The IT Nerd

Last year, I reviewed the Tile and tested it by sending it on a trip that my wife was taking. From there, it really helped me out when my flight from India back to Toronto this summer went sideways. But the Tile that I was using was dying as they only have a lifespan of a year. Thus I had to get a new one. Plus I wanted to get a few others for stocking stuffers. So I got two types of Tile products. The Tile Mate & Tile Slim. Here’s what they look like with the original Tile next to them:

On the left is the original Tile. The middle has the new Tile Mate which is a touch smaller and a touch slimmer and lighter than the Tile. That makes it easier to put on a key chain or anywhere where a small Tile would be of value. On the right is the Tile Silm. It’s bigger than the other two.  But it is much slimmer than the other two which makes it perfect that you need a slim form factor Tile to keep track of your stuff.

What hasn’t changed is the fact that this is a Bluetooth LE device that you can locate via Bluetooth when you’re close enough, which is about 100 or so feet, and via a crowdsourced community of users and people that install the Tile app on their iOS or Android device. You activate a Tile by pressing and holding the “Tile” logo then pair it to your smartphone via the Tile app, then attach the Tile to whatever you want to keep track of. In my testing, I was able to find them easily using the Tile app by being close enough, issuing a command to make it play a musical tone, or by marking it as “lost” so that you can use the Tile community to help you find your stuff which is handy if you’ve got a lot of Tile users around you who are running the Tile app that you can leverage. You can also press the button on the Tile to make your iPhone ring. And this will work even if it’s on silent to enable you to find it if you misplace it.

The two downsides with Tile that I see are the same ones from my original review of the Tile:

• The battery lasts a year and isn’t user replaceable. That basically makes this a subscription service as opposed to be something that you can use long term. The flip side to that is the fact that when your Tile does run out of juice, they do have a program called reTile that allows you to replace your Tile at a discount of up to 50%. The new Tile will come with a prepaid envelope so that you can send back the old one to recycle. But that’s only true for those in the US. For those anywhere else on Earth, you can drop off your old Tile at your local e-recycling center. I will be taking advantage of this to replace the original Tile. Then I will be following these instructions to swap it out in the Tile App.
• Price is the other thing. At $25 for each Tile Mate and $30 for the Tile Slim, it’s a bit expensive. They do have multi-packs that can save you some cash though. 

Tile works as advertised and works well. The new form factors give you more options as to how to use Tile. It has come in handy for me and if you are prone to losing things around the house, or when travelling overseas, you may want to look at it to help you to keep track of your stuff. 

This entry was posted on December 6, 2016 at 9:00 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Tile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.