Motorola Moto Tag Review: Android’s answer to AirTags

The Motorola Moto Tags have a striking resemblance to Apple’s AirTags – and they work just about as well for keeping track of luggage on long overseas trips.

Score: 3.5/5

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In this review

Motorola Moto Tag Specifications
Motorola Moto Tag Design
Motorola Moto Tag Performance
Motorola Moto Tag Battery
Motorola Moto Tag Conclusion

The Motorola Moto Tag is Motorola’s answer to Apple AirTags – rather directly in fact, because leaving aside colour, they’re a near match for Apple’s tracking tag technology in physical terms.

The actual tracking, running through Google’s Find My network is mostly impressive, though like most tracking tags they’re nowhere near as precise as the marketing hype might have you believe.

Ethical disclaimer: Motorola Australia sent me a single Motorola Moto Tag for testing, and I don’t think they’re going to ask for it back (though they’re free to do so).

As always, this has no effect on my review and they have no oversight or influence on it, but I do feel that this kind of upfront disclosure is important. Now, on with the review.

Design

If you’ve ever seen one of Apple’s AirTags, then there’s an easy way to describe the Motorola Moto Tags.

Imagine an Apple AirTag, but instead of white, make it either blue or green and drop a Motorolo “batwing” logo on the front. They’re not quite as rounded as the AirTags are at the top, which gives them a slight 1950s UFO-style feel.

Which is which? It's hard to tell...

That’s it. At 31.9x8mm, they’re an exact physical match for Apple’s AirTags, and this does bring with it some benefits and some drawbacks.

On the positive side, it means that any AirTag holder accessory, whether it’s a first-party Apple one or one of the very many third party cases and holders that you can buy absolutely will fit the Motorola Moto Tag.

Sure, I don’t think too many Android users will have heavily invested in Apple’s rather iOS-specific tags to speak of, but it does mean that there’s a lot of options out there for you to purchase.

On the negative side… you’re more than likely going to have to do so, because the round shape of the Motorola Moto Tag, and the fact that there’s no keyring loop gap means that there’s no other way to attach it to your devices to speak of.

If you need that kind of functionality, one of Tile’s trackers might be a better bet. The Moto Tags are IP67 rated for water resistance, however, so they should survive limited immersion if you attach them to something that gets inadvertently dunked in water or rained on.

Also read:
Tile Pro, Tile Mate & Tile Sticker Review

You could technically glue it to a precious device you didn’t want to lose, but then you’re asking for a world of trouble when the time comes to replace its battery, which is from the bottom.

The Motorola Moto Tag’s batwing logo isn’t just for show or branding purposes, as it’s also a button, albeit one that’s sometimes a little harder to press than I really would have liked.

Performance

Setting up the Motorola Moto Tag is a slightly odd process, because it relies on two applications.
Firstly there’s Motorola’s own app, suitably named Moto Tag, available for Android only.

Unlike Samsung’s trackers (which I’ve yet to test out) there’s no Motorola exclusivity around the Moto Tags, and this is good, especially as during my review period I didn’t in fact have access to any Motorola phones; it was paired to a Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy S24 FE for testing purposes.

However, because it uses Google’s Find My network, you’ve got to first register the tag there before the Motorola Moto Tag app will do anything at all – and when it does, it’s (in theory) a mixed set of features between both applications.

Want to find your tag anywhere on the global map? That’s part of Google’s Find My app, and arguably the feature most people will find the most useful. However, if you want to use the Motorola Moto Tag to find your paired phone or use it as a remote camera shutter, that’s set up through the Motorola Moto Tag app – at least in theory.

I say in theory because I’m yet to get those features to work at all.

The Moto Tag app required firmware updates during my review period and these often failed to download despite being very small files, but even with those applied, a battery settings permission that I absolutely enabled in every case kept stopping the Moto Tags from wanting to work as either a remote shutter or a device to find my phone.

Searching around online does suggest that there are some pairing and updating issues with the Moto Tag, so if those features are important to you, that could be a bigger problem.

The Motorola Moto Tag uses a mix of Bluetooth and UWB, paired up with Google’s Find My network of Android devices to help you track its position. You can do this remotely on Google Maps, with the promise that all actual location data is fully encrypted and visible only to you when tracking.

Typically when I’ve tested these kinds of devices in the past, I’ve done so with smaller localised tests – leaving the tag in a room in my house and finding it, testing it through a carpark and so on.

Those features do work, though it’s worth noting that the way that Google’s Find My manages this is a little different to Apple’s use of UWB and Bluetooth for ultra-localised testing.

I think it might just be nearby...

