So back in the day, I was a huge Tile user. I had them on my keys and all my bags. I thought it was the greatest idea and used it often because I would lose my stuff all the time (especially my keys). The only downside of the system was that it needed other Tiles to find where it was if it was missing and not at where you had it last. I did lose my keys one time at the bar, and it did work flawlessly. I knew exactly where I lost them and was able to retrieve the keys the next day. So I have no qualms about the Tile products at all.
Here comes the downfall of me using their product, Apple created the Find My network. It isn't that I necessarily move over to Apple products just because they announce something. I tend to weigh the pros and cons of the products and pick the one that works the best for me. Realistically, the Find My network devices and the Tile devices are the same things. The difference though is their network reach. See, the devices don't have a connection to cellular, so when they are lost and not in reach of your phone, they need a way to keep giving a location. They both handle it similarly, they look for other devices that they can connect to and send their location back to their respective servers. In Tile's case, it needs another Tile to report back the current location. For the Find My network, it needs just ANY Apple device that is online to report back its current location. See the difference now? The network of Apple's devices is just so much larger and more common than the Tile network. It isn't a fault of Tile's at the moment, it is just the reality of the situation. Because of that, I have switched over my trackers to Find My network devices. This brings us to the Chipolo CARD Spot.
Switching most of my Tile devices was easy at first. For the majority of them, I switched over to just an AirTag and moved on with my day. There was one Tile product though that I have been holding on to for a while now because there wasn't a direct replacement. The Tile Slim. The Tile Slim was basically in the form of a credit card and went into your wallet so that you can track your wallet location (something I do lose a lot too). I relied on it pretty heavily and the AirTag just doesn't fit in the wallet correctly so I had to keep it. Because of this, I kept Tile around for a good bit. That is until the Chipolo CARD Spot was released.
I finally got my hands on it and it is pretty much the same as the Tile version. The real only difference is that this can work with the Find My network, so it takes advantage of all those Apple devices for connectivity and location. The setup was done in the Find My app just like an AirTag and it was very seamless. It pretty much is an AirTag, just in the form of a credit card.
After using it for a couple of weeks, it has worked flawlessly. I have actually lost my wallet already and was able to use the device to find it just like an AirTag. Because of this decision, it has come quite relevant to me that some devices may need to resort to using Apple's Find My network to give Apple some competition. Realistically, the only reason why I switched from using Tile for years was because of this network. If you ask my honest opinion, I don't see much of a difference between the Chipolo version and the Tile version except for the network. Even the price is the same, $35 for 1 and $60 for 2. I think if the Tile version had to Find My network, I most likely would have just purchased another Tile device since I have been using them for so many years.
If you are looking to purchase a Chipolo CARD Spot, you can find them here: https://chipolo.net/en-us/products/chipolo-card-spot?cl=header
And if you have an Android device and can't use the Find My network, I would suggest getting the Time Slim at this link: https://www.thetileapp.com/en-us/store/tiles/slim
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