16 Gadgets That Make Great Gifts For Anyone Who Works From Home

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I have worked from home for the last 15 years, and I can tell you, it's usually pretty great. You can listen to music out loud, work in pajama pants, and make lunch out of your fridge, which is less expensive than takeout and you don't have to worry about someone nabbing your food. On the other hand, it can be a bit of a pain. You have to functionally set up an office space within your home where you work alone, and that can be socially isolating. 

If you or a loved one recently started working from home, and you're looking for something to buy to make life a little easier or more comfortable, you're in luck. There are tons of products that would make for great gifts for people who work from home, ranging in price from a few bucks to several hundred dollars, with loads of variations to suit individual tastes. So, if you're ready to shop, scroll on down for some good work from home gift ideas. 

A good monitor can make a pretty big difference. You obviously need one for a desktop PC, but laptops can also benefit from having a bigger screen attached. There are tons of options on the market, but if you have the money and the horsepower on your computer, the Alienware AW3226Q is a pretty excellent monitor. Over on our sister site BGR, reviewer Andy Zahn enjoyed the OLED monitor's punchy colors and deep blacks, and found it large enough to fill out a desk space pretty well. 

There are some detriments to working on an OLED monitor, like burn-in, but this monitor comes with a three-year burn-in warranty, which should help alleviate most of the anxiety. There are other things you can do to help prevent burn-in as well. It's also not the cheapest monitor on the market, but it does come in five sizes, including regular and ultrawide variants in both flat and curved variations, so you can tailor the purchase to whatever your giftee likes. 

A good mouse is worth its weight in gold. I have never met a single person who actually likes working with the touchpad on a laptop all day every day. If our own review of the Steelseries Pro X Rival is anything to go on, it's a solid overall option. It comes in regular size and there's a mini version in case your giftee prefers them a little smaller. In terms of day-to-day use, you get the usual stuff like two side buttons that you can configure, and at 53 grams, it's lighter than many other mice. 

However, the mouse's base station is the really big deal here. It comes with an extra battery that you can charge while you use the current one in your mouse, allowing you to hot swap between the two for zero downtime. The base station doubles as the wireless transmitter, so it's always plugged into your PC. You can also get a travel dongle if your giftee is on the move a lot. 

It's pretty well-known that music can make you more productive and help the day go by faster. Working from home means you can listen to anything you like in any medium you prefer, you could even have a good record player spinning while you work. However, a more convenient form factor is the humble headphone, and for that, the Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless is hard to beat. It sits right in the middle of Sennheiser's lineup, making it a decent choice. It's also comfortable, comes with a matching case, and according to a review over at our sister site Engadget, it sounds really good.

The active noise cancelling is apparently decent as well, but you probably won't really need that if you're working from home, where there aren't the same distractions as in the office. If you find that the price tag is a bit high, the Momentum 5 is similar to the Momentum 4, which is often cheaper and still a potentially good gift.

As someone who's worked from home for most of their career, I've found that listening to music out loud is quite nice. I consider my purchase of the Edifier MR4 speakers one of my best home office decisions in recent years. It's a pretty traditional speaker setup best suited for desktop PCs, but the speaker wire is long enough to get around even the biggest ultrawide monitors and the headphone jack and aux cables in the front are easier to reach than they are on a PC tower. 

This one's a bit expensive at around $130, an on-sale price that it's been at for a few years now. The speakers sound better than any sub-$100 computer speakers than I'm aware of and as of this writing, my three-year-old pair still sound and look as good as the day I bought them. It's also nice not using headphones so I can hear my doorbell or my dog if I need to.

It's true that work from home people spend most of their time in front of a screen with a mouse, keyboard, and all the tools needed to communicate. However, a smartwatch can improve that experience in a variety of ways. The Apple Watch Series 12 is the obvious choice for iPhone owners. It comes with Apple's latest features and decent overall battery life. It can do things like remind you to drink water, get up and move around, and deliver notifications that are easier to check than picking up your phone.

