GoKawiilAdrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
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ZDNET's key takeaways
All the tags -- ranging in price from $40 to $2.50 -- worked.
Bluetooth range varied wildly, with the cheaper tag having less than half the range.
The difference in performance comes down to the quality of the build.
The day that the Apple AirTag arrived was a big day for me. This one product brought to an end one of the biggest frustrations in my life -- wasting time looking for things that had been "misplaced" by… ahem… someone. Within hours, I had AirTags on my keys, in my wallet, my rucksack, and even on things like my electric bike -- and I never looked back.
AirTags also opened the floodgates for third-party finder tags, from fobs to wallet cards, from a range of companies, some already in the tech space and some complete unknowns.
Also: I replaced my AirTags with this ball-shaped tracker for a week, and it's better in key ways
I've standardized on the AirTag because Apple's solution just works for me (especially because companies like Elevation Lab make some great holders for these tags), but I've lost count of how often I've been asked if there's any difference between AirTags and third-party tags, including those cheap tags you can pick up for a few bucks.
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