikes, swims, surfs, snowboards, paddles, hunts and ride motorcycles, the Garmin Fenix 3 can keep up and help him become better at them.
The Garmin Fenix 3 is, as you guessed, the successor to the Fenix 2. Garmin has fixed all of the biggest complaints about that watch, with the biggest being the slow GPS acquisition. By adding the ability to connect to the Russian GPS equivalent, GLONASS, you can now use 24 more satellites (+ the 32 from GPS) that ultimately give you a much quicker and more reliable location lock.
Garmin Fenix 3, $729
UE Roll
The $149.95 UE Roll is a circular, flying saucer-shaped wireless speaker in the same vein as the original UE Boom and its Megaboom cousin. Packing in Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (but no Wi-Fi), the Roll is designed to pair with your smartphone or tablet — or laptop, if you’re keen — and play your entire music collection wirelessly whether it’s streamed from Spotify or Rdio or Apple Music or beamed directly from your device’s local storage.
Ultimate Ears claims nine hours of battery life from the Roll’s internal, non-removable, microUSB-rechargeable battery. It’s waterproof too, as well as drop- and dust- and everything else within reason-proof. The Roll’s standout feature, though, is the bungee cord stretched across its back panel — hooking into a curved section on the rear of the speaker’s casing, it’ll let you hang the little flying saucer from any of a huge variety of hooks and hangers and loops and other pieces of the world.
UE Roll, $149
Google Cardboard Kit
When Google debuted its charming, low-budget cardboard VR set-up at I/O, it almost seemed like it could have been joke. But the DIY virtual reality set-up worked, and now Google Cardboard has its own app section in the Google Play store. There are a variety of third party companies offering pre-made Cardboard kits. Dodocase does them especially well. If you can’t splurge on an Oculus kit, this is a fun gift for someone interested in VR.
Dodocase Cardboard VR, $30
Ilford Black and White Disposable Camera
If Dad is a bit of a photo buff, this is a great retro prezzie to get so he can mix it up with some analogue shooting. Ilford’s disposable cameras have black and white film that can be taken to any neighbourhood film lab (assuming there are any left). You could even buy a few for the family to shoot with throughout your holiday shindig.
Ilford Black and White Disposable Camera, $US14
Aeropress
The Aeropress is the hipster dad’s dream. It takes coffee brewing and strips it back to its bare bones. No fancy machines; no annoying parts to disassemble and clean. Just a simple, scientifically sound coffee press. Seriously, if your Dad loves coffee, check it out. There are also a swathe of different places to buy the thing online.
Aeropress coffee press, $49.95
Apple iPad Mini
The iPad Mini has always been a fantastic, straightforward to use tablet, and it’s actually pretty cheap. Thanks to the iPad Mini 3 being out, the iPad Mini 2, is cheaper to buy, and is still fantastic.
[$368, Dick Smith]