Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Best Personal Tracking Devices 2021”.
What’S up folks how’s it going, this watch hope you guys are all doing well and today we’re going to be talking about personal tracking devices. Now, since the launch of the apple air tags several months ago, i want to test out some of the best personal tracking tech. That’S available right now from simple to more complicated and see how it compares against the air tags from a usability standpoint. Reliability as well as safety and security, which is super important when you’re trying to track down your lost items now. First, let’s talk about one of the most basic tracking systems that you can find out there.
Typically, on places like amazon, we have these uh generic key finders, where they usually come with a number of different receivers. In this case, we have four color configured receivers and a remote control. Now, with this unit, each receiver has a light as well as a little speaker inside. So when you press the button associated with the receiver it’ll flash light as well as play a relatively loud little tone, and it works for about 30 meters distance. It can go through walls and couches, and things like that, since it uses an 80 db. Radio frequency transmission and the receivers are powered by a standard cr2032, 3 volt battery and the battery rifle will depend upon usage. It could last several months if not years just depends on how many times you initiate the receiver, but generally they’re super power efficient and very easy to attach any of these receivers to a keychain uh, perhaps to stick it to remote control or any item with some Double-Sided tape, super versatile super simple to use, don’t need a smartphone or anything and it’s plug and play plus for under 15. It’S probably one of the cheapest personal tracking devices that you can get now being such a low-tech solution.
There are certainly a lot of limitations to a product like this. Firstly, there are no directional inputs on in terms of which direction and what specific location uh your receiver is located. You pretty much have to use your ears or see where the light is coming from.
If that’s even possible and obviously there’s no a gps, a built-in no live tracking, no assistance from a public network that would help you find any of these receivers and no parent to bluetooth or any of your smartphone devices for any other additional assistance or support to Find your lost item now. Next, let’s look at something a little bit more advanced, specifically a device that can do independent, real-time, gps, tracking and probably one of the best devices out there that’s been around for quite a while. Is the trackie this little box that measures around 44 by 38 millimeters is a live gps tracking device? It actually has a built-in lte 4g, a networking inside and typically with a service like this, you are going to be paying a monthly fee for the data transmission and for all that live tracking information and uh, with the tracking system you’re paying around 20 a month Month to month, or uh 10 a month on a long term contract now the benefits of live gps tracking are many as you can imagine. This works independently of your smartphone, since it has its own uh, gps and a personal data connection. You can easily install this on a car. It has a magnetic mount built inside. You can put this on a person child dog, anything that you want live tracking anywhere in the world in real time. Furthermore, if you’re indoors and a gps signal law cannot be acquired by the tracky receiver, there is a database of wi-fi mac addresses within the trackie service that will help you find your tracky receiver in that rare circumstance. As long as it recognizes a mac address, that’s in the tracky database now, besides having to be dedicated to an independent service plan for this tracking devices, one of the other kind of downside is going to be power, consumption and specific battery life in real-time tracking mode.
Where it’s pinning a gps signal every one to five minutes, your battery life will last anywhere between two to three days. Now, with more longer tracking intervals set to one to three days, you could potentially get battery life ranging from 30 to 75 days according to trekkie. Now that being said, if you’re using trackie specifically to track your car and you have access to usb power through your car’s power source, you can easily wire in a micro, usb connection to power the device and they also sell a 3500 milliamp hour battery life. Extender that will extend your battery life to uh two weeks, with one minute tracking and up to 10 months, with one a day tracking. Moreover, if you’re specifically looking to track a vehicle, i would definitely recommend checking out one of the odb2 tracking devices that are out there on amazon they’re, very affordable uh this one over here, the land nc gps tracker is around 25. It gets powered through your vehicle’s odb2 connector, which is a universal connection. It does require a subscription service like what we find on the tracking system, because this is a live 4g lte, real-time, gps tracking device. So you get all the benefits of the real-time subscription service. Such as text and email updates, uh, speed, uh readings as well as, if you want to put it in stolen or lost mode. It’S definitely a handy thing to have, and it’s super discreet since most of these connectors are out of sight and uh.
Most people wouldn’t know if you had one of these tracking devices installed when you’re just driving the car. Now next, let’s talk about one of the most popular personal tracking devices that you can get out there and that’s the tile based system tile has been around for many years. Super affordable comes in a whole bunch of different form factors you get the essential pack like. We have over here it comes with a little mate, a sticker and a slim.
