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Tile Pro comes in black or white, while the Tile mate only has one color.Tile
For years, Tile has been my favorite "where could I possibly have left my keys/wallet/backpack" tracker. It’s literally saved me hundreds of dollars (I miss the days of non-coded car keys) and saved me more lost minutes searching than I can count.
Tile has a sleek product, with best-in-class engineering, one of the most user-friendly companion apps, and a robust community of "finders" to help when your Tiles go missing. The one thing they’ve lacked, and where competitors have pushed the advantage, is that their batteries were non-replaceable, requiring you to mail them in once they died. The program actually helped reduce waste and Tile was able to recover and recycle a considerable number of spent trackers but people still wanted removable batteries.
So that’s exactly what Tile is going to give us with its latest Mate and Pro trackers.
New, But The Same
When you grab the Tile Mate, you’ll be impressed by one thing in particular – how much it’s exactly like the Mate device that it replaces. The same goes for the new Pro tracker, it’s very similar to the Sport and Style trackers that debuted last year (though a little less blingy).
Tile Pro on the left, Tile Mate on the right.Tile
But flip either Tile over and you’ll see there’s more going on in the back than you think at first glance. The new battery covers are engineered to require additional steps for battery removal after opening so that they’re kid-safe. Digging deeper, the new devices are louder (Tile completely re-engineered the amplifier for the Pro to be 50% louder), have a larger range (150m for the Mate, 300m for the Pro), and are more durable since they’re now "lifetime" devices rather than 1-year disposables.
Simon Fleming-Wood, Tile’s Chief Experience Officer, told me that Tile went so far as to run the Mate and Pro through 1,000 tumble dry cycles to ensure their trackers would be able to hold up to year after year of punishment. These devices do generally live next to hard metal objects, after all.
In addition to the new hardware, the app has some fresh features as well. You can even add a Siri shortcut so that you don’t even have to launch the app, just ask Siri where your keys are. But that’s not all that’s new with the app…
Don’t Just Go Pro, Go Premium
The problem with switching from a product that gets replaced and re-purchased on an annual basis (the Tile Slim remains the only Tile tracker with a non-removable battery) is that Tile is essentially sabotaging its own business model. The price of the new Mate and Pro devices didn’t even increase, they’re still $25 and $35, respectively. How, then, does the company plan on recovering that revenue?
Along with the new Tile Mate and Tile Pro, Tile is introducing Tile Premium, a value-added service that provides lifetime battery replacement, an extended warranty, unlimited sharing of Tile devices (with anyone), smart alerts, 30-day location history, and dedicated support lines for $29.99 per year or $2.99 per month.
All of these sound like a great way to give Tile customers a little more (or help those who manage large numbers of devices). Smart alerts in particular, though, sounds quite interesting. The feature is currently in beta and, rather than just alerting you on demand, your Tile becomes a reactive device that will ping you when you’ve left it behind at a certain geo-fenced area. Say that you left your wallet on the counter and drove off, your Tile would ping you once you got a certain distance away.
Currently, the alerts are limited to a geofenced home area, but Fleming expects them to evolve over time to include things like your Tile moving away from you instead of you moving away from it. If you routinely leave things at home when you head out, you’ll want to try out the free month of Premium service and see if it works for you,
Where To Buy
Tile Pro in the wild.Tile
Tile Mate and Tile Pro are on sale today for $25 and $35, respectively, at Tile.com. There you can also pick up combo packs that drop the price of each individual tracker in the bundle. You can also pick up the new Tile devices on Amazon or at your local Target or Best Buy.
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Tile Pro comes in black or white, while the Tile mate only has one color.Tile
For years, Tile has been my favorite “where could I possibly have left my keys/wallet/backpack” tracker. It’s literally saved me hundreds of dollars (I miss the days of non-coded car keys) and saved me more lost minutes searching than I can count.
Tile has a sleek product, with best-in-class engineering, one of the most user-friendly companion apps, and a robust community of “finders” to help when your Tiles go missing. The one thing they’ve lacked, and where competitors have pushed the advantage, is that their batteries were non-replaceable, requiring you to mail them in once they died. The program actually helped reduce waste and Tile was able to recover and recycle a considerable number of spent trackers but people still wanted removable batteries.
So that’s exactly what Tile is going to give us with its latest Mate and Pro trackers.
New, But The Same
When you grab the Tile Mate, you’ll be impressed by one thing in particular – how much it’s exactly like the Mate device that it replaces. The same goes for the new Pro tracker, it’s very similar to the Sport and Style trackers that debuted last year (though a little less blingy).
Tile Pro on the left, Tile Mate on the right.Tile
But flip either Tile over and you’ll see there’s more going on in the back than you think at first glance. The new battery covers are engineered to require additional steps for battery removal after opening so that they’re kid-safe. Digging deeper, the new devices are louder (Tile completely re-engineered the amplifier for the Pro to be 50% louder), have a larger range (150m for the Mate, 300m for the Pro), and are more durable since they’re now “lifetime” devices rather than 1-year disposables.
Simon Fleming-Wood, Tile’s Chief Experience Officer, told me that Tile went so far as to run the Mate and Pro through 1,000 tumble dry cycles to ensure their trackers would be able to hold up to year after year of punishment. These devices do generally live next to hard metal objects, after all.
In addition to the new hardware, the app has some fresh features as well. You can even add a Siri shortcut so that you don’t even have to launch the app, just ask Siri where your keys are. But that’s not all that’s new with the app…
Don’t Just Go Pro, Go Premium
The problem with switching from a product that gets replaced and re-purchased on an annual basis (the Tile Slim remains the only Tile tracker with a non-removable battery) is that Tile is essentially sabotaging its own business model. The price of the new Mate and Pro devices didn’t even increase, they’re still $25 and $35, respectively. How, then, does the company plan on recovering that revenue?
Along with the new Tile Mate and Tile Pro, Tile is introducing Tile Premium, a value-added service that provides lifetime battery replacement, an extended warranty, unlimited sharing of Tile devices (with anyone), smart alerts, 30-day location history, and dedicated support lines for $29.99 per year or $2.99 per month.
All of these sound like a great way to give Tile customers a little more (or help those who manage large numbers of devices). Smart alerts in particular, though, sounds quite interesting. The feature is currently in beta and, rather than just alerting you on demand, your Tile becomes a reactive device that will ping you when you’ve left it behind at a certain geo-fenced area. Say that you left your wallet on the counter and drove off, your Tile would ping you once you got a certain distance away.
Currently, the alerts are limited to a geofenced home area, but Fleming expects them to evolve over time to include things like your Tile moving away from you instead of you moving away from it. If you routinely leave things at home when you head out, you’ll want to try out the free month of Premium service and see if it works for you,
Where To Buy
Tile Pro in the wild.Tile
Tile Mate and Tile Pro are on sale today for $25 and $35, respectively, at Tile.com. There you can also pick up combo packs that drop the price of each individual tracker in the bundle. You can also pick up the new Tile devices on Amazon or at your local Target or Best Buy.
