Review: Tile Mate

When Tile made its breakthrough almost a decade ago, it was simply a groundbreaking product the company had developed. Stolen bikes, lost keys and other valuable items were recovered and returned to their rightful owners in droves, and everyone was happy.

But has time and other manufacturers outrun Tile? The answer is not clear.

Boosting the network

As Tile has faced competition and other manufacturers have eaten into the market, Tile’s network, and therefore the accuracy of its products, has weakened.

However, it’s worth noting that Tile has developed their cloud-based service used to localise the small trackers so that it can now utilise data from over 40 different types of products in almost 200 countries. These include computers from Dell and HP, headphones from Skullcandy, smart watches from Fitbit and many other products that are now part of the Tile network.

That’s good thinking.

The design

Tile has also worked on the design, and we have chosen the classic Tile Mate with a nice decoration on it, which even looks nice when used as a keychain. The little piece is nice to the touch and feels solid, so we’re not afraid to have it lying around at the bottom of a packed bag.

But even more satisfying is that you can hear it! In Tile’s app, you can choose from a variety of different ringtones for the tag, and they’re all quite piercing. We can easily hear the Tile Mate even though it’s on the other side of the house.

However, we miss the ability to search for Tile with our mobile phones, like Samsung and Apple’s tracking devices offer. There’s only one way to find Tile, and that’s to have it play a tune and then go by the sound. Let’s just say we were motivated to find it quickly.

Basic tracking device

If you want access to all of Tile’s features, it requires a subscription, which you can either pay monthly or annually, and the app is more than happy to remind us of this. Especially in the first few days, we repeatedly press buttons in the app that take us to the page where we can upgrade to premium. It gets tiresome, to say the least. Not least because the features that the subscription gives access to are largely the same ones that Chipolo, among others, offers for free.

Tile’s own app is very simple, but once we have installed it, we are immediately invited to download the Life 360 appas well.

In 2021, Tile was acquired by the company Life360. In this second app, in addition to viewing Tile Mate, we can also create family members and follow their movements. But just in relation to Tile Mate, the functions are the same as in Tile’s app.

Conclusion

Tile Mate fulfils the most basic needs, but if you want more, you’ll need to invest in a paid subscription.