5 Luxury Gadgets That Take The Stress Out Of The Holidays

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When it comes to the holidays, it’s often a bittersweet experience for everyone involved. On one hand, there’s this inexplicable joy in seeing all our favorite people who come to visit and welcoming guests into our home. But on the other hand, there’s also the many responsibilities that come with having people over, such as making sure your home is sparkling, the food is palatable, and everyone is reasonably entertained. After all, if people are making the effort to go through the stress of holiday travel, it makes sense to make sure their effort is rewarded with a curated experience. While some luxury gadgets can be a waste of money, others can move the needle for your holiday planning and help make sure that you’re not just trying to survive the season, but thriving in it. With this, you can spend less time worrying about small things and more time focusing on all the ways you can make memories with your loved ones.

To round up our list of luxury holiday gadget recommendations, we considered the different pain points associated with the holiday experience and recommended items that seek to address some of the most common. For more details on how these items were selected, you can skip to the end of the article for additional information. But if you want to start investing in ways to stay sane and be everyone’s favorite person during the holidays, here are some things that you might want to add to your cart.

One of the most stressful things about having guests over is making sure your floors are spotless. But why settle for an ordinary robot vacuum when you can get one that can impress your guests, like the Shark AI Ultra Voice Control Robot Vacuum? With self-emptying capabilities, Shark mentions that it can store up to two months’ worth of debris in its bagless compartment, and it also has a self-cleaning brush roll. For pet owners, Shark adds that it can manage long hair and pet hair with its anti-hair wrap features. Apart from this, it has several smart features that set it apart from the crowd, such as its SharkClean app, precision home mapping, and smart home assistant integration, which lets you turn on or make changes to its cleaning schedule with just your voice.

Priced at $600, the Shark AI Ultra Voice Control Robot Vacuum is a mid-priced offer from its lineup that has a generally positive average rating of 4 stars from more than 38,000 Amazon customers. That said, it does share this rating with other models in the series, from more affordable units to options priced up to $999.99. There are also other popular and highly rated robot vacuum brands out there with their own mix of unique features, such as iRobot, Roborock, and ECOVACS.

When the holidays roll in, there are a lot of things that need lighting with an open flame, whether it’s to heat the turkey roast, spark the coal for your outdoor barbecue, or start the scented candles to help you set the mood or unwind at the end of the day. Sure, you can use a simple match that costs peanuts, but why not make even lighting candles an experience? If you want a fancy way to light things without the stress of dealing with oil-based lighters, the Meiruby Electric Candle Lighter might be a great holiday investment.

With its rotatable neck, it offers a lot of flexibility and reach. Apart from not having the fuel smell, Meiruby also claims that it’s both windproof and splash-proof. Plus, it can be used up to 600 times per full charge, which means you don’t have to worry about suddenly running out of power. Lastly, it’s a safer and more controlled way to light fires, which can be great if you’re scared of matches or have limited hand mobility.

An Amazon’s Choice product, the Meiruby Electric Candle Lighter starts at $12.99 for a single unit and $26.99 for a pair. It’s available in multiple colorways, from the typical black and silver to more fun options like rose gold, champagne, red, and green, which means you can match it with your holiday decor. Collectively, these candle lighters have been rated 4.4 stars by over 26,000 Amazon customers.

One of the most stressful parts of hosting season is not just making sure there’s enough food, but that it tastes good. But for people who are hosting large groups and cooking mountains of food, it can be difficult to keep track of multiple things at the same time. Sometimes, this can lead to issues like overcooking or burning. Thankfully, you can help ease some of the cooking stress using smart kitchen tools like the Inkbird Wifi Sous Vide Cookerwhich can help perfectly cook that holiday steak, turkey, or roast.

Capable of cooking with temperatures between 77 and 210°F, you can set the timer up to 99 hours. With the Inkbird Sous Vide Cooker, it’s possible to control and monitor your cooking remotely. You can also operate it via an LCD touch screen if you don’t have your phone on hand. Not to mention, it’s as quiet as a whisper with a 40 dB noise rating, so you don’t have to worry about it distracting your guests from mingling.

