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21 Thoughtful Gift Ideas for Your High-Tech Valentine

 & Chandra Steele Senior Features Writer

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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Romance is not easy. Meet-cutes are rare. Online dating can be... disappointing. And meeting someone through friends can get messy. But if you're reading this, you're looking for a Valentine's Day gift for someone. And even if that someone isn't a significant other, you're still surrounded by love. Now—to find a gift to celebrate that.

Let us help. We found gifts to love that go beyond flowers and chocolates. They all have a touch of tech, such as heart-shaped boxes that let you send digital gifts and wearables that light each other up remotely. Many are geared toward keeping your connection alive throughout the year, whether you're down the hall or across the world. (If you're looking for new love, check out our roundup of the best dating apps.)


Duly Love-Noted

Pixel Lovebox

A note by any other name would smell as sweet, provided it arrives in a Lovebox. Gift the box and fill it with love notes through its app, which lets you send text messages, drawings, photos, and stickers (depending on which model you choose) that appear on a screen inside the box. When your message arrives, the heart on the front of the box spins.

ToTwoo Always Soulmate Smart Bracelets

Always Soulmate Smart Bracelets with link Chains Set for Two (Natural Obsidian, Mother of Pearl)

No matter how far apart you are, you can be just a touch away with the ToTwoo Always Soulmate Smart Bracelets. Pair them with the app, and you and your love can light up each other's days using the bracelets. You can also use the app to send pictures, videos, audio, and text.

Work of Heart

Da Vinci Eye

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but rendering it on the page is beyond your skills. You can still create a portrait of your beloved with Da Vinci Eye. The app uses AR projection, so you can paint or sketch whatever you capture with your phone's camera.

ILYO Seven-Color Heart-Shaped Ring Light

LED Ring Light 19 Inch, Seven-Color Heart-Shaped Ring Light 360° Rotatable Ring Light with Tripod, Anchor Live Broadcast

Everybody's using ring lights these days to look better in video chats and TikTok videos. Send them a heart-shaped one so they're always reminded of you, even during work meetings. It'll also create an interesting reflection in your glasses or photo frames.

Send Them Reel-ing

Create Your Own Reel Viewer

For those of us of a certain age, many an hour was spent with a View-Master, clicking away and peering at tiny snapshots of animals, Barbie, and Disney characters. This reel viewer lets you upload seven photos of your own for a personalized hit of nostalgia.

Love Days

Social Print Studio Valentine's Day Calendar

The Social Print Studio Valentine's Day Calendar starts and ends on February 14th (which gets a special heart-shaped reminder of the day) and can be filled with your personal photos, so your loved one has a reason to smile every day of the year.

Picture Perfect

Aura Mason Smart Digital Picture Frame

4.0 Excellent

The Aura Smith frame can be filled with a rotation of most-loved moments. Upload your photos, and Aura uses curation tools to find the best ones and remove duplicate and blurry shots. The frame has no subscription fee or storage limit, and you can invite friends and family to add photos via the Aura app.

Aura Mason Smart Digital Picture Frame review

I Can See Your Halo

Halo Valentine's Vintage Fleece Crewneck Sweatshirt

You love two things: your SO and Halo. Show them with this Halo Valentine's Vintage Fleece Crewneck Sweatshirt. It's part of the Xbox Gear Shop's Valentine's Day collection.

Just Between Us

Between

You could set up a secure chat on Signal or WhatsApp, but neither is particularly romantic. Between is an app built just for two. You can communicate and keep track of all of your special memories and days (ahem, anniversaries) in one place. It's available on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC.

Heart Shaped Cordless Magic Bulb Light

Suck UK | Heart Light Bulbs | Battery Operated Light Bulb & Table Lamp | Rechargeable USB Light Bulb | Cordless Night Li

This Heart Shaped Cordless Magic Bulb Light stands alone. Its heart-shaped filament gives off a warm, pink glow for five hours before it needs to be recharged.

Share and Share Alike

Dual Heart iPhone Charging Cable

If your relationship is suffering from a power struggle, this dual-heart iPhone charging cable lets you each charge your phones and avoid arguments about who is more in need of the Lightning cable.

Call Me Maybe

Bandolier Willa

Unconventional shapes for bags are in vogue. And this heart-shaped Willa phone case with an attached pouch from Bandolier is a unique and sweet take on the trend. It comes in red, silver, or black.

