Apple AirTag: Find Lost Things – With Some Caveats

Apple’s tech means you can find just about anything you have attached the AirTag to

- Rob Mead-Green

£29 (4-pack £99) FROM Apple, apple.com/uk FEATURES U1 chip for Precision Finding (U1 chip needed in iPhone for Precision Finding), Near-Field Communication, Bluetooth, Siri support, IP67 rated, CR2032 replaceable battery

Keeping track of your stuff can be tricky at the best of times. Are your keys in your jacket? Have you left them at a café? What about your iPhone? Thankfully, that last one is easy to fix thanks to Find My – the app and iCloud service that makes it easy to track Apple devices. But, seriously, where are your keys?

Enter AirTag, an Apple-branded tracker that comprises Bluetooth, an ultra-wideband U1 chip, and Near-Field Communication (NFC) tech, and Find My to help you track it down and/or identify it.

The item-tracking concept isn’t new. Tile, Chipolo, and Samsung’s SmartThings all offer Bluetooth trackers and have done so for years (Chipolo’s forthcoming One Spot will work on Find My too). However, Apple’s belated entry into the sector could be a game-changer – thanks to its ability to the create intersection points between hardware, software, and services “where the magic happens”, according to Tim Cook. The question is: how magic is the AirTag, really?