iOS Tracker
Get yours

AirTag 2: what changed, and whether you need one

NewsPublished 5 min read
A small round white tracking disc lying on a pale wooden table beside a bunch of car keys and a dark phone

Apple announced AirTag 2 on 26 January 2026, almost five years to the week after the original went on sale. If you already own an iPhone and a drawer full of things that go missing, the interesting question is not whether the second generation is better, it plainly is, but whether the improvement is one you will ever notice. Below is what Apple actually changed, what it costs in the UK, and where a cheaper Find My tag still does the job.

What Apple changed in AirTag 2

Apple's press release is unusually specific, which makes it easy to separate the real upgrades from the marketing. Three things moved.

A second-generation Ultra Wideband chip. This is the headline. Ultra Wideband is the short-range radio behind Precision Finding, the on-screen arrow and distance readout that walks you to a tag over the closing metres. As MacRumors and 9to5Mac both reported on the day, Apple's claim is that the newer chip lets that guidance begin from up to half again as far away as the outgoing model managed, using the same blend of haptic, visual and audible cues.

Note the qualifier. It is the starting distance that grew, not the accuracy at close range. Precision Finding also needs an iPhone with its own Ultra Wideband chip, iPhone 11 and later, so owners of an iPhone SE or an older handset gain nothing here at all.

An upgraded Bluetooth radio. Less glamorous, more useful day to day. Bluetooth is what lets your phone ring a tag directly, and it is the link every passing Apple device uses to spot the tag when it is out of your hands. A stronger radio means fewer of those infuriating "no location found" moments in a large house.

A speaker roughly 50 per cent louder. Apple says it can be heard from up to twice the distance of the first generation. For anyone who has ever tried to hear a chirping tag through a sofa cushion or a full rucksack, this may be the change that matters most.

What Apple did not change

The announcement mentions no change to the shape, the size or the user-replaceable coin cell. The privacy design is the same one Apple has shipped since 2021: frequently changing Bluetooth identifiers, and unwanted-tracking alerts that now reach non-Apple phones as well. Share Item Location, the feature that lets you hand a lost bag's location to an airline, carries over too.

What AirTag 2 costs in the UK

Apple's UK pricing is £29 for a single tag and £99 for a four-pack. That is a genuine cut: the outgoing model sat at £35 and £119, so the new tag arrives cheaper than the thing it replaces, which almost never happens with Apple hardware.

Even so, run the arithmetic for a household rather than a single set of keys. Keys, work bag, suitcase, laptop sleeve, the camera case and the spare car fob is six items. At single-tag pricing that is a serious outlay for six pieces of plastic containing a coin cell, and it is the reason most people stop at one or two tags and keep on losing everything else.

Who should upgrade, and who should not

Upgrade if you regularly lose things in places where the last few metres are the hard part, a car boot at a campsite, a hold bag on a carousel, a coat in a cloakroom, and you own an iPhone 11 or later. Precision Finding starting sooner is a real, felt improvement in exactly those situations.

Do not bother if your losses happen indoors. Inside a flat or a semi, the tag is almost always within Bluetooth range already, and the thing that finds it is the speaker, not the arrow. A first-generation AirTag that still holds a charge will serve you just as well.

Think twice if you are buying in bulk. The upgrade is per tag, and the benefit is per tag, so the cost of putting the newest hardware on everything you own scales badly.

What a louder speaker still cannot fix

Every Find My tag, Apple's or anyone else's, has the same ceiling: it has no GPS and no mobile connection. It is a small Bluetooth beacon whose position is reported by whatever Apple devices happen to walk past it. In a British city centre that is a crowd, and updates arrive within minutes. On a Highland footpath at seven in the morning it is nobody, and the map will keep showing you the last place a phone saw it.

Ultra Wideband does not change that. It shortens the final walk once you are already standing close to the item. If your problem is "I have no idea which county this is in", a better radio in the tag is not the answer, network density is, and that is identical for every tag registered with Find My.

How Orbit Tag fits in

Orbit Tag takes the middle path. It is a certified accessory, so it appears in the Find My app as an Other Item, sits in the same list as your AirPods, and uses the same worldwide relay network at no cost. Certification is what buys the map, the separation warnings, the Lost Mode hand-back page, item lending on iOS 17 and above, and Apple's unwanted-tracking protections.

What it will never carry is Ultra Wideband. There is no arrow and no distance readout: you get a pin, plus an 80–100 dB chirp you can set off from as far as 60 m, and your ears do the final stretch. That one omission is the reason a box holds a pair of trackers rather than a single one, for under £15 a box with delivery included inside the UK. Apple hardware only, from iOS 14.5 upward, Android is not supported in any form, and the coin cell is a CR2032 you change yourself, good for roughly two years.

Want the newest arrow? Buy Apple's tag. Want six things covered rather than one? Look at what comes in a box.

On where that arrow genuinely earns its money, see Precision Finding weighed against Bluetooth.

Sources

By the team at iOS Tracker Revised

Read next

← All field notes