Tile Tracker Vs AirTag Battery Life: How Does It Compare?

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Whether it's an airline misplacing your checked luggage or you forgetting exactly where you left your backpack at home, it's nice to be able to look at your phone to locate the missing bag. That's why people have gravitated toward products like Apple AirTags and Life360's Tile trackers to keep tabs on their personal items. These trackers aren't terribly punishing on the wallet, either. A single AirTag costs $29, and your basic Tile Mate is just $24.99.

One thing you would hope to do with one of these trackers is attach it to an item and forget about it. After all, their usefulness only becomes apparent when something goes missing, which hopefully isn't very often. Unfortunately, these are battery-powered devices. So while they may be out of sight and out of mind most of the time, you do need to know when their batteries (or the trackers themselves) need to be replaced. For an Apple AirTag, you can expect the battery to last more than a year. 

Apple only produces one kind of AirTag, which recently received a serious upgrade, making it easy to remember the estimated life of its battery. Life360, on the other hand, has multiple Tile tracker options. The Tile Pro's battery lasts for around one year, but the basic Tile Mate, Tile Slim, and Tile Sticker all have batteries that can last up to three years. That may make the Pro version seem like a worse deal, but in reality, you won't be replacing that device nearly as often as you'd have to with the sealed-battery Tile models.

The Tile Mate, Tile Slim, and Tile Sticker can last up to three years, but once their permanent batteries die, you'll have to buy new trackers to replace them. Meanwhile, the Tile Pro has a replaceable battery. Even though the battery only lasts one year, all you need to do is get a CR2032 coin battery and replace it when it dies. Rather than spending $24.99 for a Tile Mate every three years, you're spending $34.99 upfront for a Tile Pro and can replace its battery as needed. A pack of four Duracell CR2032 batteries currently sells for $3.99 on Amazon; at that price, you're essentially spending $1 per year to replace the Pro's battery.

The Apple AirTag has a surprisingly similar setup. Despite Apple products rarely allowing for user-replaceable parts and batteries, you can replace an AirTag's battery once it's dead with the very same CR2032 battery the Tile Pro uses, so you don't have to purchase a $29 replacement AirTag every year. Your iPhone will simply alert you when the tracker's battery is low, and you can change it.

There's one big caveat to all of this, and that's Life360's pretty new GPS Pet Tracker. This is the only tracker of the bunch with a rechargeable battery, which lasts for about 14 days. It does have a six-month reserve mode, but with a pet being in constant motion, the battery can drain quite fast. The other trackers available are passive products, but this active one requires more regular upkeep.