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How has real world performance been for you?

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darthbane2k

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 22, 2009
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Just curious how real world performance has been so far. Has anyone been able to successfully track a shared set of keys? Their cat / dog?
Has the find my network proven to be reliable?
 
So far not good but I only gave it one test run.

It works fine if I have location services on my phone and the AirTag is in bluetooth range.

But when I tried relying on the Find My network it just didn't update at all. Not once in an hour. This was in London where there was people and cars everywhere. I even turned on location services for my work iPhone on a separate Apple ID but it still didn't update the location while I was out.

No idea what to make of that, hopefully just a one off glitch and they need some time to calibrate or something. They do update just fine with location services on my phone while in bluetooth range but considering these are for finding lost items that's not really good enough.
 
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arohex said:
I’ve had it on my cat since yesterday and it’s updated his location around the various streets in our neighbourhood a lot more often than tile ever did. So far, so good.
Click to expand...
It's interesting that your cat gets close to so many iDevices in his wandering outside.
 
So far worked flawlessly.. when in lost mode gets picked up exponentially quicker than the tile Pro’s I have
 
Polly Mercocet said:
So far not good but I only gave it one test run.

It works fine if I have location services on my phone and the AirTag is in bluetooth range.

But when I tried relying on the Find My network it just didn't update at all. Not once in an hour. This was in London where there was people and cars everywhere. I even turned on location services for my work iPhone on a separate Apple ID but it still didn't update the location while I was out.

No idea what to make of that, hopefully just a one off glitch and they need some time to calibrate or something. They do update just fine with location services on my phone while in bluetooth range but considering these are for finding lost items that's not really good enough.
Click to expand...
It is possible that a lot of people haven't updated their phones or have opted out of being part of the mesh network.
 
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Apple_Robert said:
It is possible that a lot of people haven't updated their phones or have opted out of being part of the mesh network.
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You can’t opt out. You can turn off Bluetooth. Also, no need to update to 14.5 to pass along anonymous location data via the Find My network.
 
Apple_Robert said:
You can turn off Find My.
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You can turn off location services for the app, yes. That just means that the app won’t be able to use your location. Your phone will still provide location data for AirTags as part of the Find My network. This is obvious based on the lack of an ALWAYS location permission setting.
 
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Disappointing - gave my wallet to my wife containing the air tag and she went to pick something up from the store (she was well aware of course, me being excited to try it out).

The first ping happened after 15 minutes, about a mile away.
Second happened after another 15 minutes had passed, 2 miles away even though it's been sat on the car seat beside her; nowhere near the store, in the middle of a busy city (by this time she was already out of the car, in the shop and paying for groceries).

10 minutes later she pulled into the driveway and then instantly showed up on 'Find My' again as being near me...

Other tests later in the day in a large enclosed shopping centre revealed that if you leave your item (with AirTag) somewhere you'll probably never it again as all you get is the "no signal" message. Any kind of walls or ceiling seems to render the device ineffectual.

In my eyes, I'm disappointed and will be returning. I honestly don't know what I was expecting, but I was expecting a lot better performance than this.
 
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vesixe7696 said:
Disappointing - gave my wallet to my wife containing the air tag and she went to pick something up from the store (she was well aware of course, me being excited to try it out).

The first ping happened after 15 minutes, about a mile away.
Second happened after another 15 minutes had passed, 2 miles away even though it's been sat on the car seat beside her; nowhere near the store, in the middle of a busy city (by this time she was already out of the car, in the shop and paying for groceries).

10 minutes later she pulled into the driveway and then instantly showed up on 'Find My' again as being near me...

Other tests later in the day in a large enclosed shopping centre revealed that if you leave your item (with AirTag) somewhere you'll probably never it again as all you get is the "no signal" message. Any kind of walls or ceiling seems to render the device ineffectual.

