5 Gadgets That Will Instantly Upgrade Your Hotel Room

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When you’re traveling, few things are more important than your accommodation. Even after using one of the best accommodation booking websites, you won’t really know how your hotel room is set up until you check in. As your work base, it’s where you’ll rest, clean, get work done, and more.

Unless you live in luxury, your hotel may not meet all requirements. Whether you need to keep your smart devices juiced up or enjoy your favorite entertainment, you’ll need to bring a travel-sized version of your lifestyle during your stay.

These five gadgets will help any room feel like a home away from home. From gadgets that keep you comfortable and entertained while you’re on vacation to those that keep you moving when it’s time to meet the day, these amenities will enhance your next hotel, hostel, or bed and breakfast.

Traveling these days means managing battery life on many devices. If you work on the go, you probably have a laptop, phone, and maybe even a tablet, along with wireless earbuds, a smartwatch, and maybe some handy USB gadgets. The last thing you want is lugging around a suitcase full of charging bricks, so you need one charger for everything.

Thanks to USB-C, you’re less likely to have important gadgets that don’t charge on one type of connector, but all of your USB-C gadgets likely have different charging speeds. Your laptop may draw between 45 watts (W) if it’s a little thin and light and 140W or more if it’s a Windows gaming laptop. Your phone and tablet may be charging slowly, and your earbuds and watch may be consuming less than 10W. Thanks to USB-C’s Power Delivery standard, modern chargers only deliver power to the device that requests it, meaning a high-capacity USB-C charging brick can intelligently distribute its power to multiple devices.

To charge an average laptop, phone, and earbuds or watch at the same time, a 150W charger is enough for most people (but double check your device’s maximum charging speed). Our current favorite is the Anker GaN Prime A2340, a 150W brick with three USB-C ports and one USB-A. Anker charges a phone, laptop, and earbuds at its highest speed, and can accept a smartwatch attached to a wireless charger for multiple devices.

Another charging gadget we should mention is the three-in-one wireless charger. If you have a regular combination of phone, smartwatch, and wireless earbuds, you won’t want to waste all the ports on your high-speed charging brick, which is why it makes sense to charge them all from the same port using something like the Anker MagSafe MagGo UFO.

There are several UFO-like devices on the market, but we like the way this one folds into its namesake form. In “flying saucer mode,” it is easily stored in backpack pockets, and takes up little space on the night stand.

The downside is that the watch charger only works with Apple Watches. The MagSafe magnets hold the phone in place, ensuring it stays aligned with the charging plate and doesn’t slip while I’m sleeping. As for the watch, our solution is to plug that charger into my phone’s USB-C port while the phone is connected to the UFO. Samsung makes a Wireless Charger Trio for its devices, but we haven’t tested it yet.

Packing small gadgets for your device before a trip can be frustrating. Instead of spreading cables around the room or closet, grab a travel bag like the Zagg Desktop Essentials International Travel Kit. The kit includes a foldable keyboard and mouse, a pocket-sized phone and tablet stand, a USB-C wireless charging puck, a USB-C cable, a 20W wall adapter, a 15W car charger, a USB-C to HDMI adapter, and a four-in-one international power adapter with US, UK, EU, and Australian plugs. Everything comes in a well made zippered case with lots of pockets for everything.

This kit will make the job a little easier, but we’ve made a few tweaks to its contents. Most importantly, we replaced the small 20W charging brick with the aforementioned 150W Anker charger and replaced the cheap charging cable with a USB4 cable for faster charging and data transfer.

The keyboard is the most prominent. It’s smaller than a medium-sized Moleskine notebook when closed. Open, it has an ergonomic keyboard of split layout with membrane switches. Given its size, the keys have more travel than we expected, and they’re not too mushy, either.

One of the best things you can do for your teeth is using a sonic toothbrush, and the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean Smart is a great choice when you’re on the go. It has a charging travel case, though we’ve found you’ll go at least two weeks without charging the brush.

DiamondClean Smart has multiple cleaning modes and vibration levels, making it comfortable for people with teeth of various sensitivities. It comes with a charger that doubles as a mouthwash, although that’s meant to stay in your bathroom at home. The travel case has spaces for two extra brush heads. The case also has a retractable USB cable, although it uses a USB Type-A connector. We’d prefer USB-C, but given how difficult it is to remove the toothbrush’s battery, that’s a minor gripe.

The case fits into the average toiletry bag, although it takes up a lot of space. There is also a smartphone app, but we don’t know if it’s good because we need a toothbrush app like we need a toothache.

It happened to all travelers. You’re back in your hotel room for the evening and you’re ready to relax, but when you turn on the TV, your only choice is to watch basic cable or pay more for pay-per-view. Maybe you stop them to watch Netflix on your laptop or phone, or connect one of those devices with an HDMI cable. Not ideal, especially if you want to use your device while watching TV.

The solution is simple: a Chromecast dongle or other streaming stick. It takes up no space in a suitcase or backpack, and once you’re logged into your streaming services, all you need to do is connect them to your hotel Wi-Fi or personal hotspot. While Chromecast with Google TV remains our top choice because of its integration with the Google ecosystem and its ability to install and run Android apps from the Google Play Store, Google has killed Chromecast and replaced it with the more portable Google TV Streamer.

Thankfully, you have some solid alternatives. There are advantages to going with your Amazon Fire TV Stick, which has a robust streaming app library, Alexa integration, and it’s cheap. Even the Roku Streaming Stick HD is cheap and easy to use, making it the best choice for those who just want to plug it into a hotel TV and start streaming.

Each product recommendation in this article was based on extensive, hands-on testing during hotel and other lodging stays. They were evaluated based on their ease of use, portability, and reliability.