Late July 2026, I shared the gear I packed for my first overseas assignment as Editor-in-Chief of Digital Reviews Network.
I spent several days in Shanghai and Suzhou with the Ecovacs Robotics team, touring their laboratories and battery factory, spending long days on the road, eating incredible food and learning my way around two fascinating cities.
Now that I’m home and have time to reflect, I finally have some answers about what actually earned a place in my travel bag.
Lessons From My First Overseas Media Trip
Number one: don’t drop your phone
Number two: if someone double-dares you to test whether it will survive another bounce, politely decline.
The Pixel passed the trip. The concrete won the durability test.
Behind the Scenes of an International Media Trip
It’s easy to look at media trips on socials and think they’re a holiday.
The reality is very different.
This particular trip, though, was hectic.
Despite feeling like we never stopped moving, my average step count was only a little over 10,000 per day. Spending so much time on coaches between locations balanced out the long walks through airports, hotels and factory floors.
Just the first day was a solid seventeen hours of travel from door to door.
We arrived at our hotel in Suzhou just before midnight. Naturally, the first priority was room service (Hainanese chicken rice, for the record, and it was divine).
Then it was straight back to work before finally calling it a night at 2:15am Shanghai time – 4:15am back home in Melbourne.
Between the language barrier, an itinerary that rarely stopped moving and everyone trying to publish stories back home despite the time difference, there wasn’t much downtime.
Out of all the tech I took with me, the only thing that did not see any action was the SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Go. No fault of its own, it simply was not needed but I would still always travel with one in the future.
Touring Ecovacs’ anechoic chamber. Behind every robot is a surprising amount of engineering, testing and technical explanation—far more than most readers ever get to see.
The Unexpected MVPs: Power, Connectivity and Airport Security
One thing everyone agreed on was that our phones all seemed to drain much faster than usual.
The prevailing theory is that we are all running dual SIMs – our home SIM and an eSIM for China, with data roaming and VPNs constantly on.
The Xiaomi UltraThin Magnetic Power Bank (5,000 mAh) became the unexpected MVP of the trip. It was emptied more than once keeping my Pixel alive, and there were certainly moments when I wished I’d packed something with a little more capacity.
But ultimately the decision to not risk bringing a power bank without a visible CCC certification marking paid off at Pudong Airport. I did not have any issues flying out of Melbourne, but security was inspecting every single power bank for the mark on the outbound at Pudong.
Flying business class meant we went through a priority screening lane, where the pat down could best be described as very thorough feather hands. One of the other attendees went through the general screening line and later told us she’d had a much less gentle experience.
The security checkpoint at Pudong Airport was one of the most intensive I’ve been through, and I say that having worked on the flight line for an airline during a period of heightened security, when every trip out to an aircraft meant another inspection and pat-down.
The other MVP, or perhaps the software gong, goes to ExpressVPN and holiday.com eSIM.
One of my concerns about travelling in China was their restrictive internet access. I needed (and wanted) to maintain ability to connect to Digital Reviews Network, as well as connect with my family without having to change all our communication apps. You can read my full thoughts on this dynamic duo here.
The Tech That Truly Earned Its Place
The Plaud Note Pro earned that honour, hands down. When I reviewed the Plaud devices, I gave them the DRN Pulse Award.
Then I took the Note Pro with me to Suzhou to record discussions, presentations and roundtable sessions with the Ecovacs team. While I’m Chinese, I don’t speak Mandarin. I can follow parts of a conversation if it’s spoken slowly and I’m concentrating, but a technical factory tour or media roundtable isn’t the place for people to slow down.
Armed with the Plaud Note Pro, I wasn’t relying solely on interpreters who, understandably, weren’t always engineers themselves. Instead, I could capture the original conversations, including the nuance of technical explanations and Chinese corporate culture, exactly as they happened.
There is no replacing jotting down your own thoughts on the fly, but Plaud left me free to listen, ask questions and engage in the discussion in English. Later, back in the hotel — or once I was home — I could replay the recordings, read the transcripts and use translation tools to verify not just the words, but the intent behind what was being said.
To be honest, it almost felt like cheating. It gave me a genuine advantage in the fidelity of my reporting from the trip.
