The holidays are right around the corner and you might be a little more behind on your shopping than you’d like to admit. We don’t blame you — between family gatherings and the final work rush before PTO kicks in, it’s hard to find the time to go to a store to pick out presents. And once you get there, you could find half-empty shelves and very few choices. But that’s why we have the internet: you still have time to buy holiday gifts online.
USPS, UPS and FedEx have laid out their holiday shipping deadlines for 2023: Ship your items via USPS by December 16 to have them safely arrive before Christmas, while FedEx and UPS have deadlines of December 15 and December 18, respectively, for standard shipping. At this stage in the game, we recommend picking up small, affordable gifts that will ship quickly so you have plenty of time to wrap them up nicely and make it look like you had everything well-planned from the start. Here are the best last-minute Christmas gifts you can get right now and still have in time before the holidays.
Amazon Echo Dot with Clock
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget
The Echo Dot is often talked about as an affordable way to get Amazon’s Alexa in your home, but it’s really a great all-purpose smart speaker. The Dot with Clock makes a particularly good gift for anyone, since they could use it as an alarm clock, a compact speaker in their home office or a voice-assistant anywhere else in their home. Recent updates make it a more powerful speaker than you might think, with clear vocals and deep bass, plus its LED display can show the time as well as weather forecasts, song titles and more. The Dot can also act as an Eero extender, so if your giftee has an Eero Wi-Fi setup, they can get an extra 1,000 square feet of coverage with this little device.
Freelancers
Freelancers / Plaid Hat Games
If Dungeons & Dragons is a bit too intimidating for you but you like the idea of such a game, try Freelancers instead. It’s a story-focused, choose-your-own-adventure board game with fantasy and magical elements including unique dice, spells and monsters. You play as a “freelancer,” a being in a post-apocalyptic hellscape who will take any job, no matter how questionable, to make a living in this broken world. The key to this game is its companion mobile app — whereas you need a game master to play Dungeons & Dragons, the app handles all of the actual storytelling in Freelancers, complete with narration, a soundtrack…