Những thiết bị theo dõi Bluetooth tốt nhất năm 2024

Format: Disc with hole | Compatibility: Android and iPhone | Water resistance: IPX5 (splash resistant) | Battery life: 2 years | Replaceable battery: Yes | Distance for left-behind alerts: 350 ft. | Phone finder function: Yes

Hands-on testing is great at smashing assumptions, and that’s what happened with the Chipolo One. This tracker’s crowd-sourced finding network cannot compare with Apple’s AirTag or Tile. In fact, when I left the Chipolo for 24 hours just outside the busy student union at UNM, I was never alerted that a member of the Chipolo community had detected my item. But as I used it and pictured how most people would use a tracker on a daily basis, the device proved its worth and earned its spot on my keyring.

The One is a small and colorful plastic disc with a hole. It works with both Apple and Android devices and requires an app which is simple to use and easily pairs new trackers. The app and tracking experience on an iPhone and a Galaxy phone were nearly identical, working equally well on both platforms. It rang the loudest of all the trackers, so lost items were quickly found around the house. Unlike other trackers, there was never a delay between pressing the Ring to Find button and hearing the trill. The ring delay for AirTag was never more than a few seconds and Tiles would generally connect and ring after no more than ten seconds. While that’s not a deal-breaking delay, it could add to the stress of rushing out the door.

Where the Chipolo One truly set itself apart was with its separation alerts. I would only get a half to two blocks away (or an average of 350 feet) before getting an alert asking if I’d forgotten an item. Neither AirTag nor Tile ever beat Chipolo to the punch. The alerts were consistent whether I was forgetting an item at home, at a coffee shop, or inside my car.

As far as losing stuff out in the wild, it will get you back to the spot where your phone and tracker were last paired. That means if you miss an alert or don’t have them turned on, Chipolo will give you directions (via your maps app) and take you right to where you left your item. In one test, I had a friend hide the tracker nearby when I wasn’t looking. I left the area and returned hours later, using the last location information to lead me within a few feet of the tracker’s precise location. Ringing the tracker then made it easy to find. Of course, if someone walks off with your tracked item, the Chipolo will be harder pressed to help you out.

If you’re concerned about lost luggage when you travel or if you worry you may lose things on trains or buses, this isn’t the tracker for you because of its much smaller finding network. But if you’re looking for a dead simple way to find your keys and make sure your jacket leaves the bar when you do, the Chipolo One is hard to beat.

Chipolo will also allow you to use Alexa to help find your keys. You’ll need to enable the Chipolo skill in the Alexa app and connect your Chipolo account. Relying on your smart home assistant to find your misplaced keys could make an on-time departure even easier.

Format: Smooth disc | Compatibility: iPhone | Water resistance: IP67 (water and dust-resistant) | Battery life: 1 year | Replaceable battery: Yes | Distance for left-behind alerts: 1,200 ft | Phone finder function: No

AirTags work with iOS’ Find My app and are registered to your Apple ID, so they don’t require any additional downloads. If you’ve used the Find My app before, you’ll likely understand how this works. These are the quietest of the trackers we tested and each time you press the Play Sound button, the tags only ring for seven seconds. You’ll need to keep pressing if you don’t find your item right away and AirTags can’t be used to ring your phone.

As for separation alerts, AirTags were consistent, always delivering a “left behind” alert when I traveled about 1,200 feet away, or about three square blocks, without an item. You can turn off separation alerts for any given tracker, as well as designate certain locations, such as your home or workplace, as exceptions for the notifications.

One feature that AirTags have that no other tag offers is the ability to tap into the ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless protocol. This allows you to play a fun game of hot and cold with an item when it’s within about 25 feet of your iPhone. Directional arrows and a diminishing distance meter on your iPhone’s screen point you to an item without having to ring it. This worked reliably about 75 percent of the time in my tests; sometimes it was just easier to ring the item when the directional finding couldn’t keep a lock on the tracker.