The Plaud Note Pro quietly recorded every discussion, leaving me free to ask questions and engage in the conversation instead of worrying about capturing every word.
The Reliable Workhorses
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon quietly did exactly what it was supposed to do. Combined with the old Satechi desktop charger, I never once found myself hunting for enough USB ports or wishing I’d packed something different. Sometimes the best travel gear is the gear you stop thinking about.
One unexpected snag came on the final night in Shanghai. The wall outlet would only accept a three-pin plug, while my figure-8 power lead was only two-pin, so despite trying every combination I could think of, the ThinkPad wasn’t getting charged.
USB data blockers were the GOAT (sorry Ecovacs, not that GOAT). I plugged them into strange ports whenever I had to use one.
The Shokz OpenDots 2 saw most of their use on the flight over, where I spent hours listening to podcasts while writing.
They didn’t get much use on the ground, other than for taking calls with my daughter in crowded places. The open-ear design allows me to keep track of the general chaos around me on the brief moments I got to wander the cities.
Unsurprisingly, the Oura Ring 5 wasn’t impressed with seventeen-hour travel days and late-night writing sessions. My resilience score, however, seemed to have accepted that this is just how I operate.
The Moleskine saw the light of day a little. Sometimes scribbling an observation is simply faster than opening another app.
Review Gear That Saw Real-World Use
The Amazfit Bip Max got a proper workout on the trip. Except for the final night when I finally was too tired to remember putting it back on. Having drinks at Sober Company, kicking on to Tipsy and ice-cream at 1am might have contributed to that.
As for the AI glasses on my review deck, yes they also got a workout. I am still putting my thoughts together on it. You will just have to wait a little longer for that.
How I Captured the Trip
The Sony α6400 came out for the moments I wanted to slow down and remember.
The battered Pixel handled everything else – including becoming the unwilling participant in a completely unnecessary bounce test.
As it turns out, modern smartphones are more than capable of covering a media trip. I simply enjoyed slowing down enough to make a few photographs with a dedicated camera.
One of the moments that made carrying a dedicated camera worthwhile. This was one of the few times I slowed down long enough to simply enjoy Shanghai.
What Surprised Me Most About China
China is massive, and its infrastructure has come a very long way since the last time I was there decades ago.
This time I travelled with no cash whatsoever. Every purchase was paid through WeChat linked to my Wise account or bank card. I never once found myself wishing I’d carried cash.
It was incredibly convenient. The merchant scans your QR code, and the payment is complete in seconds.
Electric vehicles are everywhere. Not Teslas, but dozens of local brands I’d have never heard of before. Roads that were once dominated by bicycles (that’s how long ago since I have been this deep into China), are now filled with EVs and electric scooters of all kinds.
Robots are a common sight in the hotels. They are either used for delivery or cleaning. My Hainanese Chicken Rice was delivered by hotel staff though.
CCTV cameras are impossible to ignore, and the police presence was certainly more visible than what I’m accustomed to seeing back home in Melbourne.
Yet despite that, one thing genuinely surprised me. Walking around Suzhou and Shanghai after midnight, I never felt unsafe. The city was still alive, quieter, and it simply felt … comfortable.
Walking around the lake at night, I saw locals doing the universal thing — throwing a line into the water to catch a fish.
Final Thoughts: What I’d Pack Again
Looking back over everything I packed, almost every item justified its place.
The only thing that stayed in the bag was the SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Go — and even then, I’d pack it again tomorrow.
It turns out the question I asked myself before leaving Australia was still the right one: “Will I actually use this?”
This time, the answer was almost always yes.
Looking back, I only got two things wrong.
First, I underestimated how much battery I’d need.
Second, I overestimated my phone’s ability to survive repeated encounters with terra firma.
Everything else earned its place. And if I were boarding another flight tomorrow, I’d pack almost exactly the same bag.
If there’s one thing this trip reinforced, it’s that the best travel gear isn’t always the newest or most expensive — it’s the gear you trust enough to stop thinking about.
Well… apart from packing a higher-capacity power bank. And not testing the durability of your phone against concrete.
And perhaps one other lesson… I still overpack my everyday carry. Who would have thought the best travel bag was the one filled with the gear you’d actually use?
