A tracker for an AirPods case and other small kit

Start with what is already covered

Before tagging anything, check whether it is already in the list.

Recent AirPods cases appear in Find My in their own right, under Devices rather than Items, because the case itself carries the electronics to be found. If yours does, a tag adds nothing except bulk, you would be attaching a second finding mechanism to something that already has one, and the map would show the same building.

The same logic applies to anything with a battery and a wireless radio of its own that is signed in to your account. A tag is for objects that are electrically dead: keys, wallets, cases, bags, instruments, sports kit.

So the first question is not which tracker to buy. It is: open the app, look under Devices, and see whether the thing is already there.

The cases where it genuinely is not

Older earbud cases, before the finding hardware was included, are not in the list and never will be. Nor are the small accessories that surround them, and this is where the real losses happen:

• A charging case that lives loose in a rucksack rather than in a pocket.
• A stylus, which is the most reliably lost object Apple has ever sold.
• A dongle or adapter pouch, worth more than it looks and easily left at a desk.
• A portable battery pack, usually the first thing to migrate to somebody else's bag.
• A travel wallet of cables that always seems to be in the other suitcase.

The physical problem with tagging tiny things

Here is the trade-off nobody puts on a product page. A tag of this shape is 36.3 mm square and 9 mm thick, and weighs about 10 g. An earbud case is a little larger than a matchbox.

Attaching one to the other roughly doubles the bulk of the object in a pocket and removes the very quality, pocketability, that made it worth owning. That is a real cost, not a quibble, and for something you carry daily it usually outweighs the benefit.

Three ways around it, in order of how well they work:

Tag the container instead. If the case lives in a rucksack, a gym bag or a laptop sleeve, put the tracker in the bag. You lose the ability to find the case when it is out on a table, and you gain a tag that is out of the way, on something big enough to carry it, and covering everything else in the bag at the same time.

Use a pouch. A small zipped pouch holding the case, a cable and a tag turns three loose objects into one findable one. This is the answer for travel kit specifically, and it solves a tidiness problem as well as a finding one.

Attach it directly and accept the bulk. Reasonable if the item lives in a bag rather than a pocket, and if losing it would cost real money.

Where the tag genuinely earns its place

Against the caveats above, there is a category of small kit where a tracker is straightforwardly the right call.

Anything that travels in a case and stays there: a microphone, a small lens, a set of hex keys, a bike multi-tool, a medication pouch. Anything expensive relative to its size, which people leave behind precisely because it is small enough not to be noticed missing. Anything shared between people in a household, where the question is not where is it but who has it.

And, most of all, anything that gets put down in unfamiliar places. The strongest predictor of a lost object is not its value. It is the number of different surfaces it ends up on in a week.

The limits, stated plainly

Three things a tag will not do for small kit, and they should be understood before purchase rather than after.

It will not draw you an arrow. Without an ultra-wideband radio there is no Precision Finding, so a tracker that has slid under a sofa is found by ear rather than by a bearing on screen. For a large flat object that is fine; for something the size of a matchbox in long grass, it is a genuine weakness, and our comparison sets out exactly what that costs.

It will not report from nowhere. A tag in a locked cupboard in an empty office updates when somebody walks past, and not before.

It will not work at all for anyone using an Android phone. Find My is Apple's, the relay network is Apple's, and there is no partial version of that.

A considered recommendation

If you own one of the recent earbud cases, do not buy a tag for it. It is already findable, and you would be adding weight to solve a problem you do not have.

If you own an older case, or a stylus, or a pouch of small expensive things, do not attach a tag to the object either. Put the object and the tag in the same small bag, and treat that bag as the thing you own. It is a better system than a tracker glued to a case, it survives the case being replaced, and it covers three or four items with one tracker.

And if you are choosing between tagging the small thing and tagging the big thing it travels in, tag the big thing. Coverage of the bag is worth more than precision about its contents, almost every time.

How Orbit Tag helps

Orbit Tag suits the pouch-and-bag approach recommended above better than it suits being strapped to a matchbox, and it is fairer to say so than to pretend otherwise. Squarish at 36.3 mm, 9 mm thick, about 10 g: it disappears in a rucksack pocket and refuses to disappear in a jacket.

For that use it is well set up. The key ring hole runs through the moulding, with two rings supplied, so it clips to an internal loop rather than rolling around loose. IP67 sealing covers a bag left in the rain and a drink spilled inside it. The alarm reaches 100 dB at the top of its range and answers Play Sound within the quoted 60 m of Bluetooth, which is what finds a bag in a house; past that, passing devices keep the last confirmed position current under Apple's encryption.

The CR2032 is rated at roughly two years and replaced with a twist, worth knowing if the tracker is going into a pouch you open twice a year. Apple hardware from iOS 14.5 onward is required, Android is not supported, and there is no ultra-wideband radio.

Two trackers in a box, which is conveniently one for the bag and one for whatever else keeps wandering, under £15 with free UK delivery. see the specification.