We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use.

18 Last-Minute Tech Gifts to Help You Win Mother's Day

 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

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.

Our Expert
LOOK INSIDE PC LABS HOW WE TEST
65 EXPERTS
43 YEARS
41,500+ REVIEWS
(Credit: Zooey Liao/PCMag/Amazon)

Moms have been through it these past few years. There's never been a better time for Mother's Day than now.

It doesn't matter who the mom is in your life; they deserve some love. And if your mother is the tech-savvy type, we have plenty of gift ideas, whether she wants to relax, mix up her fitness regimen, or give her home a smart upgrade.

Best Way to Cool Down

Dyson HushJet Mini Cool

Does Mom tend to run hot? Get her this high-tech, portable personal fan from Dyson. The brand has stepped up with a sleek, five-speed, bladeless device that moves air at 55 miles per hour. It comes in three colors with a two-tone design. It can be worn around the neck or propped up on a stand for desk use. Best of all, the HushJet Mini is affordable (at least for a Dyson product).

Best for Spying Speedy Birds

Birdbuddy Smart Non-Solar Pro Hummingbird Feeder with Camera - AI Bird Identification, 2K Video, 5MP Photos, Outdoor Han

Last year, we recommended the Bird Buddy Smart Feeder Pro. This year, Bird Buddy has a new feeder, meant for hummingbirds, that uses the same camera to capture 5-megapixel images and 2K video, with super-sharp close-up focus across a wide field of view. Naturally, it will also record at a high frame rate so you can slow down high-speed action.

Best Affordable Laptop for Mom

Apple MacBook Neo

4.5 Outstanding

Apple's new laptop line is both inexpensive and festive (it comes in Indigo, Blush, Citrus, and Silver). Neo also delivers a surprising amount of power using only the A18 Pro processor (plus a Neural Engine for AI) and 8GB of RAM. If Mom needs real desktop computing power in a 13-inch mobile footprint this Mother’s Day, the only question left is: What color Neo?

Apple MacBook Neo review

Best Ereader for Bedtime or Anytime

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (2024)

4.0 Excellent

When it comes to ebook readers, maybe Mom doesn’t need anything fancy—just a straight-up monochrome E Ink screen. The best option is this version of Amazon’s top-of-the-line 7-inch ereader, which features a self-adjusting light positioned toward the screen, not your eyes. It also has 32GB of storage (enough to hold 15,000-plus text-only ebooks), wireless charging, and best of all, no ads on the screen.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (2024) review

Best Way to Help Mom Dress

Stitch Fix

Does your mother have style, but no time to shop? With Stitch Fix, she can consult an online stylist about what she likes and what works for her, and then each month she’ll get a box full of clothes to try on. She (or maybe you!) will only pay for what she keeps. If she likes all five items in a shipment, the total purchase is 25% off. Send her a Stitch Fix gift card by email to get her started. 

Best Option for a Thorough Cleaning

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni

4.5 Outstanding

Whoever said never buy a woman a cleaning product as a gift didn’t consider the amazing robots on the market today. The Deebot X8 Pro Omni, one of our Best Products of the Year, builds on its predecessors' success with improved vacuum suction and a roller mop that's better than the disk pads we're used to. The mop extends out the side for better edge cleaning, plus it washes the roller as it cleans the floor.

Ecovacs Deebot X8 Pro Omni review

Best No-Subscription Easy Security Option

eufy Security eufyCam C35, Wireless Security Camera, Outdoor and Indoor, Magnetic Mount, Color Night Vision, Local Stora

The C35 is an affordable indoor or outdoor security camera that comes in white or black, mounts easily to any metal surface using magnets, and offers Color Night Vision, 180-day battery life, microSD card video event storage, and the option to add a solar panel (sold separately). The 130-degree field of view is shot in full HD at 15 frames per second. Best of all, there's no subscription required.

Best Option for a Quick Delicious Meal

CookUnity Meal Delivery Service

4.0 Excellent

CookUnity is our top pick for prepared meal services. The brand offers a wide variety of selections well-suited to busy lifestyles. Mom can get from four to 16 meals delivered weekly, including vegetarian and pescatarian options. CookUnity even offers extras like breakfast items and drinks. You can get her a gift card worth $5 to $500 to cover the costs. 

CookUnity Meal Delivery Service review

Best Audio with Translation Options

Apple AirPods Pro 3

5.0 Exemplary

We give the AirPods Pro 3 rare 5-star rating. With the exception of user-adjustable EQ controls, they have it all: exceptional sound and great noise cancellation, plus some features you don’t always get from earbuds, like long battery life and a built-in heart rate monitor. Plus, the live translation capability will put Mom on equal linguistic footing almost anywhere she travels.