If you’re too far away for Bluetooth range, you’ll just get a maps reference to the rough location of your Moto Tag, but if you’re closer, you get a visual indicator of your closeness, but without the directional arrows that Apple’s Find My service offers, just more of a “hot/cold” kind of indicator.

To be fair, Apple’s Find My does sometimes throw up a few odd directions while it tries to find an AirTag, and this is more robust than the way Tile handles that kind of tracking. You can also get the Moto Tag to chirp its speaker when it’s nearby, but its default volume is very low. Unless it’s out in the open, you’re unlikely to hear it at all.

I don’t much like half measures, so I decided I’d put the Motorola Moto Tag through a rather more robust real world test than just finding it my office, pitting it directly against an Apple AirTag and a Tile Mate tracker on a recent trip to Japan.

All three trackers were placed inside a suitcase, and I used their respective apps across two phones to see how well and quickly they’d pick up the location of my bag as I travelled around.

First stop, Sydney’s International Terminal, where I was keen to see just how close and quickly each of the tags would register once I’d checked my bags in. Once they’re tumbling down that conveyor belt they are out of your grasp, for sure, but here a pattern emerged that was pretty consistent throughout my travels.

My bags are still at Sydney airport at this point. That's fine, because I was also still there.

The AirTag and Motorola Moto Tag matched each other for speed of tracking, though they did differ on exactly where in the airport my luggage was at that point. The Tile tracked a little slower, but agreed with where the AirTag thought my bags were.

All well and good, but would I see them when I landed at Tokyo’s Haneda airport – and which tag would respond first?

The answer to that, to my surprise, was pretty much all of them at just about the same time, about a minute before they emerged onto the baggage claim conveyor.

Head to head to (nearly) head at Haneda airport. Disclaimer: The Tile screenshot is later than the other two as the screenshot failed while collecting my luggage, but it clearly shows that the Tile was seen (by me) at Haneda around the same time as the Moto Tag and Apple AirTag.

That wasn’t my only test however, as I then had to switch to a Japanese domestic flight up to Chitose Airport near Sapporo, Hokkaido.

Again, I tested for where my bags might be in the airport machinery while waiting for my luggage to appear, and again the Moto Tag and AirTag matched each other evenly for how recently they’d been “seen” by their respective apps. Here the Tile lagged a little in terms of the response of its tracking relative to the Moto Tag and Apple AirTag in the same suitcase.

Travel isn’t just about whether your bags do make it to your destination – though that’s always preferable – so I also used my head to head testing approach one day while out and about in Tokyo.

My hotel was in Akihabara, but that day I was checking out the Gōtokuji temple in Setagaya in Tokyo’s west, and I was interested to ensure that my luggage was still in my room where I'd left it.

Here the Moto Tag had a very slight edge on the AirTag, having been seen by the network three minutes prior, where Apple’s network was four minutes behind. Both were preferable to Tile’s effort, where the Tile tag hadn’t been seen for half an hour. There’s a lot that can happen to luggage in 30 minutes, though thankfully nothing actually had.

My end assessment of all of this comparative testing is that while it relies strongly on Google’s Find My network, and it will be interesting to see how any competitors on the same network stack up, it’s essentially as good as an AirTag for this kind of luggage tracking.

One nice note here is that because I was running the tracking tests across two phones, both were equally diligent in letting me know that I was travelling with a mystery tag, with the iPhone spotting the Moto Tag and the Samsung phone spotting the AirTag at similar times. I do prefer that level of scrutiny to avoid cyberstalking, though I appreciate some may not as it also potentially alerts thieves that they're travelling with tracked items.

On the battery front, Motorola’s claim for the Motorola Moto Tag is that it’s capable of up to a year’s operation before its CR2032 battery requires replacement. You only get the most basic of battery meters within the Moto Tag app, however. After a month’s worth of intermittent usage, it simply tells me that the battery is “OK”.

So all I can really say on this front is that at least month’s worth of usage from the provided CR2032 is achievable, but clearly this could vary if you throw in a particularly cheap off-brand battery as compared to something a tad more robust.

Motorola Moto Tag: Alex’s Verdict

Motorola is effectively first out of the gate in terms of providing a tracking tag using Google’s Find My system, and the Motorola Moto Tag does have that feel of a “Version One” device.

Its core tracking is fine, matching up nicely with Apple’s competing AirTag and offering a similar – but not quite identical – level of tracking of whatever you attach it to.

However, the dual app approach and bugginess of the Moto Tag app is something that Motorola really does need to address. I’d love to say that the shutter and phone finding features work because that would give them a real utility hook – but right now, they simply don’t.

Motorola Moto Tags: Pricing and availability

The Motorola Moto Tags retail in Australia at $55 for a single tag or $179 for a four-pack in either Jade Green or Starlight Blue finishes.

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