UWB is supported by iPhone models 11 and later and while newer Galaxy and Pixel phones also support UWB, no Android-compatible tracker has yet been released. In 2021, Tile announced one that would, but has since missed its promised release window of “early 2022.”

AirTag’s ability to locate a lost item out in the city is almost eerie. I had someone (who was not carrying an iPhone) take my bike with a tracker hidden under the seat to a location a little over a half mile away. I set out a few minutes later and toggled on Notify When Found in the Find My app. Within three minutes, I received a notification that the bike had been “seen” near an address. Tapping on Directions navigates to Apple Maps, which took me to a spot about 30 feet from the bike. Had it been obscured from view, I could have then used the Find Nearby button to activate the UWB locating features. Ringing the tag was too quiet to hear on the sidewalk.

If you want the same scary-precise community finding features, but with a louder ring and a hole in the tracker, the Chipolo One Spot is a solid option. It doesn’t offer UWB capabilities, however, and the separation alerts are the same as with AirTags (letting you get 1,200 feet away before a ping, versus an average of 350 feet with our top rec, Chipolo One classic).

Or, for a rechargeable option, the Pebblebee Clip is a good AirTag alternative. True, you can swap out the battery in Apple’s discs, but charging your tracker via USB-C every few months might be easier. The Pebblebee works with Apple’s Find My network and has the same setup as an AirTag. In my tests, it was spotted just as quickly as Apple’s tracker, and the left-behind alerts went off about the same distance away.

But the Pebblebee has a few advantages over AirTags: The black disk has a built-in metal attachment point and includes a small carabiner clip, so for most situations, you won’t need an additional accessory. The Pebblebee is far louder than Apple’s tracker, too. I also like that when you ping it from the app, it continues ringing until you hit stop instead of going silent after seven seconds. Pebblebee makes a rechargeable wallet tracker as well, which may be easier to slide in a billfold than the rounded AirTag. One word of warning, however: If you’re going to use it with Find My, don’t set it up with Pebblebee’s own app beforehand. If you do, you’ll have to do a factory reset before it’ll work with Apple’s app.

Format: Round disk with hole | Compatibility: Android phones | Water resistance: IPX5 (splash and rain-resistant) | Battery life: 12 months | Replaceable battery: Yes | Distance for left-behind alerts: N/A | Phone finder function: No

Chipolo makes three models of tracker: the One uses its own app on either iPhones or Android handsets, the One Spot pairs with Apple’s Find My network and the One Point taps into Google Find My Device system. I obtained the Google-compatible fob, along with the Pebblebee Clip for Android at the time of the April launch of Find My Device and tested them. I was seriously underwhelmed.

Find My Device purportedly taps into a crowdsourced network of more than a billion Android devices (participation is by default and Google automatically enrolled compatible devices in the service at launch unless users opted out). But when I performed the usual tests simulating lost keys, I got… nothing. For about an hour. When I finally got a ping, the app gave me a location for my lost item that was a few blocks off-base. Chalking the poor performance to the newness of the network, I put testing on hold for a couple months.

On a second set of tests, I had a friend hide fobs in different locations near the busy UNM campus. After marking the Chipolo One Point as lost, I got a notification about ten minutes later telling me it had been spotted by the community. Tapping the directions option in the app takes you to Google Maps that guides you to the tracker’s location, just like any other destination. When my blue dot met the location pin, I used the “ring to find” function and faintly heard the little disc’s song.

The performance of the Chipolo One Point tracker on Google’s Find My Device wasn’t quite as eerily accurate as my experience with AirTags — those directions, paired with the Ultra Wideband tech pinpointed the tracker’s exact location. Find My Device has a similar “hot/cold” function, but it’s not very helpful. Overall, the time it took for the crowdsourced finding to kick in was admirable, and a touch faster than Tile or Samsung. But there are caveats to Google’s finding capabilities.

