Misplacing your keys five minutes prior to when you must go, desperately searching for your wallet in advance of a meeting, or walking up to baggage claim and questioning which carousel will produce your suitcase – these daily terrors have an easy cure. Good news is, Apple’s AirTag 4-pack has reached its lowest price ever at $64 at Amazon, down from its regular $99 price. That’s $16 per tracker which is less expensive than the price of replacing a lost wallet and the hassle of making a lost luggage claim. In the single-pack size, the solo AirTag can be found at its lowest price ever too at $24, down from $29.
The brilliance behind AirTags is their compatibility with Apple’s current ecosystem. Installation takes quite literally one tap when you press an AirTag close to your iPhone or iPad. The device automatically shows up in your Find My app which you can then assign a name and emoji to. No pairing menus, no setting up an account, no fussy configuration: In a matter of seconds, that AirTag’s ready to track anything you attach it to.
How AirTags Tap Into a Massive Network
The actual magic occurs via Apple’s Find My network which depends on the hundreds of millions of Apple devices globally in order to find your belongings. Here’s the process: your AirTag broadcasts a secure Bluetooth message that can be picked up by Apple devices in close range. Those Apple devices then report the location of your AirTag anonymously back to you via the Find My network. It’s all anonymous and encrypted and therefore no one else can see the location of your AirTag or exploit in an attempt at tracking you. Even Apple can’t see the location of your AirTag or which device assisted in tracking it.
This crowdsourcing model enables AirTags to be extremely efficient in highly populated locations. Leave the backpack at the popular coffee shop in town and there’s a high possibility an iPhone-carrying person will pass by the backpack in minutes and report its location without ever realizing they assisted. The network also functions when your AirTag is outside the range of your own devices, which happens to be essential in pinpointing luggage in planes and identifying things left behind while you are moving from point to point.
Precision Finding goes one better on iPhone 11 and later with Ultra Wideband technology: When you’re near a target item with your AirTag, your iPhone can also report directional arrows and distance in feet and inches, and leads you straight to the item with remarkable precision. Take the example of searching for your buried keys in the couch cushions: Precision Finding lets you know the exact direction in which the keys are and how far away in inches the keys are.
Each AirTag also comes with a internal speaker that produces a tone when you activate it from the Find My app. The tone enables you to locate things in close range, such as keys that went down in the space between the car seats or a wallet kept in a coat pocket that hangs in your closet. The speaker produces a tone that can be heard in the next room and enables very swift searches compared with having to search each possible location manually.
Battery life is extraordinarily sensible. The AirTags are powered by a standard CR2032 coin cell battery which lasts around a year with normal usage. You can buy these batteries anywhere: supermarkets and gas stations and so on. Replacing them only takes a second: push down the stainless steel rear and turn counterclockwise. No spanners required, no shipping devices back to Apple, no annual fees in order for them to stay operational.
At $64 for a set of four AirTags on Amazon, you can protect your most commonly lost belongings without spending too much money. Hook one onto your keys, put one in your wallet, add one in your daily tote and have a fourth for suitcases or seasonal gear.