Gadgets and Tech for Travel Bloggers on the Move

I’ve often been called one of the “OG travel bloggers” since I started my first site in 2003 and have been at it ever since. Full-time since 2006. I started traveling long before that, though, back when a portable CD player with rechargeable batteries was considered advanced travel tech. Now the list of potential tech for travel bloggers to bring along is much more extensive.

You can’t pack it all, though, so you have to prioritize what’s essential for your travel blogging career.

In a way, the customization trend we’ve seen in most aspects of our life applies to the technology for travel bloggers that we bring along with us. Some of the gadgets are physical, such as photography equipment or an e-reader, while others don’t take up any room but are essential, like a virus scan program or a VPN.

Not everyone’s list of essentials will be the same, of course. Someone heading to live in a danger zone might need a tech survival kit, but someone heading to western European cities for a few weeks can pack a lot less. If you’re more of a videographer shooting clips for YouTube or TikTok, you will have very different needs than a travel blogger trying to circle the globe packing only a carry-on. A professional photographer who gets paid for images has much more to carry than a blogger who hasn’t seen anything they’ve photographed ever show up in print—and probably never will.

So with the understanding that there’s no universal list of the gadgets and tech for travel bloggers that will be universal, here are some items to consider that I’ve found either essential or valuable on my 100 over trips and journeys around the world while working, starting with the obvious and then getting more to the “nice to have.”

Laptop and Phone for Every Blogger and Videographer

If there are two items that you’ll get universal agreement on as being essential tech for travel bloggers, a laptop of some kind and a smartphone are going to be leading contenders. Even if you only do video, you need a laptop for processing, and if you’re a writer, a laptop will be the tool you use every day when you’re writing. In theory, you could draft articles on a phone or tablet with an external keyboard, but have you actually ever tried to do that? It’s torture, trust me.

Go ahead if you’ve got the cash to buy an Apple laptop to look cool or have status. But at the risk of pissing off 16% of the computer-using public, those are the main reasons to get one these days. You’re hobbled on wired connections, the specs are usually worse than what you’ll get for half that price by going with Windows, and you need a “genius” to fix one when you’re halfway around the world and something breaks. There’s a reason Apple is the most profitable hardware company in the world: huge margins.

Yes, Windows used to have stability issues and be more prone to viruses, but if someone tells you those are their reasons, they’re usually using data and assumptions that are 10 years old. Evaluate what is really important to you, though. For me, that’s plenty of storage, plenty of RAM, and a lighted keyboard. Oh, and a price tag under $700. Done and done for my last two purchases from HP.

A good smartphone costs more than a good Windows laptop with a terabyte of storage will cost these days, but that’s almost justified considering how many other items it has replaced. Some bloggers don’t even bother to carry a real camera anymore since the cameras on phones have gotten so good for both photos and video. (Sometimes even better in low or mixed lighting.)

Here are a few things I had in my backpack in the pre-internet age when I went traveling around the world for a year for the first time that you could now have on your phone: alarm clock, calculator, music player, maps, camera, film, flashlight, phrasebook, copies of documents, airline tickets, bus tickets, train tickets, phone/address book, and notebook.

I still use an actual notebook because I find taking notes on the phone really slow and tedious, but many bloggers who do not write in-depth articles feel differently. I also use a real camera (see below) and often wear a watch, but the latter is a tactile convenience thing unless I’m wearing the one with an altimeter while hiking. Otherwise, I can make do with my pocket watch: a phone.

A Real Camera for Better Photos

Sure, you can get by with your phone for handheld shots that don’t require a zoom, but you don’t see a lot of photography contest winners claiming awards for something they shot on their smartphones. For some categories, such as starry skies or wildlife, it’s next to impossible to rely on even the best camera phone.

There are some physical limitations on the lens size and the software compensation used to make a camera phone zoom, so getting that extra 10% or 20% of great shots is worth carrying a real camera. Ideally, that’s a DSLR of some kind, and the mirrorless ones are much smaller than a traditional SLR. These are great if you shoot a lot of videos. You still have to haul around extra lenses if you want to zoom, though, so it’s tougher to pack light.

So I take a middle-ground compromise approach with a super-zoom camera. I’ve used a few different ones; my last two have been Panasonic Lumix ones. I’ve gotten two-page spreads in print magazines with those, and while their photos are never going to be quite as great as ones from a professional DSLR, especially for manual adjustment, they get the job done.

Specialized Photography Cameras, Tripods, and Gadgets

Most of the time, this one camera you carry will be enough, but if you’re doing a lot of adventure travel and are shooting action videos, you might want to invest in a GoPro. Or you can get a Chinese knock-off version for less than $80 that is compact and works quite well. . Mine is a knock-off that was a gift, but I’ve shot some great videos with it while kayaking, horseback riding, or biking.

If you do a lot of professional videos and get paid for them, the space and hassle of a drone can be justified. For your average travel blogger, probably not.

You can often get away with regular hand-held shots for your blog, but sometimes you’ll need a tripod of some kind. Ideally, that’s a full one with telescoping legs, and some of those are pretty lightweight, but they still take up a lot of room. So I usually travel with a cheap tabletop one or a Joby Gorillapod one that can wrap around a pole or tree limb to keep it steady—or just sit on a table. ($30 to $100.)

