Pierce Mattie Public Relations New York & Los Angeles

By the end of May we'll be hitting the beginning of the travel season. Many of us will be traveling around the US and others will be traveling abroad. For those who travel abroad, there are so many more things that one needs to consider to make sure that their vacation is carefree and provides a little "comfort luxury" along the way. Below are the top five best travel gadgets to consider when packing for your next trip.

1. Gorillapod
The Gorillapod is a flexible mounting device that can hold a digital camera securely, eliminating the need to ask complete strangers to take pictures of you and your family/friends while traveling. The Gorillapod SLR and SLR-Zoom can hold larger cameras and even zooming video cameras for those expert photographers.

2. Ectaco iTRAVL TL-6 Multilingual Talking Electronic Translator
If you love to travel abroad, but don’t have all the languages mastered, then this dictionary translator is a must-have in your travels. It can understand and speak (in a human voice) Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai. Besides helping you understand the language being spoken around you it is also a MP3 Player, world time clock, daily alarm, calculator and has currency and metric conversion.

3. MFUEL Universal Power Bank
This power bank works in over 120 countries and increases the operating time of your portable electronic devices such as notebook computers, cell phones, PDA, MP3 players, Portable DVD players, portable video games, etc. It has a patented “World Jack” eliminating the need for any other recharging devices.

4. HEADPLAY Personal Cinema System
This personal cinema system is ideal for that long plane, train or car ride (as long as you are not the one doing the driving). It offers stereo audio and media in 2D and 3D. With this system you can watch movies, use it for gaming both on and offline or for privately cruising the internet from the comfort of your seat. It’s capable of producing a picture of 360 color fields per second and has reflective micro-LCD technology that offers a stunning resolution. What’s even more incredible is that even those who wear prescription glasses can use this device as it has optical settings to accommodate their prescriptions allowing them to view everything on the screen with clear vision.

5. National Geographic Talk Abroad Travel Phone
You’ve seen the commercial. The one where the guy is on vacation in another country and two people on a moped steal his cell phone and he snarkily tells his friend, “The jokes on them,” because his cell phone doesn’t get a signal abroad. National Geographic has a Talk Abroad Travel Phone that allows you to make and receive cell phone calls in 100 countries around the world. It’s a prepay phone, so you don’t have a contract or monthly fees to contend with when you aren’t using it. It also has 60 countries where incoming calls are free.

Do you have a favorite gadget you consider a must-have when traveling? Let us know in the comments!