Tile sells a line of small, Bluetooth-enabled gadgets that you can put on a keychain or slap on the back of a laptop, tablet, or anything else you want to keep track of.
If you misplace your keys, you can fire up the Tile app on a phone to locate the missing device on a map or make the Tile ring. Or if you misplace your phone, you can hit a button on the Tile device to make your phone ring, even if it’s in silent mode.
That’s all assuming your Tile’s battery isn’t dead. For the past five years Tile has been selling devices with built-in, non-replaceable batteries which means that when the battery dies the Tile does too.
Now Tile has introduced two new trackers that users coin cell batteries that you can swap out.
The new Tile Mate and Tile Pro should get up to a year of battery life from a single battery. But when the time comes, you should be able to head to the store and pick up a replacement battery.
Or you can sign up for the new Tile Premium subscription service for $3 per month (or $30 per year) to get:
- A new battery a year (for an unlimited number of Tile devices
- A 3-year extended warranty
- A new 30-day location history feature
- Support for sharing a tile with an unlimited number of people (for multi-user tracking of a single device)
- Smart alerts that let you know when you leave home without specific items
The Tile Mate uses a CR1632 coin cell battery, while the Tile Pro uses a CR2032 battery. You can pick up an 8-pack of CR2032 coin-cell batteries for around $7, or a 5-pack of CR1632 batteries for less than $6. So I’m not sure the subscription service makes sense if you’re just looking to cover the cost of replacement batteries (unless you have a lot of Tile trackers). But the other features might make it worthwhile for some users.
The new Tile devices also have louder ringers and better range than their predecessors. The new Tile Pro works from up to 300 feet away from your phone, while the new Tile Mate has a range of up to 150 feet. Previous models had ranges of 200 feet and 100 feet, respectively.
The 2018 Tile Mate sells for $25, or you can pick up a 4-pack for $60.
The 2018 Tile Pro costs $35, or you can get two for $60 or Four for $100.
Tile’s Slim tracker sells for $30 (or four for $100 or 8 for $180). That model is the thinnest (but widest and tallest) of the bunch, but does not have a replaceable battery.
