Tile Mate 2020 Version
The world’s best selling Bluetooth tracker, the NEW Tile Mate attaches to keys, purses or anything else you couldn’t live without. Use Tile adhesives (sold separately) to stick it to any flat surface like a laptop so you can always find your things. No maintenance ever. Never lose your keys, wallet, purse, laptop or phone again with the Tile Mate Tracker, a Bluetooth tracker designed for all your essentials. The Tile Mate is designed with a convenient hole to easily loop onto keychains or drop into a bag or purse. Use the simple app to see the last place your Mate was seen.
- Ring your things: Use your smartphone to make your tile Mate ring when it’s nearby but out of sight
- Find your phone: Can’t find your phone? Simply double press the tile button on your tile Mate to make your phone ring, even when it’s on silent
- Activate Community Find: If your tile Mate is faraway, let other tile community members help. The tile app running on their phones can send location updates to your app
- Replaceable Battery: Mate has a replaceable CR1632 battery is guaranteed for one year from activation. You can easily replace it yourself
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K. White –
I got my first Tile free last year with a promotion and loved it. I used it to keep track of my keys AND my cell phone (which I can ring from my keys). When I needed another key tracker, I almost bought another brand that was on sale. But then I Googled comparison reviews and found the top tech sites rank Tile as having the loudest ringer and the best range. Also, Tile has a large network of users, and they help track each other’s Tiles. If you lose whatever is attached to your Tile, it will show up on a map when another Tile user is within range of the item with their app turned on.So I ordered two packs of 4 Tiles this time. We hid one in our vehicle in case it’s ever stolen, one in our travel trailer for the same reason, and attached another to our dog’s collar just in case. I gave one to my son for his keys, and used one for my second set of keys. Last week I also gave a Tile to a friend who is always losing her keys, and she has used it several times already.These new Tiles come with replaceable batteries, which the original version did not have. Those batteries were only good for about a year, and then you had to replace the Tile. So make sure you’re buying the NEW 2018 version with replaceable batteries.The 4 packs at their current price cost only less than $15 per Tile (with Prime). I’ve saved literally hundreds of dollars in time and potential locksmith expenses—not to mention the peace of mind gained—using my Tiles (which is why I bought so many this time). It’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made, and I highly recommend them. *I am NOT associated with the maker or any seller of Tile in any way; this is my honest, unsolicited opinion.
Shystermom –
I bought a 4 pack specifically to track my 3 indoor cats just in case they bolted outside. I put the 4th on my key ring.setting up the App was easy enough. I tested the Tiles in the house. when the keys/cats were near, a green circle went around the photo, a green “Find” bar appeared, and when I pressed the bar, the Tile buzzed and played a tinny tune.I put the tiles on the cats’ collars. I test the “Find” feature every single day inside the house to make sure it is updated.Now to the hard part – one of my cats slipped out at night. She is 17. She apparently stayed close in the backyard because the Tile green “Find” bar appeared. I pressed the bar and heard the tinny tune. However, it was impossible to actually see the cat who was apparently hunkered down under my back deck (there is less than 6 inch gap under deck).The buzzing and the tune either didn’t freak her out enough to come out or it freaked her out to move further away from me and toward the building line. And the further she scooched away, the lower and more tinny the tune became until it was almost inaudible. As the November night temperature dropped and the wind whipped and I had called her name and shaken kibble, put out a can of tunafish, etc, and it was 3 hours later on a work night, I gave up and went to bed. This morning, I got up, hopeful she might still be within the Tile range. no luck. She is either out of range or the battery in the Tile has died. I doubt it is the battery she is wearing the Tile only a month. However, if she out of the 150 foot range and is roaming the neighborhood, how does the Tile help me? According to the company, if another Tile user buzzes to my lost cat, I can go to that location in hopes of finding my pet. But there is no easy way for me to send out a local “SOS” to Tile users in my area. I believe I am back to the Old School method of stapling paper flyers to the trees on my block.On top of that, the App screen says the Tile was “last seen November 1st”. umm, no, yesterday was November 20th.I spent almost 2 hours on the