How often do you lose your keys, your phone your glasses? My most honest estimate is 3 times per day, at an average of 1 minute for each misplacement, which adds up to a shocking 18 hours per year. These are 18 precious hours of my waning life-force that could be spent binge watching The Crown and Victoria & Albert, with reading a few back copies of the New Yorker’s “Annual Summer Fiction Issue” thrown in. That’s where the Tile comes in.
It occurs to me that sometime in 2014, Mike Farley, the founder of Tile, was doing research on how to help his wife find the things she lost on an occasional basis. Well, that same year the engineers at The Tile must have been surveying my house, where they perceived an even greater need and answered the cry for help.
The Tile tracking device, when attached to your key ring or handbag or headphones, uses Blue Tooth technology and your smart phone to track the wayward item and alert you to its’ whereabouts. But what about having to find the damn phone first? I asked, and resisted buying the pricey little tiles. I was hasty and did not understand that a double squeeze of any actual tile, sets off an alarm on your phone (even if it is set on silent.) It’s actually a “two-fer” – you find your keys and they find your phone or you use your phone to locate your keys!
The newly released Pro Sport and spiffy looking Pro Style have an even longer range for finding key’s etc. and even louder alarm, which is meaningful to those of us who grooved at too many Stones concerts. I’ve looked at some of the other contenders in the market, and so far, the pros of Tile far outweigh the replaceable battery option for the Track R Pixel or colorful Protag Duet and Chipolo Plus.
Tile is easy to set up, and now has the added luxury of an interface with Alexa or Google Home devices. Tile boasts a huge network in their “Lost& Found Community” that can help find a lost item and the “where last seen” feature is a game changer for me
The Tile Pro has my vote as the best way to recapture those lost “18.” It is even waterproof for when I take my keys into the shower or drop them into the toilet. And yes, I have actually done that.