At $95.99, the Inkbird Wifi Sous Vide Cooker holds an average rating of 4.5 stars from over 4,600 Amazon users. Among them, 88% of users rated it at least 4 stars, so it more or less delivers on its usefulness. Aside from helping make holiday meal prep less stressful, sous vide cookers also have some other unique applications that may make them worthwhile, such as preparing photo chemicals for developing film photos at home.

Designed to be an all-around solution for hosting with wine lovers, the Cokunst Electric Wine Opener set comes with a decanter, aerator, stopper, and foil cutter. With this, you have everything you need from opening the bottle, making it taste good on the spot, and keeping it fresh for days afterwards. For example, you can enjoy unfinished bottles and carry over the fun for your back-to-back holiday parties. Not to mention, you can use them for non-wine bottles as well, such as sparkling drinks. For a more affordable option, you can get the battery-powered model that retails for $15.99. But if you want something rechargeable via USB-C cable, the silver variant is $19.99, while the black option is $22.99. Regardless of which model you get, Cokunst’s Electric Wine Openers collectively boast a 4.6-star rating from more than 1,400 Amazon customers.

On the other hand, if you usually drink bottles with corkscrews, you might also want to consider getting an electric corkscrew bottle opener as well. Priced at $20, the Cokunst Corkscrew Bottle Opener holds an average rating of 4.4 stars from almost 1,400 people on Amazon. According to Amazon, it gets fewer returns than many similar items in its category. Apart from not damaging the cork, which means you can save it for your growing collection, Cokunst mentions that it only takes six seconds to get the job done. Out of the box, it also comes with a foil cutter and USB-C charging cord.

In an ideal world, we would all afford an in-house bartender to cater to our holiday party needs. However, there’s nothing more thoughtful than a host making and serving a drink themselves. Aside from practicing with mixology apps, you’ll also need to invest in the right tools for the job, like a Gramercy Kitchen Company Cocktail Smoker Kitwhich levels up your homemade cocktails to an almost bar-like experience. Apart from enhancing your drinks with aromatics, this smoking kit also works with other types of food as well, like cheese, steaks, and seafood. Out of the box, the kit includes the smoker unit with injection hose, lid, wood chips, a storage bag, and cleaning brush. Weighing just 11.2 oz, the aluminum smoking unit has a fan, chip chamber, and on/off switch. Retailing for $32.99, more than 2,400 Amazon users have rated it 4.4 stars on average with 70% even giving it a perfect 5 stars.

If you have a little more budget to spare and want a kit that already includes the wood chips, the $60 ComboJoy Whiskey Smoker Set comes with both a smoking unit, a pair of glasses, and ice ball molds. Additionally, the set comes with six different types of wood chips out of the box that include common flavors like pear, walnut, oak, and cherry. An Amazon’s Choice product, this slightly more expensive whiskey smoking set has an impressive 4.6-star average rating from more than 3,800 buyers.

Since the holidays come with a lot of pain points, we noted down some of the most common ones that many of us tend to deal with: cleaning, cooking, and hosting. In general, we made sure to only include items that have been rated at least 4 stars by over a thousand people, so the products have proven to more or less deliver on their promise. If applicable, we also took note of any special distinctions, such as if they’re Amazon’s Choice items or are noted to be less likely to be returned by buyers. To make it more accessible, we also included a range of items that span price points from $13 to $600, so you can opt to get one that fits your budget.

In addition, we mentioned alternative uses, which can make them useful even once the holidays are over. In some cases, we also mentioned other brands or products worth considering that fulfill the same functions but have additional features or accessories that might fit your specific holiday needs. Lastly, while we did include some relatively cheap options, we considered them luxury items because there are significantly cheaper options to do the job, such as using a match versus a lighting gadget.