Chipolo Announces Find My-Compatible Wallet Tracker, Succeeding Where Apple Failed
Chance Miller, reporting today via 9to5Mac:
With Find My integration, the Chipolo Card Spot can be paired with the Find My app on your iPhone and easily located using the Find My network. You can also receive a notification when you leave your wallet behind using the new “Notify When Left Behind” feature of iOS 15.
The Chipolo Card Spot looks to be the best offering available to anyone looking for Find My compatibility in a wallet tracker. Apple's lackluster attempt in the MagSafe Wallet with Find My is such a compromised and incomplete implementation of "Find My" compatibility that the product description includes two asterisks. I covered my disappointment with the MagSafe Wallet back in September, when it's primary feature (left-behind notifications) was quickly revealed to be more annoyance than loss-avoidance with its lack of smarts. The only other way to add true Find My integration to a wallet are the many grotesqueries that lash entire AirTag to your wallet (with the obvious and unacceptable caveat of...an entire AirTag bulging out of your pocket).
Chipolo's new product (which is available now for pre-order, shipping in February) is better in almost every possible way than either of these solutions. The Card Spot is $35 (vs $29 for an AirTag or $59 for the MagSafe Leather Wallet), but offers fully-featured tracking using the Find My network (vs the MagSafe Wallet only remembering where it was removed from your phone), in a slim credit card form factor (as opposed to an AirTag-shaped bone spur jutting out of your pocket). It also has all of the primary features of the AirTag, including Lost Mode (which notifies you when your item is found near any iOS device) and the ability to play a sound when nearby. Oh, and no more obnoxious "Wallet Disconnected" notifications! Truly the best of all possible worlds. The only downside I currently see with Chipolo's offering is the lack of a replaceable battery — though this trade-off is somewhat mitigated by Chipolo offering a 50% discount and prepaid recycling for its customers.
When I got the MagSafe Leather Wallet with Find My, I was hoping for a solution that would A. Hold my credit cards and B. Help me find my wallet if I lost it. While it succeeds at A, it fails spectacularly at B. Chipolo has created a product that would actually help me find my wallet if it were lost or stolen. I immediately pre-ordered it, and hope to have a positive update when it arrives in February.