Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsTile Mate works pretty good, phone/tablet is pretty poor
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2023
Purchased 2 Tile Mate 2020's to attach to my dog's collars. Tile Mate is fairly easy to set up. Read and follow the instructions included in the box. The Tile Mate 2020 has a fairly loud speaker and very important the 2020 version has a user replaceable battery. For some stupid reason Tile changed the 2022 Tile Mate and removed the user replaceable battery. Now you have to buy a new Tile when the 2022 version's battery dies. Some have reported as little as 3 months use and the battery has died. I don't care if Tile will replace the dead battery for me or not, not allowing me to do this is simply stupid. I can say at this point that the moment I am no longer able to buy the 2020 version, I won't be buying any more Tiles. The part that really stinks about Tile is the phone/tablet software. The software is lacking a lot of functions and some of the use is confusing. It's almost like the developers who wrote the software have no idea what a Tile actually does. I've had the two tiles for three days now, and with both Tiles in front of me, when I go into the app on my phone or my tablet, most of the time the app shows one tile, and then shows "connecting" on the opposite Tile. The "connecting" will stick around for sometimes 3 to 5 or more minutes while it connects. Eventually the app will show the connection. I also returned from a long distance trip where the Tile app showed incorrect information. The Tile app alerted me that I had left one of my dogs at the rest area almost 100 miles away, yet he along with my other dog were sitting in the back seat of my Avalanche, both had their collars on, and they had their respective Tile hanging off their collars. The app finally got around to acknowledging that I had not left my dog (or the Tile) at the rest stop. I fully understand the limitations of Bluetooth technology and the radio's range. I have no problem with that. The software though is lacking a lot of functionality that would make it a lot better. Today, while holding my phone and watching the map in the Tile app, the app showed my phone bouncing around my property (and sometimes a little outside my property), all while I was sitting in my chair in my living room. I checked the GPS and it was fairly solid, within 3 meters of where I was in my house. Why the Tile app can't figure this out I don't know, many other applications have no issue on my phone with a stable GPS location. I also have a problem with the online website not showing any tracking data at all. I should be able to log into the website and see the latest information available. Some instruction as to how the software works would be nice. I can go to the map in the app and the app says I have four Tile in my account. It also says that I can tap on them to view details. The details? Nothing more than the name of the Tile as set in the app. What's confusing is if the two Tile's are near each other, one pin on the map will cover the other, and you have to tap on them to have them show their names but they cover each other while doing so. Why not use some programming to better display that there are two or more Tiles, one on top of each other? Also on the map, the Tile app will show that x number of Tile members are in the circle shown on the map. This seems pretty unreliable since I can go into the map and Tile shows 1024, close the app, re-open the app, go to the map and it'll now show 789 Tile members. Also, what really does this mean? Are these other users active? Is the map just showing that at some time in the past, these other accounts were active? There's so much more information that could be provided, but isn't. One of the nicer things about the app is that it does show all devices running Tile. Since I have the Tile app on my phone and tablet, they both show up. This means I can make either of them sound off as long as I have the other. This I hope will help me to find my phone when I set stuff on it. As mentioned, buy the Tile Mate 2020 if you can find it (allows self battery replacement), put the Tile software on all your devices. Remember Tile works with iOS and Android devices. Other tracking (Apple Airtag) and Samsung only work on their respective devices. I hope Tile improves their software and re-thinks the self battery replacement. One other thing I just remembered, the Tile app is only available for Android and iOS. The Android version will not install on a Google Chromebook, and there is no Chrome extension for it. Too bad because this would seem to be ideal because of the much larger screen of the Chromebook and help me find my Chromebook when I forget where I set it down in the house.
