Review: Tile Pro Sport smart tracker

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

As someone who often misplaces my car and house keys as well as my smartphone, the ability to quickly find these specially when I'm running late for a meeting is priceless. I've tried some bluetooth trackers in the past, but found them to be kludgy and hard to use. This was because the hardware wasn't durable enough or the apps were lacking in functionality. 

The Tile system has always intrigued me and I immediately put the Tile Pro Sport to good use the day I got my review unit. I was cleaning my apartment and moving boxes and misplaced my house keys just as I needed to rush out for some errands. Usually it would take a good 10-15 minutes for me to retrace my steps and find my keys but thanks to the Tile app, I was able to trigger the alarm and quickly find my keys (they were under my cat) by following the melodic alert sound.

A few days later, my smartphone went missing after my son played with it. At first, I panicked and figured I would have to dial my phone number from another phone to track it down, but I remembered I had my Tile Pro Sport in my keychain. Pressing on the stylish and rather rugged Tile Pro Sport enabled me to quickly find my Moto Z2 Play.

For this convenience alone, the Tile Pro Sport is a no brainer for an absent-minded person like myself. The system, however, offers much more. Tile's Bluetooth tracking system uses a smart crowdsourcing method to be able to grab the location of nearby Tiles, which then securely pings location on a map. This means that if I lost my keys in Kensington market, another Tile user's smartphone can locate it for me securely and update location status through the app or account.

Of course, this will only work if there are many Tile users in a specific area, but its a useful feature that increases the chance of retrieving lost devices. The Tile Pro Sport is made out of metal and plastic, it has a range of 200 meters, it is waterproof as well as twice as loud as previous versions.

The Tile Pro Sport and Tile Pro Style (which is more fashion-forward in gold and white) were designed by Yves Behar's Fuseproject, which are the eminent consumer electronics design firm behind Jawbone, Ouya and others.

A tremendous amount of care and foresight has gone into creating this solution and this is something that becomes evident once you use the companion app or spend some time looking and touching the hardware.

The new premium line of Tile products reflect consumers’ various lifestyles. Tile Sport features a
unique tread-like design and dark slate finish with a graphite-colored ring that offers extra
durability.

Framed with a champagne gold ring, Tile Style is satin white with a subtly-ridged
texture, making it the perfect accessory to attach to valuable items. Both new products come with
a convenient hole so that they can easily loop onto keyrings or bags.

MSRP: $45 each, $80 for a two-pack or combination pack of both
Availability: Amazon.ca and Best Buy

Rating: 5 out of 5