Festival season is well and truly upon us, and if you have booked your tickets, you’ll probably be in the midst of gathering everything together and putting all of those final pieces into place.
But we can guarantee that nobody will have ever gone to a festival or trip away and taken absolutely everything they planned to or need. Nor will they get there and not think “I should have brought that thing” at least once.
Before you head off, here is a list of some of the tech you may forget to take with you which could boost your experience.
Portable Speaker
Festivals aren’t all standing in crowds and enjoying live music. You’re going to have to kill a lot of time too, either in between acts or after the day has finished. But it doesn’t mean the music has to stop.
If you take a portable speaker with you, you can start the afterparty or else replay that song/artist which you heard for the very first time and have now fallen in love with.
Barbecue/Camping Stove
Buying all of your food ready-made on site at a festival will likely set you back quite a lot of money. If there is a group of you going, buying food in bulk and cooking it yourselves could save you a lot of cash and also be quite a fun evening activity.
There are loads of portable barbecues around, as well as camping stoves and grills. Some are even smokeless or run off batteries so you don’t need to take the fuel. We have a couple of small, compact barbecues on our rundown of the best BBQ’s of the year.
Coffee Maker
You’re probably going to be up all night and will need to be ready to go again early in the morning, and that is probably going to be for a good few days if you’re at a weekend festival. A caffeine boost could see you through.
Warm up some water on the stove, and then take some coffee and milk with you. There are plenty of portable coffee makers around these days which are specifically for hikers, campers and festival revellers, such as the infamous Aerobie Aeropress. They don’t need electricity and require little maintenance too.
Camera
Constantly snapping away on your phone is going to sap the battery. Plus, it is fun to have the physical evidence and photos to look back at. An instant camera can give you instant results and ensure you have a really fun momento, or a single use option lets you develop the photos after the event.
You could also take a portable phone printer with you, which develops your pictures as soon as they are taken. This could be a great idea for anyone who is running out of storage on their phone – you can’t rely on getting an internet connection to upload them to the Cloud.
Battery Pack
Talking of disappearing batteries, festivals are usually long days which phone power can’t compete with. And you can’t exactly go to your tent and plug it in yo charge overnight.
To keep you videoing, picture-taking and checking the festival app all day long, make sure you take a really sufficient and reliable battery charger with you (and don’t forget the cable, of course).
As well, you could buy a spare basic phone with a battery which could last for days for those just-in-case moments when you lose your friends.
Headphones
In between all of the hype and rushing around, you may want a bit of down-time. But the likelihood is that you’re still going to want to listen to music. Noise-cancelling headphones could help you relax in peace and block out the late-night revellers keeping you awake, while not disturbing the rest of the people in the tent.
Lighting
Whether you want something which you can pop in your bag and use to guide yourself through the festival field and back to your tent without relying on your phone torch, or you want a nice table light to use when you’re all gathered round back at the tent, it is going to be vital when the dark hits.
There are loads of options, from solar powered lights to battery lamps and even ones which can charge your phone as they’re on. You may think lights aren’t really tech, but they’re definitely a lot smarter than they used to be.