Sometimes I carry a selfie stick, but I rarely use it for selfies. It’s a pole to mount the action camera or phone on. I used to carry a gimble for smoother panning, but mine was more trouble than it was worth, and I gave up. If you shoot a lot of videos though, totally worth the space it takes up.

What About Storage?

If you shoot even a fair amount of video, you’ll need a lot of storage. So pack plenty of memory cards and at least one external hard drive for backup. Relying on the cloud only is challenging as you won’t always have super-fast Wi-Fi, plus that’s slower.

You’ll also need to back up the zillion photos you’ve taken because you’ll probably need one of those shots again three or four years from now. The easy button choice is to pay a fee to Apple or Google to back up your phone shots, but I use a combination of Amazon Prime for my camera shots and Dropbox for the phone ones. I’m already paying for those anyway for other needs, so no extra charges to keep my photos backed up.

Some people carry another external hard drive just for their photos too, which isn’t a bad idea. Just keep it in a different place than your laptop. I know one person who had both items in their daypack, and when that got stolen, they were missing all the files from both places where they had stored their shots.

Chargers and Plugs for Travelers

Most physical items mentioned in this post are rechargeable, and their batteries run out daily. So you need electricity and the means to get to it. That means charging cords, electrical adapters for the countries you’ll be in, and a portable charger on top for your phone when you’re on long days of transportation. Fortunately, if one of these items craps out on you or you left one somewhere by mistake, it will be easy to buy another one almost anywhere in the world.

What if you’re off the grid and need to recharge your phone, camera, or e-reader? What about lighting? I actually wrote a post about this when I went hiking in Kyrgyzstan well away from any electrical outlets: Adventure Gear for the Solar-Powered Traveler.

Ergonomics for Travel Bloggers

Most of the “Look at me, I’m working from the beach in Thailand” Instagram shots are just plain stupid. Probably 99% of the work that all digital nomads do, including travel bloggers, happens indoors or at least in the shade. You can’t write for hours from a lounge chair, from a hammock, or definitely not from a blanket on the beach.

Many bloggers don’t realize until they’ve been out on the road for a while that a lousy chair, a low desk, and a laptop are a formidable combination for your joints and your posture. So it can be worth making space for a portable laptop stand that will raise the height of your screen and a portable fold-up keyboard that can go on the table or on your lap. There are too many to choose from for me to recommend a specific brand, so ask others for recommendations or take some time to read the online reviews.

I’ve heard of bloggers who maintain a base they return to (instead of being nomadic), taking a monitor with them in their suitcases. While I’ve been tempted, I don’t think I’d do that unless I were headed to one place for a few months or more. If you’re going somewhere for a year, though, they’re cheap enough that you could just buy one and get a portable keyboard—probably used even.

I’ve found that an inflatable travel pillow can do more than help you sleep on the plane. It can also work as a seat cushion if your Airbnb place has a hard and uncomfortable chair.

Security and Software

One of the biggest threats to your blog and your identity can be people trying to hack into your system. Use Wordfence or Sucuri for your WordPress site and put it through a CDN like Cloudflare for good measure. (That will also speed up your site internationally.)

As mentioned before, a VPN proxy server is essential if you work in coffee shops, airports, rental apartments, and hotel rooms. Any of them will cover you from a security standpoint by hiding your IP address and location, but go for a more advanced one like ExpressVPN if you’re trying to access your favorite streaming service from anywhere in the world or you’re trying to bypass surveillance in an authoritarian country like China or Russia.

I’m also a big fan of LastPass for storing passwords in a secure way. If my laptop gets stolen, assuming the person can find a way to get past my login screen, they won’t be able to see any of my passwords. However, I can autofill them on any site after putting in my master password with LastPass. My wife knows it, too, in case I am incapacitated, and she needs to take over. If you want to shop around, check 1Password as well as it’s a similar too.

Books, Music, Movies, and Entertainment

You need a break from work and travel sometimes, right? When I first went backpacking around the world, the backpacker guesthouses would show movies on certain nights because nobody was carrying their own movies with them. You had to go out to a theater otherwise.

Now you can access a dozen streaming services, a few dodgy torrent ones that are free, and YouTube. You have almost any music you want if you subscribe to music services from Apple, Amazon, or Spotify. Remember to download some favorites over Wi-Fi, though, because streaming uses a lot of data, and you won’t always have a signal.

If you want to go searching, there are lesser-known services that show documentaries, short films, public domain movies, and play public domain music if you’re trying to save some money.

One thing I carry on every single trip is a Kindle e-reader. I used to have a Paperwhite one and might get one again someday. Still, when that died eventually, I got a Kindle Fire tablet, which is one of the world’s most incredible tech bargains, and I alternate between reading books, watching movies, and playing games. The battery dies much faster on that than the e-book readers though, so it’s a trade-off.

You can put the Kindle reading app on any tablet, so you can use an iPad or Android tablet as an e-reader. Or if you’re Canadian, bring your Kobo, eh?

I’ll admit I’m a bit of a minimalist regarding tech on the road, so there are probably more things I could pack but choose not to. What gadgets and tech for travel bloggers would you recommend?