Tile Slim (2024)

Verdict

Despite not carrying GPS or Ultra-wideband connectivity, the Tile Slim remains a capable Bluetooth tracker thanks to its ability to lurk unseen within a wallet or pocket.

Its size and shape are perfect for this, and while its tiny speaker is hampered by the extreme thinness of the Slim (the clue was in the name) it features just enough Bluetooth range, speaker volume and battery life to be genuinely useful, along with a subscription option that adds a few handy features.

Its only problem is its price, which is close enough to that of rival trackers to make you wonder if the Slim is worth it.

Introduction

A common word that comes up when talking about Tile’s Bluetooth trackers is ‘slip’. You can slip them in bags, slip them behind objects of value, slip them in your car so you can find it again once you’ve parked, and slip them inside your passport so you can find it the one time of the year that you need it.

The Tile Slim is one letter away from ‘slip’ but easily the most slippable Tile of them all, thanks to its credit card-like form factor that allows it to discreetly take up spaces other Tiles might not be able to manage.

Its 350ft (105m) claimed Bluetooth range and a speaker you can just about hear over the background noise if you’re close by remain unchanged from previous versions, but new for the 2024 model is the SOS button, which allows you to send an emergency alert with a triple-press.

Design

• Easy to carry
• 100m claimed Bluetooth range
• Comes in colours

It’s pretty clear from looking at it that the Tile Slim has been built with wallets in mind, though it can be inserted just about anywhere else you’d put a plastic card.

It’s noticeably thicker than an actual credit card, which may hamper its insertion somewhat, but the fact is you’re not going to want to put it in an actual wallet, stuffed up against other payment options and surrounded by cash and soft leather, as this will muffle the speaker and make it harder to find, especially if there’s background noise to contend with.

If you have a slot for it and don’t think you’ll be relying on its ability to make a noise, then the Tile Slim is perfect for placing in pockets, under the floor of a gym bag, through a slit in the lining of your hiking pack or even tucked inside the dust jacket of a book.

Its form factor is its great strength, and it’s going to find its way into a greater number of unusual places than any other Tile, except perhaps the Sticker – though a bit of double-sided tape will help the Slim get a grip on things too.

It’s an uncomplicated design, with no lanyard hole or replaceable battery access door, but you do get a button, newly decorated with the logo of Tile’s parent company Life360, that operates the pairing, two-way finding, and SOS alerts depending on how many times you press it.

Little has changed since the last refresh of the range, but the Slim now has an IP68 ingress protection rating so that it can take a dunk in the duckpond or trip to the beach without fritzing out immediately. The casing of the sample I was sent for review was a rather splendid blue, but other colours are available, including pink and green as well as plain old black.

Performance

• Classic Tile functionality
• Range may vary
• Speaker is quite small

Tile isn’t just one connection between your phone and the tracker, but a whole network. Whoever’s closest to the tracker when you ping it (with the app installed) will generate location data for you based on Bluetooth range-finding.

This means that if you lose the Slim and whatever it’s hidden inside in a populated area, there’s a pretty good chance of getting it back. Lose it somewhere few people tread, and you might have to retrace your steps with your phone held in front of you like a sci-fi motion tracker. 

This means the range of the Tracker is all-important, as it requires someone to step close enough to recognise it’s there before it can send you a location signal.

The Tile Pro is the current king of detection range, claiming to send a signal as far as 500ft/150m under ideal conditions. The Tile Slim can’t quite manage this, and due to its shape, is much more likely to be inside something that will block both the Bluetooth signal and the sound its tiny speaker makes. It’s tinny and annoying enough to hear over some background noise if you’re close by, but with something soft blocking the grille, it’s going to get muffled.

In tests, which involved leaving it on a chair and then walking away to various pre-measured points, all with a line of sight to the Slim, it showed similar performance to the Tile Sticker.

A 30m distance seemed to be the best it could manage, with walls and other obstructions lowering this. As you move further away, not only does the Bluetooth signal drop but so does its audability. Lose contact, and you’ll be able to see its last known position on a map, and be able to set a notification for when it reconnects.

Software

• Life360 needed for SOS
• Reimbursement scheme available
• Most functions work without subscription

Tile depends on its app ecosystem for its functionality, and you get a choice.

There’s the standard Tile app, which gives you most of the functionality, or there’s the app from parent company Life360, which does everything the Tile app can do and adds the ability to send an SOS alert from the Tile Slim to a contact set up in advance by pressing the Slim’s button three times.

Unlike the Tile Sticker, the button on the Slim is easy to access and press, and the required triple-click will make it harder to set off by accident. 

Subscribers can enrol particularly precious products into Tile’s reimbursement scheme, which pays out up to £75/$100/AUS$150 if you’re a standard level sub, and up to £750/$1000/AUS$1500 if you pay for the Premium Protect tier.

There are some hoops to jump through first, and you’ll need to send Tile a photo of your item with the Tile attached. Another subscription feature is the free replacement of damaged or faulty Tiles, which sounds excellent if you’re regularly getting into scrapes.

Luckily, most of the Tile Slim’s functions operate without a subscription. If you just want to find your wallet from across the room, then you can probably live without location history and customer care support over text message – though alerts, like if you leave the house without a Tile-protected item such as your keys, could be worth paying for.

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