I’ve tested dozens of Bluetooth trackers for Android, and this is the only one I recommend

Since June of last year, I’ve been on a mission to find the best Bluetooth tracker for Android — the Apple AirTag killer, if you will, that works for the Android phones that we all carry everywhere. I roamed the streets of Paris, Milan, Antwerp, London, Lisbon, Tirana, Beirut, and Dubai with a bunch of trackers in my pockets; I sent them for an adventure in my husband’s backpack, left them in checked-in luggage, carried all the phones to keep an eye on them, and kept comparing them against the gold standard of Apple.

After going through Tile, Pebblebee, Chipolo, Motorola, and Samsung and trying them everywhere from busy malls to open forests, I know which one I would trust the most. So, if I were buying a tracker now to use right away, not for a potential benefit/improvement a few months down the line, there’s one choice and one choice only: Samsung’s Galaxy SmartTag 2. I realize it only works with Samsung phones (unless you use the uTag app workaround on other phones), but that’s a limitation worth accepting for the excellent reliability and all the extra features Samsung has packed in its tracker. Here’s why.

Basically, of all the tests I subjected all my trackers to, Samsung only partially failed in the busy Dragon Mart mall in Dubai. In every other test, and during months and months of usage outside of these quantified tests, the Galaxy SmartTag 2 has surprised me with how accurate it is and how fast it updates its location.

I’ve been able to track my luggage through at least seven airports, from check-in to when I find myself on the plane above the luggage hold and all the way to baggage pick-up in the next airport. I’ve “lost” the tracker in my husband’s backpack (with his consent) and was able to track him through several stops and multiple commutes and work days, even though he doesn’t carry a Samsung phone. I’ve given the tracker to friends while they went shopping in a small town, and knew when they left the local cheese store to come back for our dinner. I also kept it in a moving car with no Samsung phone inside and still got frequent updates about its location from nearby whizzing cars.

There’s no other Android-compatible tracker that has come close to this level of reliability. None. And it’s not even close.

Tile’s network works well in some cities like London and Paris but drops to very infrequent updates when I venture to less crowded cities and areas. Google’s Find My Device network should be more solid thanks to its inclusion of millions of Android 9.0+ phones, but it’s been unreliable at best. Sure, it seems to have gotten better in recent months compared to the absolute disaster that it was last year, but it’s still not good enough. There are enough inconsistencies that it’s not worth buying a tracker with it — yet. I can spend a whole day with not a single update from a Google tracker (Pebblebee, Chipolo, Moto), even if it’s carried by someone who uses a Pixel phone and has set it to contribute to the network “in all areas.” I sometimes have trouble finding my Google tracker when it’s literally right next to my phone: “Last seen: 12 hours ago.” No, Google, no; it’s right in front of me.

Samsung’s Galaxy SmartTag2 doesn’t suffer from these issues, or at least they’re so rare that they don’t matter. It’s almost as fast and as precise in its location updates as Apple’s AirTag, which is saying something given Apple’s strong Find My network. Samsung has clearly used its ubiquitous phones’ presence around the world — from posh Parisian neighborhoods to the remote unpaved streets of the Albanian mountains — to make sure its SmartThings Find is just as strong as Apple’s and as dependable.

I think what impressed me most when I first got the Samsung Galaxy SmartTag2 back in 2023 was the sheer amount of options and features that Samsung has packed into this tiny and simple device. Where Google’s trackers are as bare-bones as can be, Apple’s AirTag goes for a simple and efficient approach, and Tile Trackers offer several features behind a paid subscription, Samsung threw everything and the kitchen sink and kept it all free.

The Galaxy SmartTag offers Ultrawide-band (UWB) with Augmented Reality to find a nearby tracker from your phone. It has free location history, which Tile charges a premium for. It lets me customize the ringtone and the ringing volume of the tracker. It offers fast and reliable left-behind alerts with safe spaces, so I don’t get notified if I leave my laptop at home, but do get an alert if I walk away from it at an airport. And it allows me to use the button on the tracker to find my phone or to trigger smart home automations; I’ve set that up to toggle my lights so I can always turn them on when I come home or off when I’m leaving.

I’ve summarized all the differences between these trackers in the table below, but suffice it to say that there’s no other tracker that offers all of these options:

Look, I’m not condoning using hacky methods to get Samsung’s tracker connected to your phone, but if you really, really, really want Samsung’s strong network and don’t have a Galaxy smartphone, all is not lost.

My friend, Kieron Quinn, who has spent years reverse-engineering and adapting proprietary apps to phones where they’re not supposed to work, has found a solution for Samsung’s Galaxy SmartTag2, too. His uTag app has allowed me to keep an eye on my tracker from my Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro Fold, without having to carry my Galaxy S24 Ultra. It’s an unofficial solution, for sure, and I wish Samsung would remove this arbitrary limit, but it does work.

Through uTag, I’ve been able to track my SmartTag2 from afar, ring it, make it ring my phone, view its location history, and more. Even UWB, which doesn’t yet work for Google’s certified trackers on Pixel phones (or any Android phone, for that matter), works in the uTag app on my Pixel 9 Pro to help me find my Galaxy SmartTag2. Plus, when Samsung issued a new firmware version for the tracker, I was able to completely download and send that update to the tag through uTag — no Galaxy phone necessary.

Basically, uTag does nearly everything the official app does, with the caveat that you’re installing a hacked version of SmartThings, signing up with your Samsung account credentials, and letting it see your location. It also pulls the location from your Samsung account, so it’s constantly synchronizing in the background. I trust Kieron, and the app is open source, so anyone curious to see what he’s doing can check how he made it work, but I recognize it’s not an ideal solution.

Even with that caveat, though, there’s no other Android tracker I would recommend today. You could get a Tile if you live in a bustling city in the USA or a few select countries where Tiles are popular, but just know that the moment you walk out of that zone, your ability to track your lost items will greatly slow down. You could also get a Google-compatible tracker in the hopes that it will get more features and the Find My Device network will become more and more reliable in the future. But today, right now, nothing beats the Galaxy SmartTag2 on Android.

If you have a Samsung phone, the decision is easy; if you don’t, weigh your pros and cons. Me? I have uTag installed on my Pixel 9 Pro and the Galaxy SmartTag2 in my backpack.