Christmas 2017: The Top Tech Gifts for UK Gadget Lovers

Turn your home into a smart home with Amazon Echo. The standalone speaker offers hands-free voice command for music streaming, making calls, setting alarms and timers and asking questions, among other functions. It will also check your calendar, the weather, traffic reports, sports scores and more.

The little brother in the Amazon Alexa family. The Echo Dot speaker with built-in Alexa smart assistant can stream music, keep you up-to-date on football scores, TV and movies, control your linked-up smart devices, check train times, order a takeaway or update your diary. Unlike the Echo, it can be connected to a larger audio system with a cable.

Google’s hands-free home smart assistant. Just say ‘OK Google’ and ask Google Home to stream music and entertainment, search Google hands-free, manage your life by scheduling meetings and setting alarms, adjust your linked-up Nest thermostat, check the weather, get the latest flight times and more.

The mini smart assistant in the Google Home family. Stay up-to-date with what’s going on in the world, play music and control your linked-up smart-home suite. It can even be paired with Chromecast to steam TV and movies.

Get all your best Insta pics IRL with the Instax Mini camera. Snap and print physical photos instantly – there’s even a selfie mirror.

If you don’t want a separate camera but are looking to print your smartphone pics at home, check out the HP Sprocket. The pocket-sized printer connects wirelessly to your phone with Bluetooth and you can use the Sprocket app to add text, borders, and emojis to your images.

The newest Xbox console offers 4K streaming, six teraflops of graphical processing power, a 12 GB GDDR5 graphic memory, 326 GB/sec memory bandwidth and Blu-ray entertainment.

Active noise cancellation? Check. Super comfy memory foam headband? Check. Bang & Olufsen Signature Sound? Check. The Beoplay H9 Wireless Bluetooth Headphones are made from from lightweight and long-lasting materials, and active noise cancellation lets you live in peace. The intuitive aluminium touch interface gives you control over your music and calls, and the rechargeable and replaceable battery provides up to 16 hours of playback capacity.

The Nespresso Vertuo Coffee Machine recognises Vertuoline coffee pods automatically, meaning you don’t need to program the machine to brew the perfect cup every time.

Arguably the hottest flagship of the season, iPhone’s newest handset has an all glass body, an Apple A11 processor with iOS 11, unlocks with facial recognition, offers wireless charging, boasts a 5.8″ super retina display screen and has a 12 MP TrueDepth camera with 4K video recording.

Android user? The Samsung Galaxy S8 runs Android 7.0 (Nougat), has a 5.8″ quad HD super AMOLED touchscreen, a 2.3 GHz octa-core processor, 12 MP camera with 4K video recording and a 3,000 mAH battery capacity.

If you’re looking for a tablet, the Galaxy Tab S3 might be the best Android on the market. Running Android 7.0 (Nougat), it has a Snapdragon 820 processor and 4GB of RAM, meaning multitasking is a breeze. The S-Pen stylus comes in the box, making it suited for browsing and sketching too.

Apple fans will want to look out for the iPad Pro 10.5. Running iOS 10, the A10X Fusion chip makes it almost as powerful as a laptop, and with the Apple pencil (an extra £100) the device can be used for drawing and browsing.