Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot effective with cars, better with tracking luggage.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 May 2024
I researched AirTags for a year and watched countless videos so I had a good idea whether these were worth it or not for our cars before buying. Overall, they have delivered about halfway to what I expected. They definitely do not perform as well as many of us want to believe. I’m talking about putting Air Tags In cars, specifically. AirTag’s don’t really “track” anything – rather, you can see an objects last known location where and when it bounced off an iPhone’s Bluetooth signal.
We have an AirTag in each of our cars in hopes it’d be easier to find incase they ever got stolen. Unfortunately, this has come to be a bit of a waste of money.
Cons for AirTags in cars specifically:
- In remote areas it’s really hard to get a location.
- It’s hard to get a location on fast roads.
- If the “thief” doesn’t have an iPhone – you’re relying on people’s signals around them and it might only blip on the network once every 10 minutes if travelling.
- A thief may be alerted by their own phone that they are being tracked by an AirTag which means they could locate it on the car and throw it out. Apparently, they can play a noise on the AirTag to find it easier, this renders the whole concept useless.
- You have to open up the AirTag yourself to remove the speakers if you don’t want it to be found. There’s no way to disable it in the app. This costs time and risks damaging the device.
In summary, it has been a waste to buy this specifically for our cars. However, it does give you some peace of mind when you’re away from your car. Such as: when it’s at the mechanic and you want to see they’re not abusing or joyriding your car. When you’re parked away from home and want reassurance your car is still there! Or, if you’ve parked in an unfamiliar town/big car park and can’t find your car, you can see the location your phone pinged on it last, even if it was hours ago.
For luggage bags, we tracked our checked suitcase on a transatlantic flight (popped the AirTag in the suitcase) and got reassurance that the bag was on the same plane and landed in the same destination. This took away some stress. I would recommend them for this reason, as they could find your luggage in an area with lots of people, quite quickly (lots of iPhones about).
Still, this has it’s limits. At one point the luggage was left in a house and it didn’t ping onto the Apple network for 3 days!! This is despite there being a residential road out front with passing cars. This just shows that your object is well and truly lost if it’s gone remote - and it doesn't take much to drop of the grid completley. This is NOT as good as GPS, so don’t order it if that’s what you’re expecting.