RockyRoad

Apple have recently announced their Airtag - https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/20...oduces-airtag/

Could be a cheap alternative to a GPS tracker if you hide it under the seat or something. No it won't have the same capabilities as a proper tracker but then there's no annual fees and only costs £30 assuming you're in the Apple ecosystem. Plus it'll be very easy to hide it and doesn't need wired in. Can't see anything on battery life which will be a real killer if it doesn't last long.

MrRtm

There's plenty of cheap Chinese trackers that use a sim card that you can wire in under the dash, pretty accurate too.

JdmSti2006

links?

RockyRoad

Don’t you still have to pay for the sim and what happens when the car battery is disconnected?

MrRtm

Aliexpress, just search gps tracker

Pretty easy to wire in a ups between the tracker and battery.

I've just had a look and realised the days are gone when you could stick a tenner on a payg sim and the data would roll over indefinitely until used. If it still did updating gps every hour would use mere megabytes a day so a 99p sim card and 10 credit could last about 20 months in such a device. Now you'd have to buy the cheapest sim you could and top up monthly or get a cheap monthly sim, cheapest I've just seen is £4 so £48 a year ain't so bad, cheaper if your already on contract and get a deal for a second sim. Not as cost effective as it was now the network providers are all money grabbing *******s admittedly.

RockyRoad

Those costs quickly add up over a few years. How much does a “proper” tracker cost nowadays I wonder. I’m going to be keeping an eye on these Airtags to see how they work. I think it has the capacity to be quite good and getting a 4 pack for £100 means there’s a few spare for keys when they inevitably get lost in the house.

JackClark

Battery is supposed to last a year.

RockyRoad

That seems more than reasonable to me if it really does last that long.

MrRtm

I've just looked these up properly (I don't do apple, it's overpriced ****e, and this further proves so) and these are NOT gps, they are bluetooth, nfc and although they call it a u1 chip it's likely a variant of the protocol smart devices use such as zigbee which has a higher range than bluetooth but still not gps. They are what £39 or 4 for £100, you can get the same ble/nfc tags on Aliexpress for less than 2 quid and they've been around ages. Why would I pay 15x because its apple? **** that

Edit: U1 has a range of 250m apparently, still not gps and 250m goes by real quick in a scooby

RockyRoad

I thought it was made pretty clear by Apple they aren’t GPS. Not going to argue they’re overpriced but there’s a convenience to them that you don’t get with options from Aliexpress and that is worth more to some people.

JackClark

The advantage over some tat from Aliexpress is nobody else is running the app needed to find your Aliexpress tag, you will be the only person able to report it's location, basically useless outside of your home. The Apple tags report via other iPhones, there are a lot of people with iPhones.

JackClark