I re-tested Apple AirTags after 5 years – how they compare to Bluetooth tracker rivals

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ZDNET Highlights

• Apple AirTags remains the most reliable and accurate tracking option.
• Third-party tags work well for both iOS and Android.
• Any tracking tag dramatically increases the chances of recovering lost items.

Of all the tools I’ve tested over the years, none have changed my life for the better apple airtags. My grandfather had a saying – “A place for everything, and everything in its place” – but as much as I try to be a neat person like him, I can never remember where I put my keys or which bag or coat my wallet is in.

I guess no one is perfect.

Also: I bought an earwax camera for my toolkit and use it for everything except my ears

AirTags changed all that. It wasn’t long before I put tags on my keys, wallet and bags, honestly, my life improved, home frustrations and travel worries diminished in one fell swoop. Since then, the third-party finder tag market has boomed.

The AirTag was ambitious: a small battery-powered tag that leveraged an ecosystem of over a billion devices to track and anonymously report their location anywhere in the world. iPhone, ipadOr the iPod Touch (remember that?). But instead of relying only on Bluetooth, it also used another technology called ultra-wideband.

Before AirTags I was using tile tag. While Tiles were quite good Bluetooth tags, the network of people running the Tile app was quite small, so if you lost something away from home the chances of finding them were low (the Tile Tag network has since improved, but they’re still not part of the Apple or Google Tag networks).

Also: I carried this Bluetooth tracker card in my backpack for a week – and it endured my clumsiness

While Bluetooth has limitations in terms of range, location accuracy, energy efficiency, and security, UWB brings better range, centimeter-level accuracy, a higher level of energy efficiency (as it can switch between UWB and Bluetooth Low Energy), and a higher level of security to prevent spoofing and nefarious tracking. And because Apple had the foresight to add UWB support to its devices years before it launched AirTags, the ecosystem for UWB support was already in place.

how it all started

When AirTags were first released, I bought a pack of four And were scattered around Scotland to see how well they were picked up by iPhones inside the pockets of passing cars and pedestrians.

I was amazed at how good the recognition was. I managed to get all my tags back except one: not because of tag failure, but because it had fallen victim to a roadside mower and was last found in a landfill four hours later.

Also: This AirTag option with a 130dB siren and strobe light has my name written all over it

After five years, AirTags have received an update. The second generation AirTags feature advanced Bluetooth, a better, louder speaker, and a U2 chip that allows for extended precise search range and support. apple watch. We now also have Google’s Find Hub, Android’s answer to Apple’s Find My network for iOS.

With new AirTags on the scene, as well as a rapidly growing third-party tag ecosystem, what better time to try to repeat my experiment?

how is it going now

I had to go on a road trip, so I grabbed some tags and scattered them around to see how well they worked. I was interested in testing some things. First, I wanted to see if there was any difference between Apple’s Find My and Google’s Find Hub networks in terms of performance, accuracy, and general reliability.

I also wanted to see how well “Lost Mode” (the feature that notifies you when someone else’s device picks up a lost tag) works. I also wanted to see if AirTags is still the market leader or if there is something better. Additionally, since the weather has been a little rough, I had to test how weatherproof these modern tags are.

With the second generation AirTags, I took with me chipolo cardA KeySmart SmartCardand a Lululook Aircard Pro.

Also: This Bluetooth tracker has effectively replaced my AirTags with its superior durability

Apart from the AirTag, these are all credit card-style trackers, and I deliberately chose these for the simple reason that they would be easier to find than smaller tags if tracking failed – I didn’t want to contribute to littering an area. In my testing and personal experience, there is no difference in performance between key fob tags and card-style tags, so it won’t stack the deck either way.

I took these trackers, unboxed them in my two-star motel room (fancy!), created a mountain of cardboard waste in the process, charged them immediately a portable wireless chargerConnected them to my iPhone or Android smartphone, and then scattered them around the parking lot of my motel.

To make testing harder, I left both my iPhone and Android handset in the hotel room when I went on my tag-dropping mission. I left them in places where someone could drop or leave their wallet or keys, but not so obvious that someone would pick them up to steal or throw them in the trash.

After hiding around in the bushes for a while, I went back to my room and waited a few hours before setting my tag on lost mode. As much as I don’t want to bore you with all the details of this experiment, I’ll just focus on the main points.

Also: This quirky little device solved my biggest problem with my Apple Watch

The best tag in terms of detection range, accurate detection and frequency of how many times it was detected by others in lost mode was AirTag. If I had to pick one tag, it would be the AirTag. This is the only tag I was able to pick up from inside the motel, which is a great accomplishment, considering I was one story up and the tag was behind several walls.

When it comes to third-party tags on Apple Find My Network, I found that they all work equally well. No one has the exact findings, but when it comes to being picked up by cars and pedestrians, they seem to work well with Apple devices.

But what about all of you who use Android?

The main difference I noticed with tags for Android devices is that I got lower pings from them in Lost Mode, even though I always had one tag for iOS and another tag for Android close to each other. I’m not sure whether there are more iPhones around or iPhones overall have a better (or perhaps more consistent) Finder tag detection range.

That said, all the tags I tested for Android pinged their location to me several times a day, more than enough to let me find them if I lost my keys or wallet.

As far as finding all non-AirTag tags goes, the tags beep loudly enough to be found over road traffic noise and even buried in bushes. This meant I didn’t have to crawl suspiciously in the bushes for very long to recover all my tags.

outcome

The TL;DR of all this is that any tag is better than no tag, and if you can’t use AirTag, using a third-party tag dramatically increases your chances of recovering a lost item. All these tags would give me the location of my lost items within an hour of putting them in lost mode and would keep pinging me their location throughout the day.