From time-saving tech gadgets to homewares that save on heating and even a way to stop people stealing milk from the communal fridge, our shopping team have plenty of ideas from just £10
With thousands of students preparing to set off for university, many have turned their attention to picking up all the essentials needed for moving away from home for the first time. According to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), 600,660 students applied to university this year – up 1% from 2024.
With term starting in most places over the next few weeks, now is the time to pick up all the essentials needed for a comfortable and comforting living space away from home. While some of these are obvious, our shopping experts have tried and tested plenty of gadgets, gizmos and goodies to make uni life easier and more fun. We’re pretty sure there will be something on the list that hasn’t been thought of yet and will be used long beyond Fresher’s Week.
With prices starting from £10, whether you’re looking to kit out your own new space or considering a gift for a loved one, there’s plenty of inspiration in our list of top picks. As we’ve highlighted below.
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Plaud Note
This credit card-sized voice recorder is perfect for lectures. Not only won’t students miss a minute, but, once the seminar is over it will transcribe everything and even use AI to summarise key points, pulling together themes and even making revision-friendly mindmaps.
Truly a potential uni game-changer, this is currently available for £149 and comes with freebies including a case, cloud storage and transcription services, making it its lowest ever price and worth every penny. Meanwhile, pre-orders are live now for the award-winning Plaud Note Pro (it won the Best AI award at the prestigious international tech show IFA a few weeks ago). It is even smaller and more powerful than the original Note and will cost £169 when it comes out early next month.
Pitaka power bank This might be the thinnest and lightest power bank we’ve ever used – as well as one of the most stylish. Used for wired or wireless charging, it has a high-powered magnet to keep it firmly attached to your phone in the bag and is thin enough you can still use your phone while it’s attached.
Personal coffee machine with travel mug
This Lakeland filter coffee machine with travel mug is compact enough to sit on a shelf in a room in halls. Currently reduced to £34.99 , this is potentially the perfect gift for coffee loving students. Pair it with a Rise coffee subscription and there’s a guaranteed fresh cup of Joe for every early morning walk and late night study session – all at a fraction of the cost of a Starbucks or Costa.
Lakeland Only Pan
Wanting to kit out a kitchen with limited cupboard space? This ceramic non-stick pan is the perfect answer – and at £59.99 it’s a fraction of the price of the iconic (but very similar) Our Place Always pan (the stone coloured one behind it in the picture above).
Read our writer Lucy’s review where she put them head-to-head here. It will cook virtually anything and it comes with a steamer basket, silicone turner and lid. Just don’t forget to add a cookbook like…
Sam Holland’s Kitchen Kickstart book
Avoid the temptation to break the bank on Deliveroo orders by upping your cooking game with an easy-to-follow cookbook. Chef Sam Holland – brother of Spider-Man Tom – is a culinary superhero in his own right, and this book is packed with quick, foolproof, delicious recipes on a budget, perfect for less confident cooks.
Heated throw
Over the last few years, most of the shopping team have tested and now swear by a heated throw of some shape or size to keep the chill off without turning on the heating. Dunelm, Lakeland and Boots all do ones we’ve tried and loved at various price points, but we’ve also spotted this Amazon version for £29.99. Available in three colours and with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars from 163 reviews, it’s a great option for keeping warm.
A downside is the often bulky frame that comes with the plug-in gadgets. Pick up an Oodie or a budget weighted blanket (£20 on Amazon) to get the same feeling of warmth and comfort.
Digital photo frame
Bethan and Narin both swear by their digital photo frames, with Bethan describing loving hers so much that she now bought four as gifts for family members. This Frameo digital photo frame holds up to 60,000 photos and connects to Wifi so pictures can easily be transferred from any phone using the app – whether that’s students uploading their favourite photos of a night out or friends and family sending photos over as messages from home.
Remarkable Digital Notebook
This Remarkable digital notebook is the ideal way to read and write on the go, especially if lots of your study materials are on PDF. It might look to some as a stripped-back tablet, but actually, the streamlined functionality makes it perfect for people who get distracted by Reddit rabbit holes when trying to study.
Meanwhile, the E-Ink display makes for a satisfyingly scritchy writing surface. It’s an investment buy, the price is high, but for people wanting to focus it’s Remarkable by name and by nature. Prices start from £389.
The ultimate desk lamp
This £19.99 gadget is everything anyone could want in a desk tidy. In addition to a pen pot and lamp, it has a wireless phone charger pad and a phone stand perfect for watching videos on.
Plug socket extender
Anyone who’s lived in a hall of residence knows there’s never enough sockets, so a multi-plug adaptor packed with USB ports is a great option to make sure everything can stay charged. Narin regularly tucks this £15.99 version into her bag for hotel trips and loves it for not just having both USB and USB-C options but also being surge protected for safety. She’s not the only fan – it has more than 1,500 reviews on Amazon and an average rating of 4.6 stars out of 5.