phone with Tile customer service. They are useless. They used the circular logic of saying they might be able to troubleshoot IF I was near my lost Tile. GrrrI sincerely hope my cat is not dead and/or gone, but I had to post this review to save the heartache for pet owners looking for a solution. From my Amazon research, it seems that a GPS tracker would be more accurate but they are mainly for dogs and just not small enough for cats.I am so sad. Please don’t buy a Tile unless you want to track items/pets who are already in the house. If I lost my remote somewhere in the living room, fine, Tile will find it and play the tune. But outside, forget it. I want to find the device that can go on my cat’s collar, that can send a signal to a satellite and send me a GPS real time map with an accurate to within feet location of my pet. And I will gladly pay money for that. But it doesn’t exist, at least not on Amazon, for cats.UPDATE 11/23/18so the story has a happy ending, but I would not have gotten it without the Tile. I decided that if the Tile battery hadn’t died, it still must be transmitting even if the cat had died. So I decided to leave the confines of my property and walk around the block in the hopes that maybe she was beyond the 150 foot range, but still close enough for the Tile to connect.After I rounded the corner, about midway down the next block, the Tile app buzzed and the Green bar appeared. It showed the cat was close by. I was directly in front of a completely dark house that had a humongous pickup truck-on-steroids in the driveway. I approached the truck. I saw at the back of the driveway, there was a tall fence and just beyond the fence, there was another vehicle with a tarp over it. If she was in front of the fence, I had a chance of recovering her. If she was behind it, there was no way I could (trespass and) scale that fence. Of course there was enough ground clearance that a cat could go under the fence and be hiding under the car under the tarp. It was a 50/50 shot. Of course I called my cat’s name, but she is not the type to come when called or go up to people. she is beautiful but standoffish.I pressed the “Find” button and I heard the tinny little song. It appeared to be coming thankfully, from under the truck in the driveway in front of the fence. I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the truck. No cat. I called my boyfriend who is small. He came within a half hour with a flashlight. I pressed the button again and he crawled up under that truck and located the cat hiding up in the wheel well. Luckily, she just hunkered down in fear and he grabbed her. 1-2-3, he passed her to me and I held her tight behind the scruff of her neck and cuddled her. She was severely dehydrated and covered in grease but she was alive.We walked home and as soon as we got inside the house, I put down a can of wet cat food. she wolfed down a half can. Then disappeared to go sleep and recover. The photo I posted is her the next morning, still greasy but perky and waiting for breakfast. The Tile reunited me with my beloved cat so I updated my review.The Bottom Line is: I could not have found my cat without the Tile App connecting to her collar and her being within 100 feet. Had she been under that other car beyond range, forget it. But had I not had the Tile app, I could have walked around the block shaking kibble and calling her name and walked past that pickup truck never knowing she was hiding up inside it. So it was a success in this situation. You have to get out and walk around with the Tile and hope it connects to the missing pet. My mistake I think was not setting off to look for her as soon as I lost connection. I got very lucky in this situation. But I am still researching my GPS tracking options because I want something that will direct me to where my cat is without me walking around and hoping the Bluetooth connects.A Thanksgiving Miracle for sure.
Joshua –
I bought my first set of Tile Mates (older generation without replacement batteries) earlier this year. I gave a Tile to different family members, and we all “shared” with each other – which allowed us to each see, search for, and find each other’s keys.I ordered these new Tile Mates (latest generation with replacement batteries). After I gave them out to my other family members, when I went to “share,” I was SHOCKED to find that we can now only share with 1 other family member. I am alerted that for $3 PER MONTH FOREVER I can join Tile Premium and do what I used to do for free.Not only are these new Tiles less functional, but you also downgraded my old Tile Mates and I cannot share them with any new people either! You also want $3 PER MONTH FOREVER for what was free.I went from being an incredibly satisfied customer who told everyone to get Tile, to an incredibly disappointed customer! Don’t downgrade your product after sale! Tile, turn this dissatisfied customer into a happy one again by returning sharing to how it was!
