Throughout the holiday season, we’ll be featuring “Raw Deals” to help you find fun gifts for friends and family members — and for yourself! Unless otherwise noted, “Raw Deals” recommendations are independent of our editorial department.
If you buy something through one of our “Raw Deals,” we may get a small share of the sale. 20% of the profits earned from “Raw Deals” through the end of the holiday season will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.
Have you run across a good deal recently? Send your recommendations to tips@rawstory.com.
1. Anker’s PowerCore 10400 Portable Charger
As portable chargers go, Anker crushes the competition. They're affordable and they work extremely well. The latest version is powerful, affordable and tiny.
2. The Amazon Echo
If you haven't bought the Echo yet now is the time. While it's called Echo, the voice command is named "Alexia." She brings you the news, weather, traffic, your music playlist or shuffle and you can ask her to answer your random questions. She syncs with a ton of different apps and websites from Nest which controls your temperature to Hue which controls your lights. She is also partnered with Audible, so you can play your books as well. The Echo is a little pricey, but still under $200 and it'll be one of the coolest things you'll buy.
It's a Segway without the stick to guide it and it's the most fun thing you can get! If you've always wanted a Segway you're looking to pay over $3,000, so spend significantly less and get the closest thing you'll get to a hoverboard this holiday season instead. It's a better deal in the end.
If you want a drone to take amazing aerial photos with, this is your guy. There is absolutely no reason to spend over $500 for a drone expecting better quality. This one is the best deal for the quality and the price. The controls are super easy to use on your phone or tablet, but according to some reviews it lacks sensitivity, so be aware of that. Another reason to go with this one is Parrot is a huge brand in the field of drones so if you accidentally run it into a waterfall or it gets shot down by an angry neighbor you can find parts to fix it.
If you want to fly your own Millennium Falcon then this takes the idea of a drone to a much better level of excitement. With the new Star Wars movie coming out, this is the perfect gift for a loyal fan.
No need to pay a fortune for something fancy because as speakers go this is one of the better ones available. Perfect for a fan of the outdoors because it's waterproof so if you're at the lake or the pool in the summers it'll do the trick.
Tile is genius if you have the tendency to lose things like your keys or if you are paranoid about your luggage getting lost. The tiny tiles attach to whatever item you would like to track and connect wirelessly to an app which you can see on your phone. Attach it to your child or animals for extra paranoia.
It's cold. You're cold. Winter sucks. But if you want to text your friend back or check your email without taking off your gloves, what do you do? These are the pair of texting gloves you'll want this season. There are many brands available but these are on super sale, so jump on them now!
An awesome instrument brought to us by KickStarter and now available for purchase. Teach yourself how to play the guitar without shelling out the cost for an expensive guitar and weekly lessons. Learn at your own pace, practice anywhere and once you learn you can start composing using Garage Band on your Mac.
Super cool way to monitor your stress and anxiety via this little gadget that follows your breathing patterns. If the fact that it's telling you that you are stressed and anxious makes you even more stressed and anxious there's an app for that. It actually helps you work through your stress and find tools to stabilize yourself, meditate, relax and chill the hell out during the stress of the holiday season.
Bonus - We mentioned before, but worth repeating for one of the best in smart home tech:
This is the greatest thing you'll ever purchase. Compact fluorescent lights are great for the environment, but so is LED technology. The benefits with LED lights is they can change color. That's exactly what Hue does, only not only do they change color, they do so through wireless technology that allows you thousands of different lighting "scenes." They connect to apps on your smartphone and can do anything from automatically programming your lights to go off and on, cycle through the rainbow of colors and there is even an app that changes the lights along to the music that it hears playing. If you've got Siri Voice Control or Amazon Echo, Hue syncs with both systems so you can even give voice commands to tell "Alexia, turn living room lights on" or even "Alexa, turn living room lights to 50 percent."
7. Tile 
