Christmas gifts for dart players

If one present has to carry Christmas morning, this is the one with a genuine moment in it. The board pairs with a phone or tablet and puts the player into live games against people elsewhere, which turns solo throwing into something with an opponent and a scoreline.

For the gift-buying case specifically, it answers the commonest reason a dartboard stops being used: there is nobody to play. A board in a spare room with no second player gets dusty by spring regardless of how good it is, and this is the only product in the category that fixes that directly.

The dependencies are worth knowing before you wrap it. It needs power, a paired device and a maintained online service, and it is a soft-tip board, so a steel-tip league player will not want it. Check which tips they throw before buying.

The clearest gift for a steel-tip player is the board itself, one tier above what they have. Thin bladed wire set into the sisal is the specification that reduces bounce-outs, and a player on a stapled budget board feels the difference within one leg.

It works well as a Christmas present because people replace dartboards reluctantly — a board that still holds a dart is a board that still works, even when the treble twenty has gone soft and the wire is bent. Somebody else deciding it is time is how boards actually get upgraded.

Check what they are throwing first. If they are already on a current-generation thin-wire board, this is a sideways move and the cabinet below is the better present.

A cabinet is the gift that changes how the rest of the household feels about darts, which is a more useful present than it sounds. Doors closed, the board stops being a large graphic object on the wall and becomes a cupboard. That is often the difference between a board staying up and a board coming down.

It is also protective. The doors catch most of the near misses that would otherwise land in the plaster, and the scoreboards inside get used constantly if the board does not score for itself.

Measure before buying. A cabinet adds depth and needs clearance for the doors to open fully, and a cabinet blocked by a bookcase is worse than no cabinet. Check their board fits it too, as sizing varies.

Bundled darts are the cheapest component of every dartboard package at every price, and most players are still throwing them months later because replacing them never gets to the top of the list. A real set is the best-value dart gift there is.

A knurled steel-tip set gives the hand something to find, which is the thing a smooth bundled dart does not do. The flights and stems are standard sizes, so they are replaceable for pennies when they bend — and they will bend, because flights are the consumable in darts.

Keep a point sharpener in mind as a companion: blunt points are the second-biggest cause of bounce-outs after bad board wire, and they cost almost nothing to fix.

The advantage of buying the set is fit. The cabinet and the board were designed together, so the depth is right and the doors do not foul the wire — which is exactly what goes wrong when a cabinet is bought separately and sized by guesswork. The board is Winmau's Pro-SFB with a staple-free bullseye, and two complete steel-tip dart sets come with it. The thing players feel as inconsistency, and it mounts more securely because it is designed to carry the weight.

For a Christmas present it reads as a serious gift and it does not depend on knowing what they already own, because everything in it matches everything else. If you do not know whether they like it, a good cabinet is the safer premium choice.

Same measuring caution applies to the wall rather than the board: check the space, the door swing and that there is a stud or fixing to take the weight. The oche strip in the box assumes 7ft 9.25in of throwing room behind it.