Okay, I've been a Tile guy for a while. I liked Tile, first on the market, got a lot of traction out there, and for us Android folks it was the only option out there.
I had a regular old 'tile' and I had a few of them set up on my keychain and my wife's and my kid's. But... The battery would die (and it's a $16 battery) about every 6 months. Then if I didn't set up the Tile app on my newer phone when I'd get it, it didn't really help me (see usually I was using the Tile to find my phone). I liked how I could integrate Tile with my Google Home, so I could ask my Google Assistant to find my car keys... Handy stuff.
The drawback unfortunately with Tile was that it's only as good if you have a lot of other Tile users around. When it first came out, it was nice to see Tiles everywhere, then you knew that if I had left my keys at a restaurant, then when I would be somewhere far enough away, I'd need to have people with Tile near where my keys were to 'see' it and report that it had found it. As Apple adopted the 'find my' format, it seemed less people were buying Tile as their device (iPhone) had something built in. Then Android adopted the Find Hub format. So you didn't need an app specific thing - something that's built in to your phone. (And am I hearing rumours they'll work together? Nawww... Ya?)
So it seems over the years less and less folks running dedicated Tile. Well, shucks. Now to look into trackers that will work 'natively' ... Recently, you're starting to see trackers that can work on either of the 2 main networks.
Today, I'm giving you my review of KeySmart's SmartCard (gen 3), which will run you about $39USD per card (discounts for multiples, etc...).
Let's take a look and unbox it
It's lovely in its simplicity. I must have missed how thin it was going to be, thinking that there should be at least a port to charge it... Being able to charge it via Qi was really a big selling point for me. No more trying to find an expensive battery (don't recall ever the Tile app telling me the fob's battery was low).
I loved being able to just drop it on a wireless charger and it just lights up charging. According to the stats, it should last about 11 months before needing a charge again (I don't get a proper battery reading from Find Hub, it just says "okay" for battery).
Setting it up for Android's Find Hub was simple enough; you pressed the button on the card and in the Find Hub it showed up
Bingo Bango, it's in my list now as SmartCard (I could rename it to something like 'wallet' if I liked, but I'll leave it for now as I only have the one).
Using it is pretty simple. Just put it where you want
And if you need to find it, go to the Find Hub. The option is to make it 'sound' and it'll play a little chime.
What's cooler is that if you go into the 'find' option, if it's near enough to you you can have a bit of a radar feel by seeing the 'symbol' fill in more the closer you get (or less filled the further).
So far, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to. I haven't (luckily) lost anything. I would leave it at home and check in on it while out on errands (and ask my family if it started to make beeps... It did).
I wish it gave a better battery read out other than 'ok' so I could get a sense of how long it would last before I'd need to pop it back on a charger. I can just barely get it to register charing while in my wallet, so maybe I can get away with that now and again. It doesn't seem to like my MagSafe style portable chargers.
And for the price, which is about what you'd pay for a Tile these days, a little bit more, but it's going to be thinner, and more easily found as there are going to be way more Android users out there with Find Hub on than Tile users, which is the biggest benefit.
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