Choosing the Right Digital Devices for Digital Nomad Work

To many people, living and working as a digital nomad is a dream come true. It means you get to travel to places full-time and explore cultures on a deeper level than you ever could on just a few weeks' holiday. It also means that you'll place a huge amount of importance on the digital systems you use to support your employment.

When something goes wrong, is missing, or breaks with digital nomad tech, recovery is suddenly the most important thing in the world. Being slow or inefficient risks losing clients or employment, making prevention and a proactive approach overwhelmingly important. To help you avoid the common mistakes committed by many new to the digital nomad space, here are a few tips that we've seen nomads follow to help support their devices on the go.

More Expensive Means More Risk

While there's nothing wrong with taking premium devices with you as a digital nomad, this does mean that any issues you face with the systems can be much more pronounced. It's much easier to replace a cheap phone or laptop than an expensive one, especially since warranties and guaranteed repairs are far more difficult when overseas and managing language barriers.

The best solution in many cases is either to travel with a cheaper device or to have budget devices like those covered at Engadget that you can easily move to. If you're new to buying this kind of tech, then we recommend taking a test run at home to see what you need to operate at full efficiency, and use this level as a baseline.

You'll also want to ensure that any of the demands you have for your device outside of work are equally accessible with the systems you use. If you like playing low-demand Slingo games or other casual tiles, this might not be much of an issue. In this instance, titles like Slinguini Slingo and Slingo Thunder of the Gods work perfectly well even on less powerful systems. The same might not be true if you like to cut movies or render 3D models, since these are much more hardware-demanding, so finding a starting point that works for everything is key.

Keeping Data Online

Even if you adopt the best protection practices, accidents happen. At the worst, this could mean that the device and its storage are destroyed. If this happens, and even if you replace your systems, it's a challenge to get back to where you were.

Addressing this issue means ensuring as much of your key data as possible is uploaded into some kind of cloud storage service like Proton Drive. As long as you have your passwords and logins memorised, these let you jump back into where you left off, even from an internet café in many cases.

As with any digital nomad life, the best advice for any newcomer is to try it out for a few months before committing yourself full-time. There is no way to entirely predict your personal and technological needs, and readjusting when travelling can add an unnecessary level of complexity and stress. Take your time, protect your data, always have replacement plans ready, and you'll be far more likely to succeed in your future work and travel.