For one, there’s no option for a left-behind alert, meaning if you want the Find My Device app to tell you when you’ve left the donut shop without your keys, it can’t. You also can’t use the fob to ring your misplaced phone. To be fair, AirTags can’t do that either but standard trackers from Chipolo, Samsung and Tile can. And finally, the notifications weren’t as timely as they could be — I’d often open the app to see that a lost item’s location had been updated, but never received a ping to that effect.

Both Chipolo’s One Point and Pebblebee’s Clip performed similarly in terms of crowdsourced finding abilities. Both are loud (around 84 decibels) and, obviously, the app experience is the same. Chipolo’s tag edged out Pebblebee’s because the Bluetooth connection had a comparatively long range in my tests and was quicker to connect and ring when I “lost” my keys in the couch. Setup was also incredibly easy: just squeeze the tracker and pop-up prompts guide you through the rest. Oh, and it’s $2 cheaper.

Yet there are a couple areas where the Pebblebee Clip for Android bests its rival, namely in the design, with a super sturdy metal attachment point and the rechargeable battery. No need to worry about buying a new battery. Plus it comes with a key chain ring, which is a nice touch.

Format: Oblong fob with hole | Compatibility: Samsung phones | Water resistance: IP67 (water and dust-resistant) | Battery life: 16 months | Replaceable battery: Yes | Distance for left-behind alerts: 1,300 ft. | Phone finder function: Yes  

Nothing can beat the vastness of Apple’s Find My network, since it relies on every nearby iPhone to help locate AirTags. The number of Samsung phones in the US may be smaller than the number of Apple handsets out there, but it’s still significant. The new SmartTag 2 relies on those phones to offer a finding network that may not best Apple’s, but is larger than anything else out there for Android at the moment. Of course, once Google unleashes its expanded Find My Device network, everything will change.

The SmartTag 2 only works with Samsung devices and after testing one out with a Galaxy S23, I was impressed how quickly it was able to find tagged items out in the wild, though the precision didn’t quite match that of Apple. Of all the trackers I’ve tried, I like the design of the SmartTag the best. It’s an oblong fob with a big hole for attaching directly to your keys, or you can buy the optional silicone case and ring Samsung offers. Its volume is louder than the AirTag and the Tile Pro, but not as loud as either the Chipolo One or the Pebblebee Clip. You can also change the tag’s ringtone or double squeeze it to ring your handset, both things that you can’t do with AirTags.

Setup is simple as well: once you remove the plastic pull tab, your phone senses the tracker and walks you through the standard permissions (location services, notifications) and warnings (don’t use the tracker on people). The companion app, SmartThings Find, tracks your Samsung devices and the SmartTag with an intuitive and clean Google Maps-based interface.

As for how the tag works in practice, I found the left behind alerts triggered reliably when I got about three blocks (1,200 feet or so) away when walking and about eight blocks away when driving. That’s far longer than Chipolo’s alerts, a little longer than Apple’s notifications and about on par with Tile’s left-behind feature.

When the tag is out of range and you enable Lost Mode, you’ll get an alert when it’s spotted by another Samsung phone. The tag also uses NFC to display your contact info and a custom note to anyone who finds the tracker, regardless of the brand of smartphone they carry. Of course, whoever finds it would need to know to hold it to the back of their phone to get the message, and it was harder to trigger with my iPhone when the tag was in the silicone holder.

To test the finding network, I asked a friend (without a phone in their pocket) to wander a half mile away with the tag. About 12 minutes after turning on Lost Mode, I got a message that the SmartTag was “spotted by a nearby device” with a dropped pin. I tapped Navigate in the app, which opened Google Maps and led me to a point directly across a moderately busy street from where my friend was standing. If I’d left the tag behind somewhere I’d recently been, just seeing the location on the map would have been enough to jog my memory as to where I might have dropped my stuff. But if someone had stolen the tagged item and I was wandering the streets trying to get it back, vigilante style, it may not have been precise enough to help. It may not be as accurate as the iPhone-and-AirTag combo, but the SmartTag 2 is a solid entry in the Bluetooth tracker market and a good option if you have a Samsung phone.