Built on Love

Lego Flower Bouquet

Real flowers perish, but 8-bit is forever. This Lego bouquet approximates the look of yesteryear and—like your love—will never die. With 756 pieces and 15 stems, your loved one can customize and enjoy plastic-brick versions of roses, daisies, and asters long past Valentine's Day. If you think love should be easier to assemble, Lego also sells two long-stem red roses.

Book of Love

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A novel

Platonic love and video-game design feature in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and TomorrowTomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, a novel that charts the lives of two game developers and their creation over three decades.

There Are No Words

Personalizable M&Ms Gift Jar in You Stole My Heart

Chocolate can spell love, but these M&Ms can spell anything you like, because they're personalizable. Once you choose the colors you want and select a message, they're packed into a case that makes your feelings clear.

Cameo de Bergerac

Cameo

4.0 Excellent

Maybe you can't find the words to say to your loved one this Valentine's Day, but Kenny G can: Send them a personalized video message from him on Cameo. If they're not into his saxophone stylings, plenty of other celebs and influencers can speak for you (including Woz).

Cameo review

A Moving Gift

Infinite Objects Video Print

Animated GIFs are art, and you can be the artist with an Infinite Objects video print. Upload your own MP4 or MOV video clip or a TikTok video and turn it into a moving video print to display anywhere. You can also choose from existing ones, like I Randomly Love You, a work by Japanese artist duo exonemo—it's a 30-minute loop of random adverbs selected by a computer that are inserted into a conversation of "I love yous."

Kikkerland Rainbow Maker Heart

KIKKERLAND Solar-Powered Heart Rainbow Maker with Crystal, Multicolor, 1 EA, One Size

Dazzle your SO every day with this solar-powered Kikkerland Rainbow Maker Heart. It has a Swarovski heart that turns sunbeams into room-filling rainbows.

Scentsational

Scentbird

Giving them a fragrance can be fraught: Picking the wrong one is an expensive mistake. Instead, send them a Scentbird subscription, and your love will receive a new scent of their choosing to try each month. The subscription comes with a fabulous atomizer, too.

I Love You Like a Love Song, Baby

QFX RETRO-39 Shoebox Tape Recorder with USB Player

A Spotify playlist has nothing on an old-school mixtape. Transfer your music to a cassette via USB so your eternal flame can play it back on this cassette player.

Hooked on a Feeling

Kiiroo Onlyx and Cliona Couples Set

If you're apart from your significant other, Kiiroo makes a line of sex toys for men and women that can be used from across the room or across the world.

About Our Expert

Chandra Steele

Chandra Steele

Senior Features Writer

My Experience

My title is Senior Features Writer, which is a license to write about absolutely anything if I can connect it to technology (I can). I’ve been at PCMag since 2011 and have covered the surveillance state, vaccination cards, ghost guns, voting, ISIS, art, fashion, film, design, gender bias, and more. You might have seen me on TV talking about these topics or heard me on your commute home on the radio or a podcast. Or maybe you’ve just seen my Bernie meme

I strive to explain topics that you might come across in the news but not fully understand, such as NFTs and meme stocks. I’ve had the pleasure of talking tech with Jeff Goldblum, Ang Lee, and other celebrities who have brought a different perspective to it. I put great care into writing gift guides and am always touched by the notes I get from people who’ve used them to choose presents that have been well-received. Though I love that I get to write about the tech industry every day, it’s touched by gender, racial, and socioeconomic inequality and I try to bring these topics to light. 

Outside of PCMag, I write fiction, poetry, humor, and essays on culture.

My Areas of Expertise

  • Making incomprehensible tech news easy to understand
  • Expanding the boundaries of topics covered in the industry
  • Figuring out tips and tricks in apps and on devices and letting you know about them
  • Putting together gift guides for everyone in your life 

The Technology I Use

All that gadgets is gold for me: my iPhone 11 Pro, my fifth-generation iPad that I use only for streaming videos and music, my iPad mini 4 that I like to take with me whenever I carry a bag that can fit it, and my MacBook Pro. Why are they all different shades of gold, though? What’s going on, Apple? 

None of them quite live up to my two past loves: my LG Lotus LX600 phone and my Sony Walkman NW-E005 MP3 player. 

I've never given up wired earbuds so I was ahead of all those trend pieces. I use a Mangotek Lightning-to-3.5mm headphone jack adapter to connect them to my phone. 

I have had so many ebook readers, but I prefer paper to them all. Still, my Kindle Paperwhite is perfect for traveling or when I’m too impatient to wait for a book to be released in paperback.

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