Pillows of All Kinds for Sleeping While You Travel & More New Gadgets for Travelers

By GoNOMAD Staff

The J Pillow

The j pillow is one of the most comfortable options for neck pillows available. It allows you to rest all parts of your head depending on what part is most fatigued. Its soft, plush feel will have you resting in no time.
We tested this pillow out during a 9-hour car drive from New England to Pittsburgh, and it did a good job letting us sleep while leaning on a window.

Cabeau Midnight Magic Sleep Mask

This soft velour mask has a little compartment with two earplugs in case you not only need to escape from noise, as well as light. It feels more comfortable than a traditional sleep mask, because of the plush velour fabric and it’s a little bigger than a traditional mask. This is a bit pricey for a simple mask, but it’s plush, I’ll say that.

I used this one night on the same trip that took the nine-hour car journey when the downstairs chatter became too much. It’s hard though, to actually go to sleep wearing one of these, so I guess it’s up to the wearer as to whether this would be something for the whole night.

Cabeau sleep mask $26.00

Cabeau Evolution Inflatable Pillow

This is similar to the J Pillow but it deflates down to the size of a fist…quite a difference from the bulky J, I am not sure what I would do with that thing once the plane landed. We threw it in the backseat for our car trip.

It has an additional little lip to make it more comfortable around your neck and the fabric is the same soft velour as the sleep mask. This is a useful product because being able to deflate it and put it in the little pouch means it’s much easier to pack. Cabeau inflatable pillow. $39.99

Transporter Sync

The transporter sync allows you to sync your files across all of your devices. You can access files from anywhere on any devices. It’s easy to share photos, videos, music and more and allows you to back up your files for ease. The best is that there are no subscription fees and is completely private.

If you don’t like the idea of sharing your data on the cloud, this is a private network all your own. and there is no charge to store data using this hockey-puck shaped device.

Touro Mobile Pro

The Touro Mobile Pro offers two levels of protection with local and cloud back up options. it holds an astounding one TERABYTE of space, which is the equivalent of, well, thousands of encyclopedias. There is plenty of room for your large photos, travel videos and much more. The device is sleek, but the main point here is to get people to pay Hitachi, the

maker, for their cloud storage service.

Our photographer Paul Shoul was drooling to get his hands on this since he backs up all of his photos while on the road and does not yet own a hard drive as physically small as this (about the size of an iPhone) with such amazing storage capacity. This device uses USB 3.0, which might present a problem on some older computers.

Another thing some other reviewers pointed out is that the Hitachi website where customers are told to use for uploading their files is problematic.

One reviewer stated: “Half of the backup user interface is devoted to upselling Hitachi cloud storage services. You get 3GB at no charge by registering; after that, you can buy upgrades at $49/year for 250GB. I didn’t register to test this but hope it works better than the local backup utility.

You can register a domain name from many web hosts and get unlimited storage (or nearly so, depending on their terms of service) for about the same price. It’s not a competitive price, and I’m not sure it would work given the issues with the software managing a local backup.”

Icebreaker Merino Wool sweater

The Icebreaker Vantage men’s sweater is warm and stylish. It’s warm and makes you feel like you’re a local. This sweater has been my go-to keep warm garment all winter. This has also been one of the worst winters in the US in 20 years, so I was very glad to have this easy care, no pill, real wool sweater.

The half zip v-neck adds to the comfort, and the weave is tight enough to really keep you warm. It also has little holes in the wrists so when you put it on you can make sure the sleeves don’t get caught in your jacket sleeves!

This is absolutely one of the nicest and most durable sweaters I’ve ever owned. A few times when I had to wash it, I simply soaked it in a tub with Woolite and then hung it up. A go-to sweater that will last a long time!

FiAir Firestarting Blower

Ever have problems keeping the flames alive? The Fiair fireplace fan blows just right amount of air to keep your fire going strong. Whether you’re camping out in a state park, or just want to light a fire in your fireplace or woodstove, this device will make it all easier.

It can resist even the heat of being an inch from the fire, and it never melted. The only small issue is that when you use this for a woodstove, you can have some blowback of the ashes that is a bit unpleasant. This is one of those things you’ll get kudos for packing if your trip involves making fires in wet weather!

Mirror Boombox

The mirror boombox is a portable wireless Bluetooth speaker that allows listening to your tunes when traveling. It looks just like a mirror on a BMW-made Mini Cooper. It comes in both US and UK flag designs.

We enjoyed listening to this little player at a rollicking birthday party, and guests were holding it up and dancing all around it. The only qibble is that some times it’s hard to get the Bluetooth to receive the signal from the phone. This device has buttons that don’t push down, so it’s harder to see if it’s working and sometimes nothing happens when you try to sync it.

The other problem with this speaker is that even when it’s plugged in, my demo model continued to ask in a fetching female British voice, “your device is unplugged,” but it wasn’t unplugged.

Neptor Portable Charger

There are quite of few of these devices, and yet when you pull one out and begin charging your device, you feel like McGyver! Of the many different weights and sizes, this seems just about the best. The outside of the batter is rubber, and it’s very light. There are two USB plugs and the whole thing is charged using a mini USB. Little blue LEDs provide indicators of the charging status. Neptor Portable charger $39.00

If you have a gadget you would like us to review, get in touch with our editors and describe it to us or send us a sample to GoNOMAD, 9 Mountain Rd. South Deerfield MA 01373. Sorry, we can’t return products sent to us.