Hello beautiful people, and welcome back on the route one more time! 🙂

Many of you have asked us lately info on what we use to work remotely “from anywhere” – which might sound like the easiest thing in the world having a laptop, until the “anywhere” is a beach café in Bali with one wobbly power socket, the wifi drops mid-call, and your laptop is at 8%.

We’ve been there. More than once. We’ve been trying working under from a beach in Mallorca in summer (awfully hot), from remote villages in the Andes (good luck with energy and signal), from the remote village of Ouakukuejo in Namibia (where getting a good coffee was a mirage!) and many other “dream-places” for traveling, but awful places to work from.

In the years, we’ve got better though, and we found gadgets and tricks to work remotely more productively, with more power, with a safer connection and overall more comfortably, without the fear of disappearing offline from a moment to the other xD

So after a few years of figuring this out the hard way (with Isa rolling her eyes every time I bought “one more gadget” 😅), here are 7 tools which I believe REALLY improved our life as digital nomads (ps. I could make a much longer article about all the things that didn’t work ahahah but I’ll keep that for another time:)) 

Ready? Let’s dive right in! 😎

1. Bluetti Elite 10:

A light powerstation for every need!

Here’s the thing most people get wrong about power on the road: a normal 20,000mAh phone power bank will give your laptop maybe half a charge, and then it’s dead too.

If you need to work on your laptop for a full day without plugging into a socket, you do not likely need a bigger power bank,  but a tiny power station instead!

After testing several (you can find our reviews on our YT Channel!) we ended up choosing the Bluetti Elite 10 as our favourite!

This tiny 4.3kg gadget, holds 288Wh of battery, which in real life means roughly four to five full laptop charges before it taps out (perfect for working in two!).

The PS comes already with an output of 100W over USB-C, which can charge a MacBook at full speed and not with the sad trickle you get from a pocket battery^^

And there is more…you can also charge this PS using solar panels (up to 150W!).

With a 150W panel, it would take less than an hour to fully charge the PS, so basically with few rays of sun it can last indefinitely (we like to use a small foldable of 50W though, to fit it easily in our backpack!).

Price sits around 129-139Euro (a steal if you ask me!), and the battery is LiFePO₄, rated for 3,000+ cycles. So this isn’t a thing you replace next year 😉

Quick Tip: if you mostly work from cafés and apartments and just want a few extra hours of laptop, the Elite 10 is overkill in the best way. If you’re full off-grid in a van, look one size up at the Elite 100 (1,152Wh) or Elite 300 (3000wh). We run the small one and borrow sun whenever we can 😉

2. Mobile Pixel’s Duex Float 2 Pro:

A screen that doubles your Productivity!

I always hated (HATED!) having to jump from a window to the other, open one, copy text, close it, paste on the other, enlarge the next window, open the email, reduce the size, drag the windows side by side….arrrrrrgh, damn!

I guess anyone who has tried to edit a spreadsheet, answer emails, and keep a video call open on a single 13/16 inch screen knows the special kind of madness that is tab-juggling!

Well, almost two years ago, I decided to try just out of curiosity to add a second monitor.

It fixed my problems, and I never looked back!

The Mobile Pixels Duex Float 2 Pro, is a gadget designed and made in the USA, which makes carrying the extra screen extremely practical and effortless!

It’s peculiarity, is that instead of sitting beside your laptop (and needing half a desk), it mounts with magnets on any laptop, and floats above your laptop screen, stacked vertically!

One USB-C cable carries both video and power, so there’s nothing extra to plug in or charge.

The change in productivity I felt was dramatic: for video editing, for ordering photos, for writing articles while doing research, it’s just MIND-BLOWING, probably my best-spent 300 Euros in the past 5 years! 

The screen is a a 2.5K panel with built-in speakers (which compared to my Dell’s OLED screen still keeps ups quit good!), and it sets up in about ten seconds.

Fold the cover, snap it on, plug the cable. Done.

It also provide a “wow” effect from people around you: every time I open my laptop and the second screen, it makes you feel so damn professional! ahah

What makes the on-top mount a real win for us?

The fact that your eyes go up instead of sideways. After a full work day that’s the difference between a happy neck and a sore one.

Multi-monitor setups get thrown around with a “+50% productivity” number a lot, and the real figure is fussier than that, but having somewhere to park Slack while you write?

Yeah, that’s real time saved!