Apple AirPods Pro 3 review

Best Option for Sharing Pics From Afar

Skylight Frame 10 Inch Wifi Digital Picture Frame

3.5 Good

If your mom wants more up-to-date pics of you (and your kids and pets), a digital photo frame is a must, as it offers instant access to new shots. The Skylight Frame can be fed new images via an app on your phone or by sending them to an email address you set up. The frame stores up to 8,000 pictures and will keep showing them at 1,280 x 800, even if the internet goes down. For extra, the device will play videos and support multiple photo albums. 

Skylight Frame 10 Inch Wifi Digital Picture Frame review

Best for Toy-Loving Moms

LEGO Icons Wildflower Bouquet Building Set (939 pcs)

Flowers are a tried-and-true Mother's Day gift, but they tend to wither up and die within a week. Mom can enjoy these Lego flower arrangements forever—and the kids in your life will love them, too. Kits range from $8.39 to $59.89, and options include an orchid, bamboo, succulents, cherry blossoms, wildflowers, and even a bonsai tree.

Best Easy Listening on Any Device

Pandora

3.5 Good

When it comes to musical subscription services, there are many options, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify, which are just three of our Editors’ Choice picks. For incredibly easy listening for mom, I lean toward Pandora. Its free tier (with ads) works great on mobile and smart TVs, providing “internet radio” stations based on your music picks. Pandora Plus ($4.99 per month) or Premium ($10.99 per month) play exactly what you like on demand; the latter includes playlists.

Pandora review

Best Inexpensive Fitness Tracking

Fitbit Charge 6

4.5 Outstanding

Google’s Fitbit Charge 6 remains our top-rated Editors’ Choice fitness tracker, period. If all that Mom requires is tracking of the day’s activities and her overall health status, the Charge 6 will handle it—and it can go a week on a charge. All Fitbit hardware now works with the Google Health ecosystem and uses AI to analyze data. If your mother needs a smartwatch with all the bells and whistles, consider getting her an Apple Watch Series 11 instead.

Fitbit Charge 6 review

Best for Security-Conscious Moms

Proton Pass

4.5 Outstanding

Show mom you care by helping her fend off scammers and spammers. Proton Pass is PCMag's Editors' Choice because it will mask her email address, create unique logins for apps and online accounts, store passkeys, and generate multi-factor authentication codes. It's also easy to use. Spring for the $12.99 monthly Proton Unlimited subscription to get her an encrypted email inbox, cloud storage, and access to the top-rated Proton VPN.

Proton Pass review

Best for Traveling Moms

Satechi Qi2 Trio Wireless Charging Pad, 3 in 1 Wireless Charging Station, Qi2 15W Fast Charger for iPhone 16/15/14/13/12

While plenty of charging stations exist that simultaneously power up a MagSafe-compatible iPhone, an Apple Watch, and AirPods, few look as cool as the Satechi Qi2 Trio. With 15W power, it will charge things up fast. It's easy to put an iPhone in Standby mode, where the landscape screen turns into a dimmed alarm clock face. Plus, the device collapses down for travel and comes with chargers for overseas use.

Best for Beverage-Enjoying Moms

Ecozy Smart Nugget Ice Maker

4.0 Excellent

For moms who enjoy an ice-cold beverage now and again, the Ecozy Smart Nugget will be a life changer. This smart appliance sits on the counter and does nothing all day except crank out the cubes. It can make up to 35 pounds of ice daily and is super-quiet. It’s an Editors’ Choice for smart appliances in part because it responds to voice controls and offers push notifications.

Ecozy Smart Nugget Ice Maker review

Best for Caffeinated Moms

xBloom Studio

4.5 Outstanding

This smart kitchen appliance delivers the flavor of handcrafted coffee without the labor. It will weigh your beans, grind them up, and brew the beverage for you. The result, made with precision water temperature control, is among the best from a drip coffee maker. And there's a handy smartphone app to adjust how it brews. 

xBloom Studio review

Best for Traditionalist Gift Givers

Bouqs

We get it. You're a traditionalist. The latest gizmos (or Lego flowers) won't do for your mother. In that case, we heartily recommend a subscription to get flowers and plants delivered directly from one of the many sustainable farms that partner with Bouqs. Prices start at $49 per month for direct delivery with free shipping.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

Read full bio