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The travel tech I actually use after years on the road, plus the buying tricks that saved me £300 on a phone and hundreds on a laptop.
I’ve been carrying a camera bag around the world for nearly two decades now, and the kit inside it has changed more times than I can count. From big bulky DSLRs to tiny company all-in-one cameras, I’ve had it all. I think at one point my camera backpack weighed 20kg with at least four different types of camera in there. What hasn’t changed in all that time is how much I hate overpaying for my travel tech. Big bug bear of mine.
I get it, everyone wants the the latest tech, but it’s so damn expensive. A phone, a laptop, a camera, a drone and a couple of batteries can easily run past £4,000 if you walk into a shop and buy everything new on launch day. I’ve never done that, and I don’t think you need to either. Almost everything I use is last year’s model, bought in a sale, traded in against something older, or refurbished. The kit is genuinely good. Really good. I just refuse to pay full price for it.
So, this is what’s actually in my bag at the moment. Not a wish list, not a spec sheet, just the gear I reach for when I’m heading out for the day, whether that’s a city break in Europe or a week on the slopes in Austria.
I’ll also go through where I buy each piece and how I keep the cost down, because that part matters as much as the gear itself. There’s a fair bit of money to be saved if you know when to buy and what to buy second hand.
Buy last year’s model and save hundreds
Tech runs on an annual cycle. A new flagship lands, gets the reviews and the headlines, and the model it replaced drops in price overnight. That older model was the best thing on the market a few months earlier, and for travel content the practical difference between the two is usually small.
The saving, though, is not small. A generation-old phone, laptop or drone often sits 20 to 40% below where it was, and it drops again a few months after launch when the initial rush dies down. Waiting is the single easiest way to cut the cost of a kit bag. I know that sounds obvious, but it’s such a simple way to save big money
The phone: Google Pixel 10 Pro
The phone does more work than anything else in the bag. It’s the map, the boarding pass, the translation app, the notes for a piece, and increasingly the camera for anything quick.
I use a Google Pixel 10 Pro, and I saved around £300 on it. I waited for a discount code rather than buying at launch, then sent my old Pixel 8 in for trade-in credit against the new one. Two savings, stacked, on the same purchase.
That trade-in route is worth knowing about. An old phone sitting in a drawer is money doing nothing, and most manufacturers will take it against a new handset. Check the quoted value against what the same model sells for privately first, because the two are sometimes a long way apart. For mine though, what they were offering through the Google Store was what I would’ve got selling it privately, so it was a no-brainer for me.
The laptop: the bit doing the heavy lifting
Planning a trip properly eats screen time. Hours go into checking maps, reading reviews and watching video tours before a decent itinerary comes together, and that’s before a single clip gets edited.
I spend a huge amount of my time editing. Video for YouTube and socials, photos for the blog, and it all lands on the same machine at the end of a trip. That’s the real test of a travel laptop, and video is what punishes it hardest. Timelines stutter, previews lag, and a machine that isn’t up to it turns a 20 minute export into most of an afternoon. If you’re making any kind of video content, this isn’t the place to cut corners.
A refurbished MacBook handles that workload without the new price attached, and a refurbished MacBook Pro is the sensible step up if you want more speed without paying full whack. Both are easy to find on Back Market, a site for verified refurbished electronics, where every purchase comes with a one year warranty and thirty days to send it back. Again, this is such a good way of saving hundreds of pounds compared to buying new, so think of that.
The camera: Sony A7R III
My main camera is still a Sony A7R III. It’s not a new body by any stretch, and that’s rather the point. It shoots 42 megapixels, holds up beautifully for landscape work, and can now be picked up for a fraction of what it cost at launch.
A camera body that was excellent five years ago is still excellent today. Sensors have not moved on nearly as fast as the marketing suggests. Buying an older full frame body and spending the difference on decent glass will get you better photos than buying the newest body with a kit lens.
The camera that might replace three
I’m seriously thinking about the Insta360 Luna Ultra, which landed in June 2026 as the company’s first gimbal camera. It’s a dual lens setup co-engineered with Leica, with a one inch main sensor, a separate telephoto lens, 8K video and three axis stabilisation built in.
The appeal for me is simplification. One device that shoots wide, shoots long, stabilises itself and handles vlogging means fewer things in the bag and fewer batteries to keep charged. Streamlining the kit usually saves money overall too, because you stop buying accessories for four different systems. If I was buying one camera today, it would be this one.
The drone: DJI Mini 4 Pro
The Mini 4 Pro is a brilliant travel drone. It weighs 249g, folds down to nothing, shoots 4K at 60fps, has obstacle sensing in every direction and flies for around half an hour on a battery.
Here’s the money-saving bit. DJI has since released the Mini 5 Pro, which adds a larger one inch sensor and LiDAR sensing, and the Mini 4 Pro has dropped in price as a result. Unless you’re regularly shooting in poor light, the older model does almost everything the newer one does for noticeably less.
The power bank: the bit everyone forgets
Nothing kills a day of filming faster than a flat battery. Recording video, running maps and shooting stills will drain a phone by early afternoon, and cold weather makes it worse. A day out skiing in Austria will flatten a phone alarmingly quickly.
A 20,000mAh bank with USB-C power delivery is the sweet spot. It’ll refill a phone two or three times and top up a camera battery, and at roughly 74Wh it sits comfortably under the 100Wh airline limit. Pack it in your hand luggage, as power banks aren’t allowed in the hold.
How to build a kit bag for less
Good travel kit doesn’t have to mean new travel kit. Almost everything in my bag was bought a generation behind, in a sale, or refurbished, and I’d struggle to point at a single shot that suffered for it. If you’re starting from scratch, I’d spend the money in this order. Laptop first, because a slow one costs you time every single day. Phone second, because it’s the thing you’ll reach for most. Camera third. Drone last, because it’s the piece you can most easily manage without.
The tactics that save the most are simple enough. Wait for a model to be replaced rather than buying at launch. Stack a trade-in with a discount code so you’re saving twice on the same purchase. And buy refurbished where the device has no moving parts to wear out.
Do all three and you’ll end up with a bag full of gear that punches well above what you paid for it. Then spend the difference on the trip, which is the point of all this anyway.