The slim is basically something you can form fit into most people’s wallets. The sticker is something you can essentially stick onto anything as a double-sided adhesive backing and the mate and mate pro are basically universal, keychain style tracking devices, where you can essentially attach them to many different things, including your keys. Now all tile trackers utilize bluetooth to connect to your ios or android device, and the range differs from each of them. For example, the tile pro has the greatest range of up to 400 feet.
The tile mate and slim are both rated at 200 feet and the sticker is rated up to 150 feet now. Setting up your tile tracker is really simple and straightforward. You essentially assign it a identification or designation, keys, wallet, etc.
When you want to find that a specific item, you basically press on it and you hear a little custom ringtone that you’ve assigned specifically to that tile and you simply find where it’s located. Based on that auditory cue. There are no spatial or directional cues within the tile, app itself like what we’re going to see with the apple air tags.
You simply find it using your ears and in this situation, where you’re out of bluetooth range, it will just tell you the last gps coordinates of your associated pair device, your smartphone, you can go to that location and then connect via bluetooth. To find your tracker, you can also utilize the anonymous and secure tile network where the tile will try to connect to other tile users out there and give you a gps coordinates to aid. Your search now, there’s also a paid premium subscription service from tile.
That will get you battery life replacements, as well as things like smart alerts. That will notify you of when an important tracker is being left behind backpack keys and things like that from your associate paired device. Now the battery life is somewhat user replaceable, depending on which tracker you choose from tile.
So, for example, the mate and mate pro utilize, a replaceable battery, they can easily access and they both have. Basically a one-year life expectancy. The slim and the sticker actually have a built-in a little battery.
The slim is rated up to three years battery life two years for the sticker and all of the tile trackers are fairly durable and somewhat water resistant now. Finally, let’s talk about the apple air tags and in terms of the overall design and infrastructure, it’s actually quite similar to the tile system. Basically, you have a bluetooth tracker that has a 100 meter communication range between the ios device that it’s paired to.
It will also utilize the gps coordinates of that ios device if those two things become separated and further than that, if you put it in a lost mode and it’s separated from your ios device from a long range communication distance, it will also utilize the potential millions Of apple ios users that are nearby anonymously and securely to find your air tag very cool, but the big thing about the air tags is utilizes. The ultra wide band u1 chip – that’s found on the iphone 12 and 11. To give you precise, directional guidance.
To give you the exact location of your air tag within the centimeter or inch making it one of the most precise and easy to find trackers out there once you’re in within that bluetooth, slash u1 chip range, which is kind of narrow. In my experience, anywhere between 25 to 50 feet and there’s also a built-in little speaker, so you can utilize a personal ringtone for your error tag. If you visually can’t see it and it’s hidden underneath somewhere beyond that, the setup is probably one of the most simplest out of any tracker out there. You just bring it close to a new ios device that you want to pair it to, and both devices will automatically connect. Encrypting your air tag to your apple id, and then you can name your air tag and tie it specifically to your keys wallet. Anything you want all the communication is fully encrypted with apple’s high standards.
So if anyone else finds your air tag, it will automatically notify you when it is in lost mode in terms of some of the other features. Uh. The air tags are ip67 dust and water resistant. You also have a user accessible battery uses a cr2032 coin cell, very easy to replace, there’s lots of accessories out there. One of the kind of flaws of the design initially is that you don’t have a built-in key chain, luke or lock, or anything like that. You’Re kind of forced to use either some kind of double-sided tape or accessories which can get quite expensive. But there’s some cheaper alternative options out there, both from apple and third-party manufacturers to get a keychain attachments and things like that in terms of price point you’re only looking at thirty dollars for one tracker and about a hundred dollars for four air tags, which is uh Fairly reasonable and due to the fact that it’s probably one of the most secure, precise personal trackers out there, i would definitely say that it’s pretty good value for the money. Furthermore, if you’re an android user like myself, primarily unfortunately, the air tags will only work on the ios platform and android users are kind of out of luck. If they want to use air tags, they’re going to have to stick with tile or some other tracker which kind of sucks, because it would be definitely nice to have this kind of technology on at the android platform, but really other than that guys.
That’S really definitely love to know what you guys think is the best personal tracking devices out there. Are you using a one right now? Do you think it’s worth it or handy or useful? Definitely i would love to know what you guys think check out the description down below for more details about everything. We’Ve talked about, make sure you have a post notifications turned on liked our video and subscribe.
If you haven’t already we’ll see you next time and take care .