One honest caveat: if you’re on a MacBook Air with an M1 or M2 chip, macOS only drives one external screen natively, so you’d need a DisplayLink adapter. M4 Airs handle it without fuss 😉

3. SIMOVO: A convenient and fairly price e-Sim for wherever you are! 

I wrote it so so so many times, and if you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you know how much i HATE physical SIM cards: find a kiosk, queue, hand over your passport, fiddle with a tiny plastic card and a paperclip, get the pin stucked in your nail, get your finger bleeding, pray the menus aren’t in a language you can’t read, and lose your original SIM card in the meantime.

Thanks god, we live in the future and some smart god from above invented E-Sims! xD

For those who don’t know, an eSIM lets you buy a data plan online before you fly, you can install it in a couple of taps on your phone, and it let’s you walk off the plane already connected without any pain in your fingers: no card swap, no kiosk and no roaming bill that arrives like a horror movie 😀

The one we’ve been using lately is SIMOVO.

Simovo is a service that covers 180+ countries, and has plans that start from around $3 (VERY CHEAP!).

We like it especially because you go on the website, 2 minutes you can buy an e-sim when you need it, and the install is super easy.

There are no contracts, and it runs on the local networks in each country, so you get the same coverage the locals get rather than some weak roaming signal 🙂 

Quick Tip: before a trip, check how much data you really burn. If you’re working (calls, uploads, hotspotting the laptop), don’t cheap out on the smallest plan. Simovo does have unlimited and regional plans too (our favourites!), and their “how much data do I need” guide is worth two minutes of your time;)

4. Outin Nano:

a portable espresso machine

to make a GOOD coffee everywhere!

Okay, this one we wanted more than needed…we know, but Isa did not really care, she said we HAD to include it! ahah ☕

As Italians, we love good espresso... and by traveling a lot we tried whatever cup of grey, lukewarm, american untasty coffee.

Getting a real espresso, stopped being a luxury and started to feel like a proof of self-respect xD

We discovered online the Outin Nano last year, we ordered it from amazon, and it is the one that lives in our bag ever since.

This little genius coffee-machine, is a gadget that weighs only 670g, it’s bottle-shaped, and the genius feature is that it heats its own water. Pour in cold water, hold the button, and about 200 seconds later you’ve got espresso. A good espresso!

Whether we are traveling with backpack or by campervan, we found the outin extremely convenient to use: no kettle, no waiting for the café to open, no nothing…just press the button! xD

Last but not least, the coffee is truly good! The machine pulls 20 bars of pressure (22 in the most recent models!), which is the same range as the machine in your favourite coffee bar, so you get real crema, and not sad brown water.

It works with Nespresso-style capsules or ground coffee, charges over USB-C, and the battery does around 5 brews from cold water or 200+ if you add hot water yourself:)

The price is not cheap, around 150Euro. Is that a lot for travel coffee? Sure.

Has it paid for itself in skipped €4 cappuccinos and better mornings? For us, easily yes too! 🙂

5. Safety Wing:

the most convenient insurance

for digital nomads,

made by digital nomads!

This is the boring one, yet also the one that can save your entire year, so stay with us! 🙂

By traveling a lot, we normally face multiple uncertainties: medical safety, protecting our working gear from theft, dangers linked to our sport activites etc…

Normal trip insurance assumes you leave home, go somewhere for two weeks, and come back…and that works for most TOURISTS!

Nomad life though, breaks that model completely: you don’t always know which country you’ll be in next month, let alone when you’re “going home.”

SafetyWing is an insurance that was built for exactly this!

Their Nomad Insurance works like a subscription you can start while you’re already abroad, it covers you across 180+ countries, and you can keep renewing it month after month (we’ve been using it for four years by now!).

Pricing on the essential plan starts around 39Euro per 4-week period for ages 18-39, with the broader Complete plan from about 130Euro/month if you want fuller health cover (which cover really anything you can think of in terms of medical care abroad!), routine care, and the long-term stuff.

Prices climb with age, which is fair enough given that health issues likely multiply as we age 😛

A couple of honest things to know before you click buy:

• The cheap Essential plan is travel-medical, so it leans toward emergencies and mostly excludes pre-existing conditions. And it’s designed for when you’re away from your home country, with only limited cover during short visits home. We treat it as a safety net, not a full health plan.

• The Complete plan instead, covers a whole lots of things, including comprehensive medical care. Read the policy page, check the exclusions for whatever crazy activity you’ve got planned (diving, climbing, scootering around an island), and then sleep better. 