MovieGuy –
I’ve used tiles for a few years now. I consider them to be a vital product, because I can be somewhat forgetful, and lose track of small (or even not so small) objects. So the ability to find your keys, or wallet, or purse or whatever, is a tremendous help.The way it works is pretty cool, you put a tile on your object that you are worried about losing, and then you load the tile app on your phone. Your phone periodically monitors your tile objects and keeps track of them. Then when you tell the app to locate your object, it will try to connect to it via bluetooth. If it is able to connect, it does, and it plays a sound, helping you locate it. If it can’t connect, it shows you where (on a map) it was last able to connect to it, so for example if you left it at work, and you are now at home, you’ll know that you left it at work. Pretty neat!That said, this product has definitely gotten worse this year. Now when you try to locate an object that you’ve had in your possession, say earlier in the day, and it’s not nearby and you try to locate it, it’ll tell you about where it was a month ago or some such. It’s essentially worthless now for what was a really useful use case. It’s now still very useful for locating things that are nearby, but if it’s not nearby, it’s no longer helpful imo.
Clever Spud –
Why the Borg catchphrase as the title of this review? Well, like the borg the Tile Mate is cleverly engineered and efficient, but it’s really only going to shine as part of the wider network, which requires a subscription fee. As part of the collective you can flag a device as lost and it will show up whenever another Tile user is nearby, increasing your chances of having the item returned. Honestly, it’s a good system and at thirty quid a year I’m almost tempted.If you decide you don’t want to spend the money on a subscription service, there’s still a lot of value to be had.One tile, attached to your keys, for instance, and linked to you phone lets you track down your keys when you have your phone, or call your phone if you have the keyring. If you’ve left your keys on top of your phone somewhere then you’re out of luck.Setup is simple BUT you will need to create an account, which make more sense if you are going to subscribe.Now, there are similar devices without the worldwide network which cost much less, so you should possibly weigh up the cost versus the value to be had from the phone app and the 2 way communication between the phone and the Tile device.Really like this, as I am getting to that point where the forgetfulness is real.
Rowena G. Matthews –
I thought this was a brilliant idea for keeping track of keys, etc. But the app has a tragic flaw. It only works if location services are turned to always, even thought when traveling out of wifi range, this puts a huge load on the phone battery (you use a mobile app to find out where your keys are). Since adding this app, and activating my tile, my battery life has shot down. If I change location services to “when using the app” it tells me that my tile has been disabled. This needs to be fixed–much of the time we don’t need our locations tracked since the tile is immobile, or we know exactly where the object is.
Rafael P. –
Everything but having no adhesive is great. I’ve owned several Tile products over the years, and gifted many to friends and family. I purchased the slim for the business laptop as it would be low profile and would allow the laptop to be stowed away in its sleeves. Unfortunately, it has no adhesive. The 6th image on the listing shows the Tile Slim on a laptop. It misled me, into thinking an adhesive sticker was included as other products they have. Other than that, the Slim is great. Also, wish Tile considered adding a geo fencing option for keeping track of items. Hope this helps! Best of luck!
