5 Affordable Digital Gadgets That Can Fit on Your Keychain

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The humble keychain has been around for as long as we’ve had things worth stealing. But besides playing with lots of keys, some people have long found other ways to make their key chains useful. Online marketplaces like Amazon are full of ideas for how to make your key ring more than just a home for your keys by adding devices including everything from flashlights and multi-tool gadgets to bottle openers and USB drives.

But there are also many less obvious options. As gadgets continue to diminish, it’s become possible to carry some surprisingly capable devices alongside your keys, many of which can come in handy when you’re not expecting them (you just have to remember you have it on your keyring!), while others can be taken out and used simply for fun. We’ve focused on a line of digital devices that will happily keep your keys company, each costing less than $50.

If you’re on the go and your phone, Apple Watch, or other gadget is low on juice, then this keychain power bank from Rorry could save you. With a 10,000 mAh battery, the CharmGo Pro packs a lot more power than its compact, keychain-friendly design suggests. The device has built-in charging cables (USB-C and Lightning), so you won’t need to carry cables in your bag when you go out, while its USB-C port can deliver up to 45W of power to compatible devices. And yes, it also has a dedicated Apple Watch charger built in, as shown in the photo above.

Currently holding a 4.3/5 rating on Amazon from over 650 ratings, the CharmGo comes with a digital display to indicate the remaining charge, and once the power bank is depleted, it can be recharged in just over two hours with a 30W charger. At $43, there are cheaper 10,000mAh power banks, but they won’t fit on your keychain like this one. Just keep in mind, though, that at around half a pound, it’s probably the heaviest item hanging around next to your keys.

What the Kodak Charmera lacks in size, it certainly makes up for in nostalgia. Launched as a keychain gadget in 2025 and inspired by Kodak’s first single-use film camera from 1987, the Charmera is a small digital camera designed to bring a little old-fashioned fun to taking photos and shooting video. The cute little device weighs just 1 oz and measures approximately 2.2 inches in length, making it a perfect fit for your keychain.

Sure, its 1.6-megapixel sensor will never put your smartphone to shame, but that’s actually the point. The images you get from this little device will have a distinctive retro, lo-fi character that is a far cry from the polished perfection of your expensive handset. It also offers built-in filters, allowing you to add different effects to liven up your photos. The $35 Charmera, which has a 4.5/5 rating on Amazon out of about 4,000 ratings, uses a microSD card for storage and charges via USB-C. Kodak sells the camera in blind packaging with different designs like those shown in the photo above – another quirky element that turns it into something of a collector’s item. Charmera is part of a group of cameras available that succeed in bringing the fun back to photography.

This rather nifty box of tricks is actually a small programmable computer powered by Raspberry Pi, designed to look like a very small Game Boy console. TinyCircuits’ Thumby Keychain gaming console comes with five preloaded games — versions of “Snake” and “Pong” as well as a shooter, side-scroller, and dungeon RPG — that you can play on its tiny screen. If you love coding and want to take it to the next level, you can also program it yourself in MicroPython.

Despite its toy appearance, there’s a lot going on under the hood of this $30.52 device, which appears on Amazon with a 4.5/5 rating from more than 300 ratings. The Thumby includes six touch buttons and 2MB of storage so you can load your own games, animations, and other software experiences. If a friend buys the same device, you can even link the consoles together for multiplayer games like the previously mentioned “Pong.” This is actually an amazing mini gadget that retro gamers will definitely love.

Your phone probably has a voice recorder, but you might find that by the time you’ve grabbed it and fumbled with the app, the thing you wanted to record is already done. Vandlion’s device is a digital voice recorder that fits on your keychain and starts up quickly with its one-touch record button. It even has a mode that starts and stops recording whenever it detects sound. The 32GB internal storage gives you up to 450 hours of recording time and you can choose between MP3 and WAV formats. It also has around 25-40 hours of battery life and can be recharged via USB-C. The same port is used to transfer your recordings to a compatible computer or phone.

This makes this $40 device handy for all kinds of situations, like recording lectures to listen to again later, documenting discussions in meetings so you don’t have to constantly take notes, capturing ambient audio while on vacation, and recording any interesting thoughts or ideas that come to mind throughout the day. Vandlion’s digital voice recorder has a 4/5 rating on Amazon out of nearly 1,000 ratings.

The latter is a little different from the others on this list, but it’s still a solid selection that could end up being worth every penny of the $25 (available for $20 in a limited time offer, at the time of writing) you pay for it. Instead of something you use directly, this digital key fob gadget is designed to help you find your key fob if you misplace it. The Life360 tile has a 4.2/5 rating on Amazon out of nearly 11,000 ratings. It attaches to your keychain with your keys and whatever else you have on it, and uses Bluetooth to help you find it if it goes missing.

Once you add the Tile to your keychain, you follow a unique process to pair it with your phone. Then, if you can’t find your keychain and you’re nearby, you can get the accompanying app to make the Tile play a sound so you can easily locate it. If you are a certain distance away (for example, you lose the key fob and attached sticker in a shopping mall), the Life360 network will use other connected phones to pinpoint its location. A useful perk is that if you misplace your phone, a double tap on the Tile will make it ring, allowing you to quickly find it if it’s nearby. There’s a lot of competition in the Bluetooth tracker market, but not all of them include a hole like the Tile for easy attachment to key fobs and other items.

We searched for small digital devices available for purchase on Amazon that had a rating of at least 4/5 and had favorable reviews from verified buyers. Additionally, we prioritized items that we considered genuinely useful or fun. They also had to be affordable, so we limited our search to products costing $50 or less.