Convenient, well-priced, transparently-explained, we love Safetywings! <3

6. Matein’s L Backpack:

a cheap QUALITY backpack,

that brutally expensive one!

You can spend €300 on a travel backpack.

We’ve seen people do it…

We’ve been people who did it….

And then it can break like the cheap ones.

After years of wandering through the 5 continents, here is my honest advice: you don’t need to spend a lot for a digital nomad backpack.

There is a lot of marketing and useless features that simply pump up prices and give you mediocre products.

A backpack for digital nomads, in my opinion, must be:

• spacious to use,
• maintain your working and travel gear ordered,
• must be ergonomic on your back,
• and waterproof if bad weather strikes.

That’s it in my opinion.

The Matein 40L carry-on ticks all those boxes for under 50Euro and refuses to die.

It is made of water-resistant polyester, it opens flat like a suitcase at 90-180 degrees so airport security stops hating you, and it fits a 17-inch laptop in a padded (!!!) sleeve.

At 18 x 13.5 x 8 inches it slides into the overhead bin or under the seat in front of you, and the 40L main compartment swallows enough for a 2-3 day trip without checking a bag.

The details are the nice part:

• A trolley sleeve so it slides onto a roller suitcase.
• A hidden anti-theft pocket on the back for your passport and wallet.
• A USB pass-through port on the side.
• Side mesh pockets for a bottle.

But overall, a LOT of space, spacers, and a craftmanship so ROBUST that it can survive anything! 🙂

Will hardcore one-bag travellers tell you a premium bag carries nicer on a long day?

Probably, and they might not wrong.

But for a bag that lives a brutal life, gets thrown in buses, dragged through rain, and stuffed past full, paying €40 instead of €300 just feels smart.

Ours still looks fine after a lot of abuse, and it holds laptop, drone, photocameras, Outin machine and cables like a boss! 😎

7. Smart-tags:

the best insurance for Things

You Can’t Afford To Lose

We talked about insurance and Safety wings before.

Sure, if the worst strike, it is good to have your electronics insured…yet, the damage is done, and losing your electronics means sometimes losing files, photos and memories…it’s never nice!

Last November, it happened to us.

While we were shopping, some thieves entered our campervan and stole both of our computers.

It was a terrible experience I don’t wish to anyone…

From that experience though, we learned.

And now we studied our weak spots and learned to take precautions. 

One we found, was filling our dearest belongings with Smart Tags!

Smart tags are inexpensive bluetooth trackers that can be attached to virtually anything, and can help you find your devices (or anything else!), in case it gets lost or stolen!

If you’re in the Samsung world, the Galaxy SmartTag2 is the obvious pick (while apple users might want to use the Apple Tags).

It’s around $30 (and often on sale for less), it’s IP67 water-resistant, it has a Bluetooth range up to 120 meters, and the battery lasts up to 500 days in normal mode, even longer in power-saving. The ring shape clips straight onto a bag zip or your keys.

For your wallet, the SmartTag is too chunky, so that’s where a slim card tracker comes in.

These are credit-card-shaped, a couple of millimetres thick, and slide right into the card slot you never use. They piggyback on the big “find my” networks, so even a stranger’s phone passing by can quietly ping your lost wallet’s location back to you.

How many are we using now? Two in our campervans, one on our key-rings, one in each of our working bags, one card-tag in the wallet, one card-tag sticked on the back of our laptops,  all now findable from your phone.

Too many? Maybe.

But they fooled us once, and we decided that would have been the first and last time! 🙂

Conclusions 🙂

And here we are at the end 🙂

In this article we’ve seen 7 gadgets and services than in our opinion make our lives as digital nomads way easier, safer and more comfortable: power that gets you through the day, a screen that fits in your bag, internet the moment you land, a safety net when something goes sideways, a tough bag, and trackers so your stuff stays yours.

Add a real coffee on top and the whole day goes better 😉

None of it is fancy, and all of it earns its place. That’s the real lesson of life on the road, at least for us: get the right few things and look after them.

The rest you can happily leave at home:)

Now we’d love to hear from you:

• Which of these 7 would you grab first, and which would you skip?
• What’s the one travel tool you swear by that we totally missed?
• Team “real espresso everywhere” or team “I’ll survive on hostel coffee”? Be honest! xD

Let us know in the comments below! 😀

And if you enjoyed this, here are a few other articles you might enjoy:

• Our honest packing list for long-term travel
• How we stay connected (and sane) while working on the road
• Van life vs. nomad life: what changed for us

Thank you for reading, and see you in the next article! 🙂