Family Road Trip Tech Checklist

Are kids today less patient than they used to be? I’m old enough to remember when “road trip” meant staring out the window of an Oldsmobile Delta 88 counting license plates. But I’m also a dad now, and honestly, my kid wouldn’t put up with that. If you’re lucky enough to have patient, well-behaved kids who daydream out the windows, bless you. For the rest of us, try this hardware and software checklist.

HARDWARE
Tablets. Tablets are the backbone of any efficient modern road-tripping operation. The $50 Amazon Fire ($49.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is the ideal music and video playback tablet, affordable enough that every kid in the back seat can have one of their own. You can fill it with books, or use it to run Disney Radio so you don’t have to listen to Disney Radio. Sign up for Prime Video or Amazon FreeTime, and cache your videos on a SanDisk Extreme 64GB MicroSD card , which you can find for $30. That way you don’t have to worry about streaming on the road.

For more gaming-focused kids, iOS is still the gold standard, with the best array of kid-friendly games. Currently, the $399 iPad mini 4 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is the way to go. If that’s too rich for your blood, the $199 version of the Asus ZenPad S 8.0 ($148.77 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) runs Minecraft and media players very well.

Kid-safe headphones. Special childrens’ headphones limit their volume to 80dB or 85dB to prevent hearing loss. We like the $50 comfortably padded Nabi Headphones ($85.46 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) because they can grow with your child, with a Parent mode without the volume restriction. They also sound quite good, for the price.

Internet. Using your phone as a hotspot should be good enough for a family road trip. If you don’t have a hotspot plan, or you’re worried about going over your data limit, the $59.99 H2O Bolt prepaid hotspot(Opens in a new window) gives you 4GB over 10 days for $25 on the AT&T network, perfect for a family vacation.

A power inverter. If you have a bunch of electronic devices in your back seat, you may want to recharge them on the road. Bestek’s 200W inverter(Opens in a new window) fits into the cupholder in your center console and gives you two AC ports and two USB ports. I wouldn’t run a laptop off of it, but it’s fine for keeping phones and tablets charged, especially when you’re running your phone as a hotspot.

Extra rechargeable batteries. You don’t want your tablet to run out of batteries before the kids do. Keeping an Anker Powercore 10400(Opens in a new window) battery in the glove compartment can be a real life saver. With 10,400 mAh of charging capacity, it can top up most smaller tablets entirely. Heck, it’s $20 – buy two.

A personal fridge. Oh, why not? You can keep sandwiches from getting all squishy, and prevent unnecessary gas station snack consumption. Amazon has a range of personal fridges available, all of which get similar reviews. The Uberchill(Opens in a new window), runs about $50 and plugs into your cigarette lighter or power inverter.

Instant cameras. Want to get kids offline? Give ’em instant cameras. There’s nothing digital about the Fuji Instax line ($238.72 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , which are old-fashioned instant cameras that go straight from an analog image to film. If you buy the film as a 100-pack, you can get it down to 67 cents a shot. Pair this up with a roll of tape and a traditional scrapbook, and the kids can make a real hard-copy record of their journey.

SOFTWARE
As someone who has traveled around the world with a child, I’ve found this all of these titles invaluable.

The Toca Boca suite. I’m a big fan of computer toys, open-ended experiences rather than games with a defined goal. For smaller children, the Toca Boca apps offer dozens of hours of violence-free, relatively mentally healthy experimenting. They’re available on Androis or iOS, and standouts include Toca Life: City, which is full of mini-games, and Toca Builders, which is just baby Minecraft.

Minecraft PE. And speaking of Minecraft…does it really need an explanation? The ultimate world-building game for kids can keep them endlessly occupied. If you have several kids in the back seat, use your phone to spawn a hotspot, and they can all play together as a local multiplayer experience.

Amazon Video. In terms of legal video apps that let you download movies for later viewing, Amazon is the best, in my experience. It’s important to have locally stored videos for when you pass through those inevitable 2G phone zones. Netflix is also great, but when you hit that 2G zone, there goes your video.

VLC Media Player. If you have video files that you acquired elsewhere, say, from ripping your own DVDs, VLC will play them. No judgment.

Marvel Unlimited. I think this app is a sleeper, in terms of reaching a broad array of kids. If you have Wi-Fi signal, this app lets your kid read tens of thousands of Marvel comics, up to about six months before the present day. In my road-trip experience, comics tend to cause less carsickness than regular books, and the Marvel Unlimited library is really deep.