Apple AirTags are here! What are the reviewers saying?
Apple AirTag reviews are out! Here are some of the most insightful, interesting, and useful snippets from the early reviews.
What are AirTags for?
Rene Ritchie scored an interview with two Apple execs: Kaianne Drance, Vice President, Worldwide Product Marketing, and Ron Huang, Senior Director of Sensing and Connectivity.
Drance laid out some use cases for AirTags:
Anything basically that you might … lose that maybe goes with you from place to place and gets left behind. For example, I think one of the most easily relatable ones is your keys, ... perhaps your purse, your wallet, your backpack.
How do they work?
Dieter Bohn at The Verge had a fun idea. He sent his friend off into the city to hide an AirTag, and Bohn set out to find it.
Dieter explains how AirTags work:
If close to your iPhone, AirTags work by connecting directly to your device via Bluetooth. If farther away, AirTags can be located by riding anonymously on the Find My network of (a billion!) Apple devices. Apparently it works well:
I finally found him. He was standing on a street corner with no foot traffic whatsoever, which meant that the intermittent signals I got detailing his location came from a couple of iPhones in cars that were driving by.
That’s impressive.
What is the user experience like?
Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch found that with Bluetooth, AirTags can take a moment to speak up but then give very precise locations:
It often took 30 seconds or more to get an initial location from an AirTag in another room, for instance. Once the location was received, however, the instructions to locate the device seemed to update quickly and were extremely accurate down to a few inches.
Panzarino says AirTag batteries are replaceable:
The AirTags run for a year on a standard CR2032 battery that’s user replaceable
[...]
The battery contacts inside the casing are not simple bend prongs as is normal for small devices; instead, the contact is made via the internal casing clasps and a set of three pressure contacts. This should improve longevity as they are less likely to get tweaked or bent during a battery replacement or lose contact over time.
Photo: Matthew Panzarino
AirTags will need new batteries about once a year.
AirTags scratch
AirTags are scratch magnets, according to Marques Brownlee:
So you can probably skip the $449 Hermes luggage tag to show off your AirTags:
(Yes, those are real products.)
Of course, there are other accessories that cost less than your car payment.
AirTags are available right this very minute at Apple’s website. You can buy one for $29, or a four pack for $99.