In my eyes, I'm disappointed and will be returning. I honestly don't know what I was expecting, but I was expecting a lot better performance than this.
Click to expand...
lol I just put the AirTag in my car and went to the gas station with it. After going back home with the AirTag inside the car, now Find My is still showing my “car” inside the gas station. It’s completely useless.
 
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haruhiko said:
lol I just put the AirTag in my car and went to the gas station with it. After going back home with the AirTag inside the car, now Find My is still showing my “car” inside the gas station. It’s completely useless.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one. I really wanted to like this as I'm excited about the technology, but I only see it giving you a very negligible chance of ever finding a lost item again, particularly if you leave it in an enclosed shopping centre. By the time it pings to notify you of where your wallet is, it'll be LONG gone and probably stolen.

Perhaps this might be more useful for someone who is completely unable to keep track of anything and routinely loses their keys or their wallet within their own home or leaves their stuff at friends houses or at their workplace? For me, it would be more useful if something "Tagged" was to drop out of my pocket in any random place and still be reliably trackable, which it is not.
 
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For me it worked like it supposed to. Purposely left it hidden in random busy public areas (set to lost mode), and I would always get a notification of the location after x amount of minutes. Which is perfect for what it is, and greatly helps you find a lost item, especially if that item is stationary.

Those that treat this like some sort of real time tracker, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!!!!!
 
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I put my keys on the dining room table and walked a couple rooms over and it couldn’t find it. It told me to walk around and get closer. It’s good if you lose your keys in your couch and need a sound to guide you to it. Aside from that, I think putting my phone number attached to my set of keys will probably accomplish the same thing as the tags. Returning my set of 4.
 
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I think it was and is reasonable to expect it to have an accurate last known location when separated from the phone. But at least right now that isn’t happening. The phone should be able to track this in some way (its position when it loses a bt connection)
 
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I just dug out an old android phone with Nfc and switched the airtag on lost mode to demonstrate what happens when an android user finds one and scans one. Nothing happened, no response at all. Has anyone got this to work? Granted it was a Galaxy S6.
 
darthbane2k said:
I just dug out an old android phone with Nfc and switched the airtag on lost mode to demonstrate what happens when an android user finds one and scans one. Nothing happened, no response at all. Has anyone got this to work? Granted it was a Galaxy S6.
Click to expand...

This worked for me using the Fold 2. But instead of taping the top of the phone(like on the iPhone) on the white side, I had to tap it on the middle of the phone. In my experience, the majority of Android phones have their NFC located in the middle of the device.
 
haruhiko said:
lol I just put the AirTag in my car and went to the gas station with it. After going back home with the AirTag inside the car, now Find My is still showing my “car” inside the gas station. It’s completely useless.
Click to expand...
Haha! After 8 hours the location finally updated! I guess someone passed by my car.

but what I wanted from the AirTag is not general “GPS” location (my car has an app for that), I want precise location inside the parking lot, which it failed.
 
cwosigns said:
You can turn off location services for the app, yes. That just means that the app won’t be able to use your location. Your phone will still provide location data for AirTags as part of the Find My network. This is obvious based on the lack of an ALWAYS location permission setting.
Click to expand...

Settings > Apple ID > Find My > Find My iPhone > Find My network - flipping that off means your phone will not detect/update other people’s airtags. But you also cannot use Find My at all.
 
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People need to understand these things are a simple $30 device without its own gps. Do the research prior to purchasing them so you know what you are getting. There are many gps based trackers for real time tracking available if that’s what you need.
 
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A real world performance limitation is the lack of a BT signal strength indicasator that can be used as a distance indicator. The tile has this and in real world locating, the Tile will indicate you are within 100 meters of the item, the Airtag you will have to walk around until you get within UWB range.. Unless you can hear the sound, which is also no where as loud as a tile..

Apple, please add a BT signal based distance indicator to the find my app.

the work around is to continuously try and ping the tag to make a noise, Find My will tell you if you are in BT range.. sort of works, but it clunky..
 
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