Review on 🔍 Chipolo ONE Spot (2021) - Apple Find My Network Compatible Item Finder with Keyring Hole (Almost Black) by Ryan Bennett

In April of this year, Apple announced in a press release that they were opening up the "Find My" network to allow it to work with third-party products. This Chipolo One Spot was one of the first three products to support Find My (for products not made by Apple or Beats). That was weeks before Apple's first-party variant called "AirTags" was unveiled. I'm surprised this product hasn't been available from Revain for so long, but I'm very glad I had the opportunity to review it. I'm a total Apple fan and already have AirTags, so (IMO) I was a good choice. The MSRP for this product is exactly $1 less than buying a standalone AirTag (although a four-pack is $99 for Apple and $90 for Chipolo). But you actually save a little more since AirTags don't have keychain holes, which requires an additional purchase 🤣. This Chipolo One Spot gives you most AirTag features, with the exception of the UWB-based precision search feature, which requires an iPhone 11 or later to function. The setup process for this Chipolo is also a little less like AirPods than AirTags. Unlike previous Chipolo products, this only works with the Find My app and not the Chipolo app, so you must have an iPhone to use this. To set up One Spot, simply go to the Find My app on your iOS device and select the Items tab, then Add New Item, and finally Other Supported Items. Hold Chipolo close to your device and an on-screen prompt will let you choose a name and emoji to associate with Chipolo. After that, everything is set up and connected to a powerful network that spans iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other devices. It's basically a guarantee that whatever you plug into the Chipolo won't be lost for very long, at least not in North America where there are millions and millions of Apple products. I'm not going to go too deep into how this all happens. works, but if you lose your keys (for example) and leave them in a restaurant or elsewhere, as long as there is another Apple device within Bluetooth range of your Chipolo, you can see its current location in the app. If there is no Apple device nearby, the last known location is shown. In the Find Me app, you can call Chipolo to find him if you know he's nearby, but not exactly where (e.g. the Chipolo's speaker is actually much louder than the AirTags and will ring by default longer. You can even ask Siri to find your item by name, and it will call you. This works via HomePod, iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. But not on a Mac (not even an Apple Silicone Mac) or an Apple Watch. What could stop a stranger from finding your Chipolo, deleting it and saving it as their own hidden object scene? You can't do this without having one of your Apple devices linked to the iCloud account you linked to Setting up Chipolo It also has all the privacy features AirTag has to prevent it from being used to spy on an uninformed person by placing it in your car or on yourself I don't want to explain in detail how this part works because I don't want to inadvertently help someone trying to use this product for evil. The point is that after a certain time the ignorant person will be notified and call Chipolo One Spot to inform him that he is being tracked and he will get a popup on his smartphone if he has an iPhone. Presumably, an equivalent of this will appear on Android as a downloadable application. All of these things are within Apple's jurisdiction, and any product that works with Find My is subject to this anti-tracking people thing. Pros +$1 less than AirTag with 95% functionality Has a keychain hole unlike AirTags Just turn the speaker up louder than AirTags on Chipolo and it will ring over and over until you stop it whereas AirTags will only ring for about 10 seconds. Thinner than AirTag IPX5, water resistant (Weaker than AirTags which are IP67. So AirTags can be submerged up to 1 meter for 30 minutes, but Chipolo is only splashproof.) Setup process time same as AirTags No feature to pinpoint location with iPhone 11 equipped with U1 or newer. not as durable as AirTag Update 1: Just to understand potential buyers, it's true that you can't share a Chipolo One Spot with a family member so they can track its location. This means that each Chipolo One Spot is linked to a single Apple ID and the owner cannot share the location with another Apple ID. Even if they're signed in to Family Sharing, which lets you share App Store purchases and iCloud storage plans. However, it is also NOT available as an option for Apple AirTags. So it's not entirely fair to blame Chipolo for not including something that Apple wouldn't let. The Find My network is under Apple's control, and they decide what's allowed and what's not for each device that connects to it. Be wary of reviews without a legitimate "Verified Purchase" tag or "Vine Free Product Review" tag like this one. Without this, there is no proof that they even owned or used the product in question. This is more of an opinion than a rating.