SteveM –
I have had several different Bluetooth tags on my bag, and I was hoping that this one would finally solve the problem, but it doesn’t. The earlier tags were all designed to alarm on my phone and on the bag if I walk away from the bag. Yes, this one will do that BUT ONLY IF YOU PAY FOR AN EXPENSIVE MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION at £2.50 per month if you sign up for a year else £2.99 per month.Without the subscription you can only trigger an alarm from one end or the other by pressing a button, and you can find out where the bag was last seen, but that’s no good if you’ve walked off and left it behind and then someone has taken it.Its predecessor (different manufacturer) worked just fine but was a poor quality construction meaning that the battery contacts were not reliable, but it did everything and at a much lower price and no subscription.This one is a good sturdy construction and I’m confident that it would work reliably.The subscription service is well thought out especially as it will use signals from your Tile device being detected by the phones of other Tile users to help find where your item is now. The subscription also includes free battery replacement.The packaging is unfortunately destructive – you have to pull a tear strip to open it, and if it were not for this then I would return it and request a refund. I can’t say it doesn’t work as described because reading the description carefully it doesn’t say anywhere that it will alert if you walk away from your device.So, bottom line: well constructed, good looking, expensive subscription though well thought out, but doesn’t meet my needs.
C-man –
Bought two packages since overall reviews seemed good. I figured I would beat the odds. The first box I opened, the second tracker I tried to program didn’t work at all! The second box all of the trackers seemed to work until today. One day later. One of our car keys had been missing, I finally found it and went to put it on the tracker that formerly had worked. Now it no longer works at all! No sound comes out of it at all, it won’t be found by my phone, it won’t try to find my phone. How long until the other trackers lose their charge and they are brand new? The other 6 are still working great, however. I love that you can name them and take pictures as each one has a different house key assigned to help keep track as well.
Brooke –
I normally don’t write review’s for products, but the tile is too fantastic not to yell it from the roof tops! I am always losing my keys or my phone and with the tile it makes it so easy to find my keys in a flash or find my phone! All you have to do is attach it to your keys and you’re all set!When you misplace your keys, you go into the app on your phone (which is super user friendly) and tap, find my keys. It then rings your tile that is attached to your keys and if they are not in an area where they can ring, it shows you the location of the tile, which is also very helpful!If you misplace your phone, you can double tap the middle button on the tile and it will ring your phone!It is such an amazing product and I am thinking about attaching them to everything in my house!! (I am such a scatter brain!)
J and G G –
Ordered to use with his and hers keys and iphone. Tried valiantly to set up with instructions on app, then chatted with customer support for an hour. No relief. They are either defective or the setup is beyond my capacity.(I am a graduate engineer, somewhat computer savvy and usually able to make stuff like this work)Unsatisfactory product.
Bill –
First of all, I feel misled by the reviews for the Tile Mate 2020 – 32 of 35 of the current reviews have all been provided with this item for free, whereas I paid £40 for the set of four. And as you might expect, the majority of those 32 reviews are positive!Not one of the reviews made it clear that the Tile Mate 2020 *cannot* report it’s own location to the App on your phone, because it doesn’t know it’s own location. All they do is tell you if the device is within a 200ft radius of wherever your phone is located. So when you look at the map in the app, all you see is YOUR location (ie. your phone’s location) and if the Tile is detectable within a 200ft circle around your phone (or less if there are walls/buildings in the way).If you want to actually ‘find’ the tile (and whatever it is attached to), you have to use the phone app to ‘ring’ the device and then use your ears to home in on its actual location.So, if you attach the Tile to a dog or a cat (as per my intention), then it simply can’t tell you where within the 200ft radius around your phone that the cat is located – he could be anywhere behind you, infront of you or left or right of you! All you know is he’s somewhere within 200ft of you! If you want to find him, you have to sound the ringer on the tile using the app and listen out for him. Well, I could do that with a £1 cat collar with bell on it! And if I were to sound the Tile ringer while attached to my cats collar, he would run a mile because it’s just too loud (even when set to the quieter level). And if he were to run away from me with the Tile ringer sounding, once he’s out of range there is no way for me to cancel the ringer sound!If the essentially ‘bought’ reviews for the Tile Mate 2020 had been more specific about how this item actually functions, and less keen to present the device in a favourable light in return for having them for free, then I would not have bought the device. I feel misled by the reviews for the Tile Mate 2020.
