Have you ever stood at the front door with the firm feeling that your keys were just in your hands? And then spent half an hour flipping the couch, checking jackets, and going through the pockets of jeans you supposedly hadn’t worn for three days? Personally, this has happened to me more than once, and I know many of my friends have experienced the same thing. This is exactly the daily torture that tracking tags save you from. The simplest solution for an iPhone owner is to buy an AirTag. But they cost a pretty penny, and there are alternatives that work natively and cost much less. Now UGREEN has also decided to offer an alternative at almost a third of the price. The question is how honest such a replacement will be.
This tracker is better than AirTag and costs three times less
What Is the UGREEN Smart Finder
In short, the UGREEN Smart Finder is a Bluetooth tracker that works through Apple’s Find My network. No proprietary servers, no subscription, no separate app: just the standard Find My on iPhone, and that’s it.
The device comes in several versions. The standard one is a square key fob measuring 36×36×7.4 mm with a hole for a strap, which is included in the box. There’s also a Slim version — a card just 1.7 mm thick for your wallet, and a tiny Mini in the form factor of a small tag. There’s even a version for Android in card form.
The tag is slightly larger than a coin.
The card is thinner than a coin and only twice as thick as a bank card.
The Mini version looks very similar to a regular AirTag thanks to its round shape, and we’ll leave the Android version to our colleagues at AndroidInsider.ru. For now, let’s look at the standard version and the card, which work with Find My and will help you find lost keys or a wallet.
What the Item Tracking Tag Looks Like
Both versions of the UGREEN Smart Finder feel pleasant to hold. The build quality is solid with no creaking, wobble, or cheap plastic feel. The square shape of the standard version with rounded corners looks neat. The strap hole is built right into the body, eliminating the need to buy a separate holder, as you have to do with AirTag. The 7.4 mm thickness is slightly more than Apple’s competitor, but still compact enough not to weigh down your pocket with keys that have a tag hanging on them.
The battery compartment lock deserves special mention. The cover doesn’t open with a simple press — it requires a special tool. This is a requirement of the UL4200A standard, which protects children from accidentally swallowing the battery. A small detail, but a nice one: at least in this regard, the company thought ahead rather than shifting responsibility to the user.
In one case the battery is replaceable, in the other it’s built-in.
The card is even more minimalist, and you can’t remove its battery — it’s built in. For charging, there’s a single distinguishing element on the body — a magnetic contact. The card itself is only slightly thicker than a regular bank card, so it doesn’t take up extra space in a wallet or cardholder. If you want to hang it on a backpack, there’s a special hole and a strap included. A charging cable is also included in the box.
Charging cable and strap are included. But don’t lose the cable — finding a replacement won’t be easy.
How the AirTag Alternative Works
Setting up both tags takes literally a minute. It’s essentially the same as with a regular AirTag. You open Find My on your iPhone, tap the plus button, add a new item — and the tracker appears in the list. No registrations, personal accounts, or passwords. It works on iOS 14.5 and later, so even on not-the-newest iPhones everything will be fine.
Setup and configuration in just a couple of taps.
After that, it works in two modes. At close range — up to 10–20 meters — the tracker beeps with an 80 dB siren, loud enough to hear from under a couch cushion or from the depths of a backpack with multiple pockets. This isn’t a quiet beep — it’s a proper sound, and it gets the job done. At longer distances, the Find My network kicks in: every iPhone, iPad, or Mac belonging to any person passing by picks up the anonymous signal from the tag. If it’s in lost mode, the data is sent to the server, and you receive a notification that the device has been found.
So if the tag is in a taxi that has already driven away, or was left on a park bench where you were sitting earlier, you’ll find out as soon as any Apple user passes by.
With this thickness, you can carry the tag in a wallet, cardholder, or hang it on a backpack
In this mode, the tag can stay active for quite a long time. And the probability of encountering someone with an Apple device is as high as it gets. The main thing is that they need to be near it. In a big city, this happens within minutes, and in my experiment burying the tag in a forest near a park, it responded within a few hours.
The tag can also remind you if you’ve left it somewhere. It works quite simply. Your iPhone sees it nearby and stays silent. As soon as you
