5 Gadgets You'll Want When Traveling Without Wi-Fi

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Traveling without Wi-Fi in this era may seem a little improbable, but there are still many places in the U.S. and across the world that have limited signal or no service altogether, especially when traveling outside the reach of your carrier. There are plenty of trips organized with the intent of getting away from Wi-Fi, like camping adventures where the main goal is to connect with nature and the people you're traveling with. Whether your adventures away from Wi-Fi are intentional or not, there are a few gadgets that you might want to keep on hand in case you get bored.

We wanted to round up some gadgets that don't require an internet connection to function and are small and useful for travelers, adding either fun or practical value to your trip. These little devices aren't meant to replace the connection you can get from sharing experiences with your travel companions and the locals, but instead to augment your travels, allowing you to check out and relax with a book, a video game, or something else off Wi-Fi.

The Nintendo Switch Lite does have some internet-based features, like online multiplayer or cloud saves, but there are a ton of new and classic games you can enjoy with completely disconnected. You can spend hours playing Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and plenty of other Nintendo titles and third-party options. This compact handheld features a 5.5-inch, 1280- x 720-pixel touch display, a 3.5mm audio jack, a single USB-C charging port, and 32GB of built-in storage, with the option to add more storage via a separately purchased microSD card.

When we reviewed the Switch Lite in 2019, we praised its portability, great battery life, and affordable price. Since then, it has gone up in price by $30, putting it at $229, but that's still relatively affordable as far as handheld consoles go. If you have the cash to spare and don't mind carting around a larger handheld, the latest Switch 2 is another great choice, but it'll cost you more than twice that of the Switch Lite.

If you're traveling without Wi-Fi, it's probably a good idea to save your smartphone's battery for navigation, communication, and other more vital uses than capturing memories of your trip via photo and video. Instead, take along a standalone camera, like this Kodak PIXPRO FZ55 Digital Camera. It's a well-rated point and shoot option that's super simple to use and delivers great-looking, detailed photos and videos.

Kodak's FZ55 camera is equipped with a 16-megapixel CMOS sensor, a 28-millimeter wide angle lens, up to 5x optical zoom, and a memory card slot for Class 10 SD, SDHC, or SDXC cards up to 512GB in size. If you're not the most savvy photographer, you can use the camera's built-in scene modes to automatically adjust settings to the environment and lighting conditions where you're currently shooting. You can see what's in view at all times with the camera's 2.7-inch LCD screen, capture video in 1080p resolution, and conveniently stash this compact gadget in your pocket when it's not in use.

If you're traveling without Wi-Fi, there's a chance you may be relying on your go-to daily electronics more often, like your smartphone, headphones or earbuds, tablet, and so on. You might have the ability to charge a few gadgets via your vehicle, a hotel room, or another random source, but just in case any of these options aren't available to you during your travels, it's a smart idea to pack a hefty power bank like this 25,000 mAh Power Bank from Anker.

It can charge up to four devices at once via a USB-A port and three USB-C ports. Each of the USB-C ports offers max charging support up to 100W. Put in simpler terms, this allows the power bank to charge an Samsung Galaxy S24 up to 50% in 28 minutes or an M3-powered MacBook Air in only 21 minutes. Built into the power bank, there are two USB-C cables, one of which measures 0.98 feet while the other can extend up to 2.3 feet. It also has a smart display that shows you a ton of real-time information, like the battery's current temperature, output and input wattage, the battery's overall health, how much battery is left in the form of a percentage, and how long it'll take to recharge.

Passing hours off Wi-Fi is an easy task when you have an e-reader. Of course, you'll need to plan ahead and download the books you want to read prior to losing internet access, but once you do, you'll have hours of internet-free entertainment at your disposal. One of the best non-Kindle e-readers is the Kobo Clara BW, a great alternative to the Kindle Paperwhite that's a little smaller and, therefore, more easily portable and a better pick for travelers.

The Clara BW is equipped with a 6-inch E Ink Carta 1300 HD touch display that's free from annoying glares and easy to read in bright sunlight. When you're reading at night, you can employ the e-reader's Dark Mode or adjust brightness, color temperature, and blue light via ComfortLight Pro. It has an IPX8 waterproof rating, which means it's waterproof for up to 60 minutes in up to two meters of water, so it's safe to use in the bath or at the pool, lake, or beach (though maybe less so the sand).

With 16GB of built-in storage, you can download up to 75 Kobo audiobooks or up to 12,000 e-books. On a full charge, you can get weeks out of the Clara BW. Kobo estimates it could last up to 53 days when using it for about 30 minutes a day at 10% brightness with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned off.

For anyone going on a trip with the intention of unplugging from social media and otherwise getting away from the internet, a pocket router might not be worth bringing along. But for anyone else who might want to be able to access the internet at some point during your travels, the compact GL-MT3000 Beryl Travel Router by GL.iNet is a gadget you might want to splurge on. It can improve internet quality in an area with poor service, act as protection between your devices and public Wi-Fi networks, and create a local area network (LAN) for your and your traveling companion's devices.

This dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router offers speeds of 574 Mbps (2.4G band) and 2402 Mbps (5G band), supports a max of 70 devices connected simultaneously, and runs on OpenWrt 21.02 firmware out of the box, with support for over 5,000 ready-made plug-ins to personalize your experience. It comes with OpenVPN (max speed of 150 Mbps) and WireGuard (max speed of 300 Mbps) pre-installed and it's compatible with more than 30 VPN service providers, though you'll need an active subscription through whichever VPN service you're trying to use with the router.

To round up these gadgets you might want when traveling without Wi-Fi, we started by consulting the SlashGear team's years of experience traveling and working with various gadgets and technologies. We considered any device that would be helpful to have while traveling, would work completely off Wi-Fi, and would add value to a trip, by being either fun or practical.

Once we had a list of potential gadgets in mind, we set out to find ones worth recommending. For an item to make it onto our list, it needed to have an average customer rating of at least 4 stars on Amazon and a minimum of 600 total ratings to ensure its average star score wasn't misrepresented.