Psyman –
….. it seems like I “misplace” my keys or my iPhone on a daily basis and normally when I’m late for work. I use this far more regularly than I ever thought I would – it’s quick and easy to use – the app is simple / intuitive – takes 30 seconds normally to find the phone or keys and I’m out of the door. Not sure how I survived without this to be honest. My blood pressure must be lower now though….
anmol –
Good stopped my wife from running away from our arranged marriage
Taelor –
Terrible, it will find the phone fine, but when you want to find the tile it works about 1 time out of every 20 and doesn’t work from a distance of more than a couple of meters away.I bought tile instead of a cheap knock off because I thought that they’d work much better bud sadly I was wrong. Sometimes it doesn’t even find my keys when I’m right next to them! It’s basically an expensive weight in your keys, I’ll be returning my tile and I strongly discourage anyone from buying this product.
B Blum –
Firstly, it’s important that everyone know that the warranty on Tile sucks. Once you get past a few months, they will not swap you out. They will only provide a coupon code for a discount off a new one. How does that reconcile with a 1 year warranty? If you try to elevate the issue, you end up in a Ground Hog day cycle of Americanized named ‘Supervisors’ all forcing you to start over at ground zero with countless emails, and you eventually end up with the same coupon code offer. Total waste of time.So fast forward, I get this new removable battery version, and it sucks. The old 2018 version, we stuck on the dog’s collar, and it connected great. Trained the dog to come to the door when the alert was sounded, and until it died prematurely (9 months), it worked well. We have a one acre invisible fence and we pretty well had an instant connect and full coverage. And yes, we only used the Tile outdoors when it was sunny and dry.So this new one takes F O R E V E R to connect, even if the Tile is right next to you. The dashed circle just spins and spins. Once you finally get it to connect, the range is now down to perhaps 80 to 100 ft max – If someone holds it up in the air and there are absolutely no obstructions. Tried Chat and then Email to complain after a month or so of testing, and guess what. Coupon time – No offer to replace. As such, this is going back to Amazon. I’m done with this nonsense.I’ll try to open the old one and see if that battery can be replaced. But just be forewarned, the new Tile is thicker, bulkier, and doesn’t work anywhere as well as the old one. And worse, the Support and Warranty sucks! Tread with caution.
Damien –
I’ve had RF key finders for a few years and they’ve got me out of many a predicament. So when the last ones stopped working, I decided to go up a notch and bought the 4pack tile mate. Barely audible unless the speaker is face up and very poor range – pretty much need to be in the same room. Right now I’m looking at my dog 10 feet away through a pane of glass and it can’t find the tile around his neck!! If you need to find keys in your own house like I do, then just go with a well recommended RF key finder instead. Much better range, much louder, much cheaper. And while the Tile may have some utility for lost kids or pets in a maojr urban centre, my experience in a mid-size town is the tiles are invisible once out of bluetooth range..
Nathan –
I bought one of these for my wife after she accidentally mislaid her car keys. Initally we were happy with the set up and almost looked forward to the ease by which we’d be able to resolve the issue in future.A week or so passed by when my wife started to complain that her Fitbit wasn’t working and was refusing to sync its data to her phone. She then noticed that her wireless headphones were also not connecting. Simple enough, Bluetooth was disabled, so she re-enabled it. And then again and again and again, once every hour she needed to check if Bluetooth was still enabled. It was always off!We spent a few days investigating as she’d only recently received the Android 10 (Galaxy S9) update on her phone, but there was nothing obvious as to why this was happening. And then we remembered the Tile.Looking further into the Tile support site and FAQs and it seems Bluetooth instability has been a major issue for them in the past. We tried every option available to us to stop the Tile app from putting Bluetooth to low power/sleep or stopping it but nothing would work. Well, nothing short of uninstalling Tile, which we did and the problem was gone. As is the Tile as we’ve just returned it to Amazon, sorry but “ain’t nobody got time for that!”If you’re an Android user I would seriously think twice about getting one of these, or at the very least test it thoroughly when you get it with other Bluetooth devices.