Android users get less utility out of an Apple Watch, so for those folks, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 or the Pixel Watch 5 are viable alternatives that grant many of the same features. I have an older Galaxy Watch that I use primarily to track fitness. Since my WFH job has me sitting down for eight hours a day, making sure I stay active helps keep my health in check. 

Most of the gifts so far have been pretty expensive but many comfort items don't cost nearly as much. The Kafri Headphone Stand is one of them, and it costs all of $19. My wife gifted this to me a few years ago and I use it every day. It's a headphone stand, so its primary purpose is holding your headphones. However, it also includes an RGB light strip along the bottom for a little extra flash. 

My favorite part is the inclusion of two USB-A ports and one USB-C port on the front that you can use to charge your phone, headphones, tablet, or smartwatch and the two outlets on the back that can be used for whatever you need them for. I wouldn't plug a desktop PC into it, but charging cables or powering your extra monitor should work just fine. In either case, this little mixture of form and function makes for a nice, inexpensive gift. 

The Ember Mug had its viral moment a few years ago, but it's still a nice gift idea. The premise for this one is simple. You pour yourself a cup of coffee, tea, or other hot beverage, and the built-in heating element keeps it at your preferred temperature indefinitely, so you never have to microwave your cooling drink as you slowly drink it. Our own Chris Davies felt that it worked as intended and keeps beverages hotter for longer, although battery life is largely dictated by how hot you like things. 

In any case, the cup comes in a few different colors across two different sizes. You control the temperature through the app, which pairs with the cup over Bluetooth so you can control it and monitor its battery and other stats. The material is porcelain, so no PFAS to worry about, and you can keep a cup warm all day if you use the included charging coaster. 

A decent lap desk is another comfort item that adds some versatility to working from home. These little things sit on your lap where you can fit a laptop and a mouse and work from the comfort of your couch or even bed if you want to. There are several across Amazon and in retail stores like Micro Center, but the Ergomi Lap Desk is a decent one. It comes with the mouse pad on the side and little bean bag cushions underneath for comfort. 

There are many variants and you can buy whichever one you want, just make sure to get one with a mouse pad attached to it. Using a mouse pad on your couch is awful, and the ones with an attached mouse pad are usually only slightly more expensive. Something like this can be nice to have on lighter days when maybe you want to pop on some Netflix on TV and work while you watch. 

The Rocketbook Core is a pretty neat notebook. You use the included pen to write notes like you would in a regular notebook, but you can then scan them your phone, back them up to Google Drive, and use a cloth to erase everything and start over. This could be a nice work from home accessory for people who need to take the occasional note but don't really need a full notebook taking up tons of desk space. It comes in five different colors and usually costs around $27. 

There are other, more expensive models in the lineup, including the Rocketbook Fusion and Rocketbook Everlast. These add more features, more notebook sizes, and other niceties, but the Core version grants the basics. If you do buy this as a gift, a stocking stuffer idea is a set of Pilot FriXion Erasable Pens. They are the special erasable pens that Rocketbook uses to give their notebooks that dry erase board wipe-away functionality.

The extra-large mousepad is another comfort item that doesn't add a ton of functionality, but it can make an office space look nicer and also eliminate the need for a smaller mouse pad. There are a ton of these on the market, but the Steelseries QcK XXL mouse pad seems as good a place to start as any. The base configuration comes in black, which is always in fashion, and costs $30. There are also couple stylized options if you want a little more flair. 

These are cool because you get more space than you do with a traditional mouse pad and having one large mat just looks nice. There are hundreds of premade ones them on Amazon, and you can even get customizable ones on places like Etsy. That makes it easy to pick one that appeals to the fashion sensibilities of your giftee, and the overwhelming majority of them are under $50.

Earbuds have the same benefit as headphones and speakers in that they let you listen to music all day, with the added benefit of barely weighing anything and also being useful for voice or video calls. For Apple users, the AirPods 5 is probably the best place to start. They're one of the least expensive premium options, and according Engadget's review they have enough battery life to last a full day of work, and come with enough functionality to use them at work and for pleasure. There is, of course, the more expensive AirPods Pro 3 if you have the scratch and want more features.