Air fryer
Forget waiting for the oven in a shared kitchen, air fryers are a quick, easy and healthy way to cook. This 1.5 litre option from George at Asda costs £28 and has more than 1,600 five-star reviews. Bigger capacity, premium – and more expensive names, cough, Ninja – are available, but for a smaller meal-making appliance (and no worry if housemates use it too) this is a great choice.
Sunrise alarm clock
Someone who struggles in the dark or wake up early on bleak mornings? A sunrise alarm clock can make getting up in the morning a little more bearable, even in the depths of winter. The Lumie Sunrise Alarm Clock was arguably the first to market and is available for £49 from Argos currently. Meanwhile this £23.46 version is a great alternative.
More than 500 shoppers have bought one in the last month and it has an average rating of 4.3 stars from almost 3,000 reviews. As well as the sunrise and sunset simulator, it can act as a colourful lamp in 11 different hues and also comes with an FM radio.
Coverless duvet
Those with a long list of things to buy, a coverless duvet is a simple way to streamline bedlinen, as well as minimising hassle. Online Home Shop has a coverless 10.5 Tog duvet and pillowcase set in blush, with prices from £16 for a single up to £26 for a king size. There’s also a reversible grey and ochre colourway that is reduced to £8.50 for this week only .
Storage
These versatile desktop drawers have been reduced from £59 to £15.99 and are perfect for everything from notebooks to make up essentials. The colour is subtle enough to fit in with every aesthetic and they’ll keep desks and shelves alike clutter free.
Heated airer
No one wants damp clothes hanging around in their living space in cold weather – not only does it make for messy surroundings but there can be health ramifications to being near wet washing, while it increases the risk of indoor mould and other issues.
A heated airer can cost pennies an hour to run and, while Lakeland’s DrySoon that started the trend is an investment option albeit currently 15% off in the Lakeland sale, there are lots of cheaper versions available now. For example, this Argos one is currently 25% off at £41.25 and has more than 1,100 five star reviews.
VPN subscription
Keeping data secure when browsing, streaming and doing life admin like online banking is vital, especially when spending more time on shared networks rather than safer home connections. A VPN is a must-have, and there are some great deals that offer multiple device access as well as a host of other online safety extras like password management, anti-malware protection and adblocking.
Among the best-rated are NordVPN and Surfshark, with both offering tempting discounts for students signing up for the new academic year and prices from £1.49 a month depending on the features included.
Shower Caddy Whether you’re sharing a bathroom or lucky enough to get an en suite, bathrooms are often overlooked for storage. Keep everything spick and span in one place with this budget-friendly £10 shower caddy from Dunelm.
Headphones
An essential for tuning out the world and keeping entertained on the go, if you’re lucky enough to be snapping up the new iPhone 17 you can snag some free Airpods 4 with one eye-catching deal. If you’re looking for something more budget friendly, Anker’s Soundcore cans were named one of our five best budget headphones on Amazon in a recent roundup and have notched up more than 70,000 reviews.
Praised for their noise-cancelling qualities – perfect for tuning out loud flatmates, these £37.99 beauties have an impressive 60-hour playtime when in standard mode and will give an impressive four hours of listening from a quick five=minute charge. Their memory foam ear cups produce Hi-Res sound with 100% stronger bass while reducing ambient noise by up to 90%.
Galaxy light
There are more obvious essentials on the list, but this versatile Aurora Light (£21.10) is a light projector, bluetooth speaker and white noise machine all in one. Whether you want a Northern Lights style display for parties or help sleeping this has you covered, with more than 200 shoppers snapping one up in the last few months and thousands of shoppers praising it as being beautiful and soothing.
Laptop backpack
A secure laptop bag is a must when carting tech back and forth between home, lectures and the library. While some might suggest a pricey option offers more protection, Amazon has some really great options at a more budget price point. VSNoon’s Anti-Theft Laptop Bag is reduced by 47% to £18.99 currently , comes in six stylish colours and has a combination lock, hidden pockets, a USB 2.0 charging port. It’s even compact enough that reviewers report being able to use it for budget airline hand luggage.
Milk lock
No, bear with us. Communal fridges paired with love of late-night cereal means milk is a perennial foodstuff that disappears in shared kitchens. This might be a gag gift to some, but to others it’s serious business, with this £11 milk lock, aka the Udder Lok, accruing a 4.4 star rating based on dozens of reviews.
One milk loving reviewer explained: “I bought this for my daughter at University. Her accommodation block has a milk thief and she was getting rather annoyed by it after her new 4 pinter of milk was taken by an unscrupulous student. So I got this and boy does it work big time. A must buy for anyone who lives with uncivilised people without any morals.”