I'm trying to connect to my Pebble Bee right now, but it's not working. This might foreshadow
the point of my review: Apple AirTags are pretty amazing, except for one place - wallets. A while
back, I reviewed a wallet finder compatible with the Apple Find My app, the Chipolo Card Spot. My
experience with it was, well, pretty bad; it was basically non-functioning. Commenters on that
video mentioned the Pebble Bee card, so I ended up ordering it and receiving it in early August
of 2022. Now that I've had it for five months, I feel like it's time I can finally review it.
To test out the Pebble Bee, I decided to toss my skis into my car and make the trek to the
snowy east side of Mount Hood. We may as well just skip the introductions and get
straight into the review. I decided to make my review during a cross-country ski session, as
this would be a place you would not want to lose your wallet. Like all Find My compatible devices,
Apple keeps the best features for themselves. Find My compatible trackers do not offer precision
tracking like Apple's AirTags; instead, you can only get approximate locations and the ability to
ping your device so it can play a sound. This puts third-party trackers at a distinct disadvantage.
The Pebble Bee card has a simple design. Its dimensions are roughly that of a credit card,
making it easy to fit into any wallet with card holders. At 2.8 millimeters thick, it's about
as thick as two to three credit cards. It uses a rechargeable battery with a magnetic cable,
and Pebble Bee boasts the battery lasts about 12 months. After about five months of use, I'm still
over at least a half charge, so this seems to be somewhat accurate. The Pebble Bee does boast an
IPX rating of six, so it is water-resistant, and I've definitely put it through the test
through owning this, as I've hiked in the rain. The biggest issue with my Chipolo is it stopped
updating its location, but it was still randomly chirping. Whereas the Pebble Bee has somewhat of
an inverse problem: It's fairly reliable when it comes to updating its location,
but it mostly doesn't chirp unless you're very close. I'll demonstrate this in a second. It
wasn't always this case; it used to work better. Unfortunately, the Pebble Bee seems to be
only effective from about two feet. It's not always prone to updating locations,
and I can't tell if this is a flaw of the iPhone or this card in particular. It seems
like these third-party devices just don't update the same amount as the Apple AirTags.
This leaves the Pebble Bee in a semi-working state. I have a generalized idea of where my
wallet is, but it won't help me locate it if it's, say, well wedged in my couch, where just chirping
it would be ideal. The Pebble Bee is certainly superior to my experience with the Chipolo,
but that's hardly bragging rights. This brings me back to the same conundrum as I had before:
Tile offers a much more reliable solution with its cards, and Apple offers the best-in-class
experience. Each has its unique set of issues. Tile was bought by Life 360,
which made money by mining user data from a family safety app and then selling it. Life360
did reform itself somewhat; now it's only selling its data to a single data broker who may or may
not sell that data down the line. We know how Apple makes its money:
by its walled garden ecosystem, although it's not beyond reproaches as Apple's jumped into
the advertising game deeper with its news app and App Store. Apple's certainly the lesser of
two evils when it comes to data privacy, but the AirTag is ill-suited for wallets.
At least the Pebble Bee actually works, unlike the Chipolo that I was testing.
Maybe at some point in the future, someone will get this right, but so far, I've yet to find one
of these wallet-style tags that actually worked well. The best I've ever found thus far is Tile,
if you're looking for the slim wallet, except for now that they're selling all your data.
Now I'm using the much more bulky Apple AirTag. It's more accurate and it's the
best thing I found outside the Tile. I did do a surprising amount of testing
that just didn't make it into this video because it was, quite frankly, boring. I couldn't get it
to reliably connect, but it would continuously update the map for approximate locations. For
that to work, I had to be roughly 25 feet away tops in my test. Both the AirTags and the Pebble
Bee card had a range of about 25 to maybe 30 feet. For the rest of the world not using Freedom Units,
this is approximately 9 meters. These results are expected as this is roughly the maximum
range of the iPhone's Bluetooth capabilities. The Apple AirTag is hands down the winner simply
for the fact that it works and reliably chirps, not to mention it's more accurate.
After being burned so bad by Chipolo, I really wanted this one to work, but the problem is,
working partially is not the same as working completely.
With the limited functionality compared especially to that of the Apple AirTags,
it's hard for me to justify really keeping it around. It's time to close out this review,
I'm going to do that over a barrel-aged craft beer. Maybe third-party Find My trackers will
improve in time, but for now, it really seems like the only one worth buying is the Apple AirTag.