Tile should – and must – perform better than the DIY-looking “tile for cats”

Did you know that Tile sells Bluetooth trackers for your cat? Why not just tape a little tracker to something cheap and clip it to your cat’s collar you say? Well, that’s exactly what Tile did. At a time when Bluetooth tracking companies should be rethinking their approach and reputation with buyers, a tile sticker on a cheap collar feels like a missed opportunity.

It took a surprisingly long time for Tile to release an official pet tracker, but Tile for Cats finally became available on Wednesday for $40 — $10 more than the MSRP of a Tile sticker. Tile’s announcement describes the product as the simplified solution it is. It simply combines “tile stickers with a silicone collar attachment”.

And that’s the number one reason Tile for Cats doesn’t feel like an exciting new product — and it doesn’t look like it either. If anyone wanted something that looked like a DIY pet tracker, they would probably make one. Something cuter than “Tile” would probably also be written on that device, like this GPS pet tracker on Hackaday that says “Squeak.”

Tile’s announcement called its cat tracker “convenient,” “safe,” and “unobtrusive,” but the product’s bulkiness in shared images doesn’t exactly scream cozy.

Still, Tile claims the product is designed to stay in place “with two attachment points and a special coating to prevent fur, dirt, and dust from sticking to it.”

But Tile for Cats doesn’t add any exciting features that you can’t get by hacking together your own solution. Considering Tile’s last major product announcement was the 2022 line of trackers, which included new features like ultra-wideband wireless technology and longer battery life, Tile for Cats isn’t groundbreaking.

Missed opportunity for the best AirTags

It would have been a great time for Tile to announce something to get people excited about Bluetooth trackers. One reason is the growing competition. AirTags are commonly used to track pets, although Apple has warned against it (dogs have eaten them and some have died), and AirTags’ inability to support multiple Apple IDs makes them buggy for multi-owner pets. That leaves pretty big gaps for Tile to fill, but it missed the mark.

Tile almost hit the mark by offering Life360 subscribers the ability to link to Tile for Cat’s Tile Stickers for people in their “circle” of family and friends to see, but that requires extra money for a Life360 subscription with features that someone might not need.

Also, Tile for Cats is only aimed at cats who tend to play hide-and-seek on the spur of the moment. The Tile Sticker has its regular maximum range of 250 feet, which is wider than AirTags (about 33 feet). But when you’re not in range of an AirTag you’re looking for, AirTags can tap into Apple’s massive Find My network, giving it a far wider reach, which is crucial when you’re tracking something with multiple legs. Tile still recommends its Tile Mate as a tracker for non-cat pets, although the device is also intended for general Bluetooth tracking. We reached out to Life360 to ask if Tile for Cats is an effective solution for dogs and will update this article if we get feedback.

Meanwhile, Chipolo, which started selling trackers in 2013, has been open to working with Apple to integrate Apple’s Find My into Chipolo’s product.

“It just comes down to it, do you want the customer to be happier with the larger network? … We decided this was better,” Chipolo co-founder Domen Barovic told TechCrunch earlier this year. He added that replacing Chipolo’s original search network is easier “than trying to build a huge network,” which is “really hard to do.”

We’re not saying that Tile should necessarily work with Apple. Given the companies’ combative history, that might be quite… uncomfortable. However, Tile should evolve something because even smaller players are finding ways to expand the networks of their trackers. More urgently, there are soon hints of Google-branded Bluetooth trackers that could take advantage of a vast network of Android-based devices.