Android users have a ton of good wireless earbud options as well, including entrants from Sony, Sennheiser, Samsung, and Google. Open-ear options like the Shokz OpenFit also exist to give you the functionality of an earbud without losing the ability to hear your surroundings. There are a lot of options here to cater to your giftee. 

Organization lends itself to a certain type of happiness, and it is definitely something you can gift someone. A good example is a cable organizer. My desk has all sorts of cables running around it, including charging cables, a mouse cable, and a few USB cables. I have a cord holder for that keeps everything a little bit neater and more accessible. These little knick knacks usually go under $10, making them excellent stocking stuffers. 

There are also a lot to choose from, including your regular cord holders like these, which attach to the side or top of a desk with an adhesive base and keep your cables within easy reach and out of the way using a magnetic clasp. You can also get ones that look a little more elegant like this beechwood cord holder, or cutesy ones like these animal cord holders. The large number of options makes it easier to find one your giftee will like and they're also functional, which is always nice to have. 

A splash of color never hurt anyone, and decorations always make for good gifts for a work from home person. A good example of this is the Govee Floor Lamp 3. I own an earlier generation of this lamp, and I keep it in the corner of my office. When it turns on, the straight pole emits light that travels along the walls and gives my office a nice, colorful ambiance, especially in the winter when it gets dark early. 

This light retails for $170, making on the lower end of expensive, but it's one of only a couple of products like this from known brands with the Philips Hue Play being the other, and it's six inches shorter than the Govee version. Both brands have other lighting products as well, like light strips, light bars, and other controllable RGB lighting that, when placed effectively, can really add some awesome lighting to any work from home office space. 

Many people work directly from their laptop keyboards, and those are generally fine — way better than they used to be. With that said, having a dedicated keyboard offloads any wear and tear to a device much more easily replaceable. Additionally, mechanical keyboards can look cool and last for a decade or longer. For this, the Keychron Q1 HE is worth a look. 

This keyboard comes in two varieties, tenkeyless and full size, and in two colors. It can also be used wirelessly or wired, depending on their tastes. On top of all the customization options, the software gives you even more control. That should cover just about every use case imaginable, making it a good gift idea overall. It's expensive, but mechanical keyboards often are. They also last a very long time provided you give them basic maintenance, so it's a buy once, cry once type of scenario. 

Another inexpensive gift idea is a nice, simple phone stand. Working from home means the smartphone is usually face up on the desk, which doesn't really make for the best viewing angle. A small, easy fix for this is a phone stand. The Nulaxy Aluminum Cell Phone Stand goes for about $10 and it does exactly all that it needs to do and nothing more. It's an aluminum stand that folds up for easy storage and can hold basically any smartphone on the market with an open spot at the bottom for a charging cable if needed. 

A little stand like this can let your work from home gift recipient check messages or see notifications without picking up their phone, letting them know if something is important enough to deal with now or later at a glance instead of a whole arm motion. It seems small but the average person gets dozens of notifications per day these days and so that's about 50 arm motions you're saving per day with this little thing. 

If you're looking for something less functional and more comforting, there are an endless array of knick knacks, decorations, and comfort items that you can buy that don't have anything to do with being in a home office but can still be nice. For example, the Aura Digital Picture Frame is an expensive, but high-end digital picture frame where your giftee can show pictures of their family, friends, and pets, adding a little personality to their office space. 

This can include posters, pictures, figurines, and even small stuffed animals like these tiny Squishmallows that your giftee can set up on their desk to add some color and friendliness. You can find decorative items like this literally everywhere, although I've always been a big fan of Etsy for finding unique decorations you don't really find often on Amazon. Some folks even buy things like fidget toys like The Fube to play with while in meetings or other occasions where one may have idle hands.

For this list, I based a good deal of it on personal experience, since I've been working from home for 15 years. I have nearly all of the things above in my home office to some extent, either those exact products or very similar ones. We sourced reviews from SlashGear and our sister sites Engadget and BGR where possible, and at other pro review sites where needed. Of course, every product would be right at home in a home office and have plentiful positive reviews from actual customers as well. Happy shopping!