Last fall I lost my wallet. I took it out at Home Depot's self-checkout and didn't notice it till I tried to buy my groceries an hour later. The embarrassment of ringing up more than a $100 worth of food with people waiting in back of you only to realize you have no money is something I'll remember for a long while. It's not that I didn't have money it was simply I had no wallet. Immediately I feared that it had fallen out in the parking lot and was likely long gone. Luckily the folks at Home Depot were amazing and kept it safe. However, since then I've been using Tile to keep tabs on my wallet as well as my camera bag.
When I shared the initial story on Facebook, several friends said I should try Tile and so I reached out to the folks there and asked for a sample. They sent me a Tile Slim and also a Tile Pro to test out and share my story.
Over the past few months, I hadn't realized how many times I "lost" my wallet. Most of the time it was lost in the car, lost in my loft, or lost in a hotel room and I was able to recover it quickly. However, those frantic 10-20 minutes of searching is stressful. Now though, the solution is simple. I just open the app on my phone and press "find".
Assuming that my phone is close to the Tile it activates and begins to ring. If I'm out of range (Pro (300'); Mate (150'); Slim (100')) then it provides me with a location history of where it was last connected. I can even share the location with a friend to have them pick it up if maybe I left it at their house or car. Tile is also supported by Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant so I can even just say "Google, find my wallet" and it does.
Tile has a full suite of products ranging from the stylish Tile New Pro, and Tile New Mate, as well as the Slim which is the one I found most useful for what I needed. However I have found Tile Pro would work very well on my keys as well and might buy a third one just for that.
Tile Slim is 54x54 mm and 2.4 mm thick. In practical terms it is 3 credit cards thick in my wallet so it fits great and I never know it's there ... unless I need to. The ringer is loud enough though that I can still hear it, even when packed between other cards. While the Pro and Mate units have replaceable batteries, Slim features an integrated battery that is rated at one year so you will have to replace it annually.
You can buy Tile Pro ($33.17), Tile Mate ($24.99), and Tile Slim ($29.98) on Amazon.
