$20 (approx £20 inc shipping)
Manufacturer: Tile
Our Rating: 
By Jim Martin | PC Advisor | 07 October 14
Tile is a small Bluetooth gadget that you attach to anything that you don't want to lose, such as your house keys, a child - anything really. Here's our Tile tag review.
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Tile is a Bluetooth gadget that helps you find things when they're lost. Here's our Tile tag review. See also: iPhone 6 vs iPhone 6 Plus comparison
We first heard about Tile way back in June 2013. It turned out to be a very successful crowdfunded project, raking in $2.5m from thousands of people wanting a way to keep track of their precious items.
We finally received ours in July 2014 and we've been testing it out since then. The first thing you'll notice about the £20 Tile is that it's larger than you thought it would be. It's not too big to attach to a keyring, but at around 5.5mm it's twice the thickness of an average key and wider than most car key fobs.
An Android app is imminent, but currently you can use a Tile only with an iPhone or iPad - one that has Bluetooth 4.0 low energy.
The app is free, and it's easy to pair the Tile: you press the 'e' on the gadget and it plays a short tune to let you know it's in pairing mode. Just be careful not to pair a Tile with more than one smartphone or tablet as it won't work properly if you're signed in on multiple devices.
It then works much like the Find My iPhone app in that you can see when the Tile was last 'seen' - i.e. in Bluetooth contact with your iPhone or iPad and a map of its location.
If you were to lose the object in question, you can go to its last known location and start searching. Bluetooth 4.0 LE's range is bigger than you might think at up to 150 feet, so you don't have to be right on top of the Tile before the app can connect to it.
Until it's in range, the app will show 'Out of range', but when it connects, a green Find button appears. This causes the tile to play a Donkey Kong-style tune, which isn't as loud as it really needs to be. In a quiet house you'll track it down fairly easily, but outdoors with competing sounds, it's a harder prospect.
It's also not obvious that you can tap the Tile icon inside the green circle to display a distance gauge. The segments fill up as you get closer to the tile, but there's no indication which direction to go - it's just a case of trial and error.
If you return to the place the Tile was last seen and you're still out of range, there is another way to find it, but it relies on other Tile users. It's called Community Find, and it's a really clever system. Whenever the Tile app is running on anyone's phone or tablet, it logs the location of any other Tiles that it detects.
You wouldn't know that, as no information is shown apart from the location of your own Tiles (you can have up to eight of your own connected to the app). However, should any of those other Tile owners lose theirs and your app picks up the location, it will be shown in their app even though there was no Bluetooth connection.
There are some obvious stumbling blocks here. One is the user base. Until lots of people who live and work near you own Tiles, you won't be able to use Community Find. The other problem is that the system requires the Tile app to be running, so unless everyone walks around with Tile open on their iPhones, locations won't be collected and reported.
Battery life is another thorny issue. Tile says the battery will last roughly a year, and isn't user replaceable. This is because the gadget is sealed to make it splash proof. Basically, it means there's a £20 yearly fee to own a Tile, unless you buy in bulk. For example you can buy three for $60, and get one free. Add on the $14 shipping, and it works out at roughly £46, or £11.50 each.
Tile review: bottom line
As Tile freely admits on its website, small tracking devices are nothing new. What's different about Tile is that it uses Bluetooth, and is less accurate than a GPS tracker.
Most GPS trackers, of course, are more expensive than a Tile and will require regular recharging. If you're the sort of person who's always losing their keys around the house, Tile is ideal. For keeping tabs on your child, a GPS tracker makes more sense.
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