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So I lost my keys...

maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
Original poster
May 3, 2009
73,697
43,763
As the title states. I missed placed my keys, I whip out my iPhone, open up the find my app and try to locate my keys. But it doesn't show anything. No map I'm unable to sound an alert, nothing. The airtag is out of range and there's nothing the iPhone can do :mad:

I got this to handle this very thing. I eventually found them upstairs in my bedroom the old fashioned way, oh the location finally updated one I was holding my keys. So in my somewhat small house as I stand on the stairs the airtag was out of range. I'm very disappointed
 
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Typical stick frame house, my wifi is downstairs and I have no issues with that signal
 
maflynn said:
Typical stick frame house, my wifi is downstairs and I have no issues with that signal
Click to expand...
I wonder if you have a bad AirTag. My old Tile seems to work better than that. I can find my keys anywhere in my two level house via the alarm sound. Of course I don’t get guided to it on my iPhone like the Airtags are supposed to do.
 
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The AirTags are only UWB and bluetooth (and from what others have said, the bluetooth radio in them doesn't have a very significant range) - no doubt getting a year out of the CR2032 is part of that rationale.

As a test of your iPhone's bluetooth radio, I'd do some tests to see what kinda range you have with your AirPods (presuming you have a pair) :)
 
fischersd said:
The AirTags are only UWB and bluetooth (and from what others have said, the bluetooth radio in them doesn't have a very significant range) - no doubt getting a year out of the CR2032 is part of that rationale.

As a test of your iPhone's bluetooth radio, I'd do some tests to see what kinda range you have with your AirPods (presuming you have a pair) :)
Click to expand...
When I tested in the house, (when I first got them) I found the range to be about 30 feet or so, before the app gave me enhanced directions.
 
maflynn said:
As the title states. I missed placed my keys, I whip out my iPhone, open up the find my app and try to locate my keys. But it doesn't show anything. No map I'm unable to sound an alert, nothing. The airtag is out of range and there's nothing the iPhone can do :mad:

I got this to handle this very thing. I eventually found them upstairs in my bedroom the old fashioned way, oh the location finally updated one I was holding my keys. So in my somewhat small house as I stand on the stairs the airtag was out of range. I'm very disappointed
Click to expand...
This is expected (poor) behaviour. AirTags Bluetooth location only works within 10 meters or less indoors and 2-3 meters for UWB. Also it doesn’t work well with walls.
Good luck if you are not in the same room with the AirTag.
 
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AirPods Pro multi device support works almost exactly the same as shure SE215 BT1, which is based on BT4.2. I really don’t see how BT5.0 increases its operation range over 4.2, at Least in the house I live.
Haven’t got my hands on airtags yet but if OP experience is anything to go by, Apple has already failed.
Yeah, sample size of 1. But it is enough of a caution for potential buyers. You really only need one negative case to let people start to question the quality of your products.
 
I currently have an airtag on one of the cats, my house is 2 stories and ~ 3,000 sqft.I do get the "out of range" quite a bit, when I go upstairs or downstairs it finds him sooner or later and eventually gets down to exact location. Similar outside, when he is on the side of the house and I'm in the middle in the back, no signal, when I go around the corner, it connects ...
My takeaway from the past 3 or so weeks is that you have to physically move around and get within ~20-30 feet of the tags, and even closer depending on the walls, but it is reliable.

The cat is new to our household, he's a jumper and we have dogs on 2 sides of the house, we have another cat who jumped into the neighbors yard before, so I wanted to try the airtags for piece of mind purposes. And the cats are indoor, outside in the yard only under supervision.
 
I think the original post describes expected behavior. He was out of range of the AirTag so naturally Find My didn't have an updated position. Had he waited a little while and moved around his house normally it would have updated in time. These low power devices with one-year battery life don't update as often as people think.
 
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maflynn said:
As the title states. I missed placed my keys, I whip out my iPhone, open up the find my app and try to locate my keys. But it doesn't show anything. No map I'm unable to sound an alert, nothing. The airtag is out of range and there's nothing the iPhone can do :mad:

I got this to handle this very thing. I eventually found them upstairs in my bedroom the old fashioned way, oh the location finally updated one I was holding my keys. So in my somewhat small house as I stand on the stairs the airtag was out of range. I'm very disappointed
Click to expand...
I'm a little confused. Did you not just go from room to room until you got a signal? I guess if you didn't know that they were in the house that would make some sense but still going from room to room until you verified that they weren't in the house would still be my strategy to start.
 
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azmscle said:
Do you base all of your decision making on only one person’s experience? Sometimes individual products can be faulty.
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I guess it’s more than just a wee bit of trolling. I haven’t looked, but I’d guess there’s been no posts by that person indicating they were ever interested in AirTags. So, it’s VERY easy to make a decision not to do something when you weren’t going to do it anyway :)
 
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chabig said:
I think the original post describes expected behavior. He was out of range of the AirTag so naturally Find My didn't have an updated position. Had he waited a little while and moved around his house normally it would have updated in time. These low power devices with one-year battery life don't update as often as people think.
Click to expand...
The fact that there was no map for it says to me that there’s a problem with it. Because, even RIGHT after setting them up, if you immediately move 100 yards away, Find My would be aware of where you set it up and show that location… someplace roughly 100 yards away.
 
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ian87w said:
Maybe Apple assumed people using airtags are only hipsters with studio apartments…. :D
Click to expand...
It will be useful if you drop your keys to the underworld of your couch as demonstrated in Apple’s video ad.
But if the couch is in another room… good luck going into the correct room first 😂
 
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Bluetooth has limitations.
The problem here would exist if the Airtag performs worse than other Bluetooth devices. It would be interesting if @maflynn could do the same test with another Bluetooth device, such as EarPods.
If the tags perform worse than EarPods in maintaining BT connection, then they are indeed poor.

So I am not entirely surprised that they might fail to connect if not in range. What surprises me is how many people buy these things under the mistaken impression that they operate as trackers, for use on their dogs, etc…
 
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