If you want to protect your wallet there are two ways to do it: you get either a smart wallet or a tracker. We’ve tested both methods on Woolet wallet and Tile tracker. See for yourself!
Tile it up!
Tile is a flat, square tracker that can be attached to whatever you want to protect, and it will also fit inside your pocket. Let’s just focus on wallets though. If you want to protect your money and cards you just need to put Tile tracker inside one of your pockets. Then you will be able to locate your wallet on a map if you lose it. The geo-location works really well, and you’ll be able to find your wallet with absolutely no problem.
Apart from the main features Tile also includes the possibility to locate your phone (just squeeze it, and the synchronized phone will ring), crowd-finding (Tile is located by other Tile users when you click on the “Notify when found” function) and share-tile (one Tile can be used by several people).
Cracks on the Tile
Unfortunately, we’ve come across few inconveniences. First of all, Tile can easily be removed by a potential thief, would make your wallet basically impossible to locate. Also it’s not as tiny as the website claims and it doesn’t fit inside every wallet. The girls in our team had no problem with it, because their wallets were, let’s face, bigger. A few of the guys, on the other hand, who owned slim wallets quickly noticed that Tile makes them bulky and took up a lot of space.
Secondly, the battery is not rechargeable, so when its dead, it’s useless, and you need to replace the whole thing. The Tile company offers discounts for regulars but, even so, we would expect a hi-tech gadget like this to be more reliable.
One of our testers also noticed that you can squeeze Tile accidentally and call your phone at the most unexpected moment.
Finally, when you leave your wallet behind Tile won’t inform you about that. Only when you realize that your wallet is gone can you check its current location (which in most cases is going to be home or work). We think that’s a massive flaw, because we would like to be notified every time we leave our wallets behind. That’s why we turned to Woolet.
And now for the Woof!
Geo-location, phone notifications every time you leave your wallet behind, and an integrated battery (basically it’s sewn into the material and can’t be removed without ripping the whole thing apart). The battery is almost invisible so there’s no way the wallet can get deformed. The battery is fully rechargeable on wireless charging pads. You can get one in the bundle with Woolet or use any other in QI-standard.
The problem with Woolet was mainly that there were too many pushed notifications. In buildings with multiple walls, the app sometimes went crazy. Apparently, there’s an app update to be expected soon and we have been informed that this bug will be fixed.
Unfortunately, you can’t find your phone using Woolet, and there’s no crowd-finding feature. Also it’s more expensive than Tile, but since it’s the whole wallet hand-crafted out of leather, that’s understandable.
Verdict
As far as the safety of the wallet is concerned, we give our vote to Woolet. mostly, because the electronics inside can’t be removed, which is crucial in case of pick-pocketing or simply forgetting the wallet.
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