THE BEST TRAVEL PRODUCTS 2025
- MG
- Jul 26
- 9 min read
Booked your holiday already? Now get those bags packed with our ultimate guide to the best travel products of 2025
If you're planning a trip this year, we've got you covered. Whether it's a long car journey, a backpacking trip through the Amazon or just a weekend away with the kids, there's something for you in our ultimate guide to the best travel products of 2025.
FOR THE GROWN UPS
YETI cool bag
From £275
We’re well versed in the merits of a cool box: Cold beers at the beach, fresh picky bits for the picnic in the park and somewhere to plonk your head when it all gets too much in this summer weather. But they’re just so damn clunky.
Not so, the YETI cool bag! The world’s most recognisable cool-box connoisseurs have created a backpack version of their trusty chillers, meaning you can throw it on for a hike, hit those hard-to-reach secret beaches or just throw it in the boot of the car without having to sacrifice a suitcase.
What’s not to like?
The Backpack Cooler comes in four sizes and more colours than a Pantone chart, with the smallest claiming room for 20 cans and the largest 42 cans. Opt for the compact versions and you’ll also get a kangaroo pocket for your valuables.
HEYS Astro Luggage
€189.99
If you’re hoping to find your luggage on a packed carousel, you could plaster it with gaudy stickers, or have your face printed on the front. You could, but we’d recommend opting for one of Heys’ works of art instead.
The Astro 26” comes in five holographic colours - purple, silver, green, charcoal and blue - each made from a super lightweight polycarbonate composite. Safety’s taken care of, too, in the form off a TSA combination lock, but the real security is in knowing you’ll see your case coming from the other side of the carousel.
PASSENGER Dry Bag
£34.95
If you’re heading out on a boat, expecting some torrential rain or are planning a solo visit to the beach, a dry-bag is a must-have. Pack your essentials - including your phone and wallet - into this Passenger backpack and take it with you wherever you go (and yes, that includes ‘into the sea’).
While most dry bags opt for the plain ‘yacht’ aesthetic or hi-vis colours, we love the design of Passenger’s offering. It’s big enough to pack all of your gear inside, but compact enough to throw on your back without feeling like you’re in the army - and when you’ve finished your day you can pack all of your wet clothing inside without worrying if everything else in the car will get damp.
GOMATIC Compression Packing Cubes
From £20
The only thing worse than packing for holiday is the ghastly job of re-packing at the end of a holiday, so we’re on board with anything that makes the task a little easier.
The GOMATIC packing cubes are one such product, and they have the added bonus of helping you organise your luggage so everything’s easier to find.
The cubes - essentially a selection of lightweight mini-bags - are designed to fit Gomatic’s range of luggage, but that’s not to say you can’t benefit from their nifty features with your own travel gear. Each cube features a clever zip system which allows you to compress the contents by at least 50%, helping you fit more inside that suitcase and maybe even downsize to a cabin bag for your weekend away.
Mesh covers allow you to see what’s inside each cube and a generous Lifetime Warranty from the manufacturer gives you peace of mind. Available in navy, blue or grey.
TROPICFEEL Sunset Swim Shoes
£80
Nobody wants to lug a spare pair of shoes around and not all of us are on board with the Crocs/jelly shoes revolution. But if you’re looking for some shoes you can rock in the water and head straight to the beach bar afterwards, these Sunset water shoes are the ones for you. They’re ultra-lightweight and made with AirTech™ and Drainsole™ technologies so you can get wet but dry fast. What’s more, they also feature a special foldable heel that lets you kick down the back to create easy slip-on clogs, or pull it back up to create a smart pair of trainers.
Oh, and if you’re worried about that damp smell, fear not - they’re treated with anti-bacteria by Aegis to stop any unwanted odours.
SMUG Contoured Blackout Sleep Mask
From £15
If you’re a seasoned traveller, you’ll know that snatching sleep wherever you can is a superpower. If you’re a parent, you’ll know we’re not being dramatic when we say it’s the key to maintaining your sanity.
The SMUG Contoured Blackout Sleep Mask is a comfortable, lighweight mask with a soft, raised rim that lifts the fabric off your eyelashes while blocking out everything from the outside world (except the sound of “mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, look at this!” from your children…).
It’s super comfortable and guaranteed to give you a moment’s peace, whether you’re attempting some shut-eye at 10,000 feet, on the bus or in the car.
ZONE3 Brew Flask
£35
Zone3 are experts in triathlon gear, so probably wouldn't be your first port of call for a brew flask, but this is a serious piece of kit with a conscience, so we're fully on board. This flask will keep your liquids hot or cold, but the real feat of engineering is in their no-spill lid. Unscrew the top slightly and you can sip from the bottle as though it's a regular mug, but tip it upside down and nothing comes out. How? We don't know! Probably some kind of magic. So if you do need a cappuccino on the way round a triathlon, these guys have your back. We used ours in the car, on a few long walks and on the train, and it did the trick in all scenarios. We imagine it's probably ideal for a post-swim warmer, which is where the triathlon link becomes clear. If you're after a little more smugness, know that this bottle was created with eco-friendly trailblazers, Ocean Bottle, whose mission it is to rid the oceans of plastic. Not only is it responsibly made, but for every bottle sold they'll fund the collection of 11.4kg of ocean bound plastic - the equivalent of 1,000 plastic bottles - before they reach the ocean.
FOR THE KIDS
MY FIRST Care Buds
£59
Bluetooth earbuds designed specifically for kids, with safe batteries, a max volume of 85db and even a ‘Smart Transparency Mode,’ which means they can hear you calling their name, even when they pretend they can’t.
