TL;DR
- ElevationLab’s TimeCapsule replaces your AirTag’s button-cell battery with a pair of regular AAs.
- The extra capacity allows the AirTag to run for a solid decade or longer before needing a battery change.
- Pricing starts at $20 for a single TimeCapsule, but you can get 4 for just $40.
Having your favorite stuff go lost or get stolen is just the worst — and that’s exactly why Bluetooth trackers have become so very popular. While companies like Tile have offered solutions for years, it was really Apple’s introduction of the AirTag, with access to the company’s huge network of devices, that really pushed adoption into the mainstream. But for as great as AirTags already are, one company has just come up with a way to give them a major upgrade.
The AirTag is powered by a non-rechargeable button-cell battery, and even with pretty regular usage, Apple says you could hope to see a year or so go by before you’ll need to replace it. You even get warning on your phone when the battery’s running low, so you’re not stuck trying to track down a dead AirTag.
While that’s totally fine, what if you were willing to make a trade-off between the AirTag’s sleek, compact design and its battery life. That’s just the balance the team at ElevationLab decided to start playing with, and they’ve come up with a solution that essentially replaces the AirTag’s internal battery with a couple AAs. Dubbed the TimeCapsule, when paired with some high-capacity AA batteries, this has the potential to extend an AirTag’s operational life between battery changes by a factor of 14 — offering what the company says can be “a whopping decade of power.”
Sure, two AAs make the TimeCapsule a lot bulkier than a hide-it-anywhere AirTag, but this is still reasonably compact, and it doesn’t look like you’d have any problem finding room for it in vehicles or bags. The whole thing screws shut to discourage casual tampering and help keep the batteries nice and dry.
Maybe the best part here is the cost. If you thought, “this sounds like a neat idea, but it’s also not doing that much, so I really don’t want to pay very much,” good news — you don’t have to. While a single AirTag itself goes for $29, this decade-long battery booster will only run you an additional $20. Pick up a few, and watch the price plummet: 2 for $30, or 4 for $40.
Of course, you still need to grab a few AA batteries (ElevationLab recommends spending a little extra on lithium), but that sounds pretty cheap for how much peace of mind it buys.
