How has real world performance been for you?

[Apple_Robert]

At this point in time as a day one adopter, I am ambivalent about my purchase as I haven't experienced any real benefit thus far, not that I was expecting any drastic change. If geo-fencing is added at some point, I would be more inclined to purchase again.

 

[Celf]

I have only needed to actually find something once since attaching these to various items, I put one in my sunglass case and needed to find it at the house, the precision finding arrow was useless and when I played the sound, I could barley hear it through my sunglasses case, if I didn't know approximately where to look, I would not have found them using the sound. Now granted the AirTag was in my case but I had a Tile Pro in there before and it was way louder!

I also do not like the way the sound ramps up as opposed to just playing full blast from the start, they probably do this for battery life. The sound does not play for very long either.


I will say that that Apple is known for releasing superior products/features but thats not the case here, if the precision finding worked off cell towers, that would be more Apple like.

The one missing feature that I'm disappointed has not been included at release, is the geo fence. I would like to be alerted I'm leaving the house without my wallet or sunglasses.

I just pulled up Find My and it does show the location of all my items so I will keep the AirTags because I like that better than a separate Tile app that has to be running in the background

I'm very disappointed with the two Airtags I bought. Like Drober30, the U1 chip is nothing more and nothing less than a gimmick. On both my Airtags the "precision finding" 😂 kicks in when I almost can grab the thing I was looking for. The sound quality is just horrible. When something is pushing against the sides of the Airtag the volume degrades even more...example: keys & airtag in your pocket. The only reason to keep them is the find my network. For stuff that never leaves the house I keep using my old Tile Pro, much more effective for in-house use.

 

[haruhiko]

I'm very disappointed with the two Airtags I bought. Like Drober30, the U1 chip is nothing more and nothing less than a gimmick. On both my Airtags the "precision finding" 😂 kicks in when I almost can grab the thing I was looking for. The sound quality is just horrible. When something is pushing against the sides of the Airtag the volume degrades even more...example: keys & airtag in your pocket. The only reason to keep them is the find my network. For stuff that never leaves the house I keep using my old Tile Pro, much more effective for in-house use.

Same as my real life experience with them. Find my network is great, precision finding is crap.

 

[Theryesider]

Only received mine yesterday slightly disappointed, hid it under a cushion on the couch only 9ft away, but still had the swirling white dots.
Tried leaving keys upstairs directly in a room above, it picked it up no bother, but no indication it was on another floor.
For £29 no great complaints just thought even after watching all the YouTube videos it would be slightly more wowing.

 

[NotTooLate]

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.

I think i read somewhere that you need to put it in "lost mode" to have a more frequent ping ,as i dont think the device is trying to do continues location tracking in "default" mode , but i must admit i didnt pay enough attention to the device yet.

 

[Celf]

Apple: "If your AirTag is nearby, your iPhone can lead you straight to it with Precision Finding"

In daily use:

 

[crrood]

I was very disappointed. When I first got it, it worked about 3/4's of the time over a dozen quick inside the house tests for precision finding. Constantly having to switch modes to get it to locate consistently though.
About 4 days later, a friend asked me about it and I tried everything I could think of and it couldn't be found even sitting right next to it. It hadn't even moved from where I'd originally been testing it.
After an hour on the phone with Apple Support trying all sorts of solutions, nothing worked. And it's not worth driving an hour to an Apple Store for repair. So it and the the keyring case with it is being returned.