A lot of thought has gone into the My First Care Buds, considering everything from hearing protection to personalisation - these earbuds come with a sheet of stickers and name plates so your kids can truly make them their own, and a raft of different silicone buds to ensure a perfect fit.
As with everything these days, they bear more than a passing resemblance to Apple’s Airpods and our kids loved how grown up they felt when they were handed their pair for the first time.
The charging carry case comes with a band for tying to a bag (or their wrist), which will go some way towards ensuring they’re not lost. Are we convinced our children won’t end up with a single bud before long? No! But we parents know that the true cost of anything is the price of having to buy it twice. Luckily, at under £40 for the pair, you can rest safe in the knowledge that you can buy three pairs before you’ve hit the cost of the aforementioned Apple products.
And believe us when we say that the silence we’ve experienced on long car and plane journeys make the My First Care Buds worth their weight in gold.
ELECTRONICS
TWELVE SOUTH PlugBug Travel 120 adapter
From £79.99
Eurgh. PLUGS. They’re a pain in the bum, right? Every holiday, you spend weeks fumbling through that drawer which must never be opened, only to find every adapter except the one you need. So, it’s another trip to Duty Free at the airport.
And when you arrive, there’s a bun-fight about whether to plug in your phone, the children’s tablets or the portable fan, which ruins day one of your trip.We’ve all been there. But just when we’d settled on the solution of always packing a four-way extension lead for every holiday, along comes PlugBug with the ultimate solution.
With four USB-C connectors, the PlugBug can handle a family’s charging needs in one go, while also coming packaged with connectors for the USA, EU, UK, AUS, China and Korea, meaning you’d be hard-pushed to turn up anywhere unprepared - even if that layover ends up being longer than expected.
It’s powerful enough to fast-charge your laptop, phone or tablet and its slim, single-socket design means it won’t require you to unplug everything else in your hotel room.
But wait! There’s even more genius hidden inside its shiny, Apple-esque white casing: Connect the adapter to your phone (iPhones only, unfortunately…) and you’ll never have to do the dreaded drawer-search again. Just open up the Find My app and it’ll remind you of that ‘safe place’ you hid it after your last trip abroad.
And when you’re done, everything fits neatly inside the provided carry-case - including all of the worldwide plug add-ons.
It’s not the most exciting product on our travel guide, but it’ll almost certainly be the one you’re most glad you bought.
SODAPOP portable speaker
£59.99
The portable speaker market is pretty saturated these days, but even we’ve never seen a bottle-speaker before.
If you’ve ever worked in a kitchen before, you’ll know that placing your phone in a large metal bowl turns its humble speakers into an Ibiza-worthy sound system, and the Soda Pop works on largely the same premise. Screw the small speaker into the top of the provided, plastic bottle and it gives the bass a mighty boost, creating a speaker far more powerful than its size would suggest. It’s equal parts simple and genius, and the speaker also packs neatly inside the bottle when not in use, creating a tough carry case you can toss into your bag without fuss.
Netgear Nighthawk MR1100
£268
There might be cheaper options on the market, but the Netgear Nighthawk stands head and shoulders above its competitors when it comes to portable WiFi extenders. This nifty machine picks up the local phone signal and transforms it into a usable WiFi signal powerful enough to run laptops, phones and anything else that needs connectivity.
We tested the M6 Pro version a few years ago and were blown away by its capabilities, but the Nighthawk range offers cheaper options that won’t eat up your holiday budget in one go. The MR1100 does a good job of straddling that gap. It’ll turn your bus, car or holiday rental into a high-speed WiFi zone capable of streaming movies, playing games or ignoring those work emails in double-quick time.
MEDICINES/WELLNESS
Koala Compression Socks
£12.99
If you've ever arrived on holiday with sore, swollen cankles and a general feeling of grogginess, you'll know all about how planes can mess with our bodies. And for the long-haulers amongst you, it could be more serious than just a little swelling, as issues like Deep Vein Thrombosis and blood clots can be worsened by airmiles. So, you need to get yourself some compression socks, and KOALA offer the best around, in a range of styles to suit everybody's tastes. Promising to increase blood flow, reduce muscle fatigue and swelling, and provide all-day comfort, these stylish socks are the real deal. Buy Now
LEVEL Luxury Aromatherapy Shower Steamers
PRICE
We can’t all afford an in-room spa when we travel abroad, so why not take your own whenever you travel? LEVEL Luxury Aromatherapy Shower Steamers are tablets packed with herbs and comforting fragrances including Grapefruit, Chamomile, Lavender, Tea Tree, Rose, Eucalyptus, Floral Jasmine and Rosemary.
Drop the tablet onto the shower tray and the hot, herb-infused steam will be released into the air, turning your shower into an aromatherapy experience.
Two sets are available - ‘relaxing’ and ‘energising’ - so, whether you’re after a pick-me-up or a wind-down, the LEVEL shower steamers will become a welcome part of your daily travel routine.
ARRAN NATURALS Awaken Deodorant
£12.50
We’ve long been fans of Scottish scent-makers, Arran, ever since we came across their incredible aftershave, Sannox. So, we jumped at the chance to give their all-natural deodorant, AWAKEN a try. Laced with essential oils that are chosen to boost energy and relieve tension, it's the kind of deoderant we need after a long day of travelling. Did we feel like we'd just chugged a can of Red Bull after a ten hour sleep? Well, no. But perhaps these things are a little more subtle than that. However, we can confirm that this is one of the nicest smelling deoderants we've ever smelt, and we had compliments while wearing it, which is lovely and a little disconcerting for us men, who don't get that sort of thing very often.
It's vegan, fresh, natural and long-lasting enough to easily see you through the day. And the compact, cardboard casing makes it the perfect scent to chuck in your travel bag for later, should you need a top up after a particularly warm trip.
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