8 travel apps under $5 that will make your next trip smoother
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Trips — either for business or pleasure — have a way of making you feel like your mind is being simultaneously stretched between 10 equally important tasks.
You have to pack for the trip, plan an itinerary, figure out basic phrases for communication (if it’s international), and try to sync time zones in a way that doesn’t feel obtrusive and clumsy.
If you’re going for pleasure, itineraries and price comparions might take more of your spare time. If you’re going for business, you might be collaborating with multiple players across time zones. Either way, most of us relish finding anything that can make the process less painful.
While most of us aren’t willing to go the whole nine yards and pay to outsource the travel planning to a professional, we might be more willing to part with $4 to make the going much easier on us — especially if we’re frequent flyers.
With this in mind, you’ll find 8 apps below that might be worth the spare change — either because they get around the bugs and tweaks of unpaid versions, circumvent the "must-be-connected-to-internet" holdup, or make simple but tedious tasks easier and more simultaneous while traveling.
Check them out and decide for yourself if any of them might make traveling more pain-free:
Have access to the entire WikiTravel guide anywhere and anytime without internet connection.
If you own a Mac, you can bring the entire WikiTravel guide with you wherever and whenever you go without internet access with TravelGuide. You'll be able to find detailed and up-to-date information on hundreds of thousands of places to eat, stay, and see —as well as other valuable advisories on safety, cultural context, and visas.
You'll also be able to find sample itineraries for trips across a state, country, or region and phrasebooks for hundreds of languages to ensure you can always communicate.
TravelGuide, $1
A reliable live voice and text translator.
Speak & Translate is one way to ensure that you'll always be able to communicate, no matter where you are. You might not speak 54 languages (and be able to write in more than 100), but thankfully this app does.
You can dictate what you need to translate, type it, or use a contextual menu, which means you click on any highlighted text.
Speak & Translate — Live Voice and Text Translator, $4.99
A better packer than you (that takes into account length of trip, weather, and activities).
PackPoint is the packer that you wish you were. It will build a packing list for you based on length of travel, weather at your destination, and any activities planned during your trip. To get started, all you have to do is enter your destination, departure date, and the number of nights you'll be there.
It has a bunch more customizable features, but at its most basic it'll deliver you a no-nonsense packing list you can trust without any labor or cross-examining on your part. There are in-app upgrades, but it's free to download.
PackPoint, free to download
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