The Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and Slim Smart Finder offer a lower-cost alternative to AirTags — with a couple of catches.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Less expensive than AirTags | Lacks precise finding (name?) |
| Choice of design styles | Biz card model has fixed battery |
| FineTrack Slim is rechargeable | Recharging is quite fiddly |
Score: 3.5/5
 |
Buy The UGreen Finder Tracker! | Buy On Amazon |
 |
Buy The UGreen Finder Tracker Slim! | Buy On Amazon |
In this review
Design
Performance
Battery
Conclusion
Ethical disclaimer: The Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder and Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder used in this review were supplied to me by Ugreen.
That gets them reviewed, nothing more; Ugreen has had zero input into the editorial content of this review, which is how it should be. Rather like finding your valuables, finding good upfront disclosure is, I feel, highly important. For more on ART’s ethics policy, see here.
Design
Apple’s AirTags are nice enough devices if you’re an iPhone user, but rather like the rest of Apple’s general output, you can’t exactly call them inexpensive. While there are cross-platform alternatives like Tile’s array of trackers, if you do want to keep matters within Apple’s Find My network, you do have alternatives that can slice away some of that price.
Also read:
Tile Pro, Tile Mate and Tile Sticker Review
The Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and FineTrack Slim Smart Finder are two such alternatives, though unlike what happens so frequently with AirPods, these aren’t straight up AirTag clones visually.
Instead they’re closer to what Tile offers in design terms, with the cheaper Smart Finder coming in a simple square while the Slim Smart Finder has a business card shape and considerably thinner profile.
That does give them some flexibility in how you could deploy them – it would be easy enough to have the Slim Smart Finder in your wallet, for example – though it does also mean that they’re explicitly not compatible with any AirTag accessories the way that some products like Motorola’s Moto Tags are
Also read:
Motorola Moto Tag review
Performance
Setting up either tracker is a simple enough affair, managed only through Apple’s existing Find My app on compatible devices.
Unlike an AirTag they won’t be automatically detected by a nearby iPhone or iPad when you take them out of the packaging. Instead, you add them via Apple’s Find My App, choosing to “Add other item” within its Items interface.
For both of the Ugreen devices, this was a painless process. At that point you can also rename them and assign them whatever icon suits your style. Once set up, they’ll live on the Items tab of the Find My Interface, the same way that AirTags do.
All so well and good, but are they in fact any good?
It depends what you want, because while they do represent a cheaper alternative to AirTags, what you’re getting isn’t quite the same as the “full” AirTag experience.
I put the both trackers through the same kinds of tests that I’ve done for tracking tags in the past, “losing” them in specific places in order to try to find them, with an AirTag in the same location for the purposes of comparison.
As always, the accuracy of these kinds of tracking tags relies more on having a network of devices that come close to each tracker.
Here the Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder essentially matched AirTags placed in the same locations around my home and in my car.
One catch here is that if you’re only accessing Find My via an iCloud web browser instance, then no trackers will show up at all – but then, that’s also true for official AirTags, which means that (for example) you can’t really track them via a non-Apple device such as an Android phone.
In terms of the way that the Find My app locates and tracks them, it’s an essentially identical experience in terms of time to find each tracker, but there is a catch when it comes to Precision Finding.
That’s the feature on AirTags that allow them to give you directional instructions as to where they are precisely, down to the metre and with compass point directions.
The Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder are cheaper because they lack the precise ultrawideband support that enables this feature – and I’m not 100% certain that Apple opens up that anyway – which means that all you get is a map-based rough location of each device.
They do support playing a sound to become discoverable, with a distinctly different and slightly higher pitched chime than an official AirTag.
It’s a very small plus in the Ugreen’s corner here, because if I had an AirTag and a Ugreen tag in the same location within a bag or my car’s glovebox, I could hear the Ugreen chime just that little bit better.
Battery
The big difference between the Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder is that the former uses a standard CR2032 battery that Ugreen claims will last up to two years, while the latter is rechargeable via an included cable with a claimed battery life of one year.
To get the obvious out of the way, I’ve not had either device long enough to run them flat, no matter how many times I try to locate them during my couple of weeks of testing. Apple’s interface doesn’t really give me a good idea of battery rundown in that time, so all I can really say is… so far, so good?
One area where Ugreen has outdone Apple is in the security around the cell battery in the standard Smart Finder. This was a bit of a sore point for the original AirTag because it’s not that hard to pop the batteries out of those devices.
The Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder’s battery is secured with a pinhole, similar to the way your phone’s SIM card tray pops out, and it’s quite hard work just to get the battery cover off. A big plus for child safety, but also quite annoying when you do need to swap the battery out
Ordinarily that would mean that I’d say that the Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder would be the better buy, but this model has a different issue.
It recharges via USB cable, but it’s with a tiny, quite custom pin connector. Lose or break the cable, and you would have no way at all to recharge the tracker, at which point it’s just so much e-waste.
My own test bench probably isn’t a good example of everyone’s situation, but if you have any number of USB cables – and most of us do – good luck finding that one very specific cable after a year’s worth of use when the battery is running low.
Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder: Alex’s Verdict
Apple’s AirTags are a nice premium option, but premium is the key detail here; at $49 each they’re hardly cheap. The Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder sells for around $26 and around $43 respectively at the time of writing, so you’re saving money right away, and that’s the key point of appeal.
If you don’t need precision finding, then the cheaper Smart Track Finder could be a really smart buy for iPhone users. It’s a little harder to recommend the Slim Smart Finder unless that business card shape is critical to whatever it is you want to track, however.
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Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder: Pricing and availability
The Ugreen FineTrack Smart Finder and Ugreen FineTrack Slim Smart Finder retail in Australia for around $26 and $43 respectively at the time of writing.
|
Buy The UGreen Finder Tracker! | Buy On Amazon |
|
Buy The UGreen Finder Tracker Slim! | Buy On Amazon |
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